THE LOST SOULS OF THE ALPENA

The sea is rolling as if it were mad.

—Detroit Free Press in response to the terrible “Alpena Storm”

Nothing could make you feel more helpless than being at the mercy of Lake Michigan during a storm, and not one single passenger aboard the side-wheel steamer Alpena, leaving Grand Haven and bound for Chicago, lived to tell his frightful story. October 15, 1880, was a nice fall day, but the barometer was falling quickly. Three hours into the trip, everything was still fine. The weather was cooperating, but as the night wore on, the winds picked up to gale speeds, and no part of the lake was still. The storm continued to get worse. Over the course of the next two days, the infamous fury of Lake Michigan became known as the Alpena Storm, damaging over ninety ships and possibly taking one hundred lives from the Alpena alone, adding to the graveyard at the bottom of the water. To this day, it was one of the worst storms ever seen on Lake Michigan.

Captain Nelson W. Napier had no idea just how bad the storm would become. Napier was a friendly man, well liked by his regular passengers. He had decades of experience on the water and perhaps was overly confident the day he took the Alpena out for its last voyage. Wreckage from the Alpena washed ashore near Holland, including items with the Alpena’s name on them. Bodies started to wash ashore, as well as coffins the ship was carrying as cargo. The ship’s flag, a final surrender to the lake, washed ashore in White Lake, Michigan. The entire west coast of Michigan, from as far north as Muskegon down to Saugatuck, was littered with debris from the wreck.

No one knows for sure what happened to the Alpena, besides the obvious fact that it was torn apart brutally by the fury of the lake. The bones of the Alpena and most of its crew and passengers have never been located. Judging by dead bodies found with stopped watches—all at 10:50 p.m.—it can be assumed that is about the time the ship went under.

Captain Napier’s family put up a reward of one hundred dollars for anyone who could find his body, but Lake Michigan kept him for itself, and he was never found. Superstitious sailors have spoken for a long time about seeing a ghost ship trying to make the trip from Grand Haven to Chicago but never succeeding. The Alpena is forever doomed to live in the spectral world of Lake Michigan’s ghosts.