Famous for all the
wrong reasons

Many ships have made Duluth famous, but only a handful have themselves been made famous by the Port. That distinction certainly belongs to the old freighter Mataafa, and unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. The Mataafa was wrecked on the end of the Duluth North Pier in 1905. The tragedy ended the lives of nine good men, barely 300 yards from the safety of the Park Point shore. The 430-foot steamer had been built in 1899 for the Minnesota Steamship Company and she became one of the first units of the United States Steel Company's Pittsburgh fleet when it was organized in 1901. The fleet included 112 ships, the largest merchant fleet in the world at that time, all based in Duluth.

Like many of her running mates, the Mataafa regularly towed consort barges in those days, which enabled her to haul roughly twice as much cargo down the lakes on a typical trip. In 1905 she was paired with the 450-foot barge James Nasmyth. Together, the two carried a payload of some 15,000 tons.

At the end of November 1905, the steamer and her barge weathered out a storm in Duluth after taking on a load at the Missabe ore docks, and then they set out together at 4 p.m. on the 27th. By midnight a second storm swept down the North Shore, blowing 50- and 60-knot winds out of the northeast. The two ships labored in the growing seas off Two Harbors and then, with the arrival of daylight on the morning of the 28th, they turned to run back to the safety of Duluth harbor. Capt. Robert Humble on the Mataafa saw tremendous breakers at the piers as he approached Duluth and he elected to drop the towline to the Nasmyth. The big barge went to anchor out on the lake while the steamer tried for the narrow entry.

It was 2:30 p.m. on the 28th when the Mataafa approached the Ship Canal, but it would be six months later that she finally got inside the harbor. A huge sea was running at the time and the wind gusted to 80 miles an hour, and a powerful current was also sweeping out the piers, causing a dangerous eddy at the entry. The Mataafa was swept into the end of the North Pier, where she struck solidly and came to an abrupt stop. The captain tried backing the ship, but the movement astern combined with the outbound current and swung the ship's bow around more than 270 degrees. The Mataafa came to rest in the shallow water alongside the North Pier. In that position, she was hammered by enormous waves during the next several hours while the temperature plummeted to near zero. Nine of the ship's 24 crewmen perished that night while literally thousands of Duluthians watched helplessly from the shore or from windows on the hillside.

The Mataafa was refloated and patched up in the spring of 1906 and she went on to serve another 61 years on the lakes. Her story followed her until she went to the scrapyards at Port Colborne in 1966.

The legend of the old Mataafa was resurrected earlier this year when Marine Tech's big crane-barge B. Yetter made a discovery at Superior Entry. Working on repairs to the South pier, the Yetter's powerful crane picked up a rusty riveted-steel rudder from about 30 feet of water. The 16-foot relic recalled an incident in June 1914 when a steamer was swept into the pier during a gale; she lost her rudder when her stern pounded on the concrete pier wall. The unfortunate steamer was none other than the Mataafa, and the event was eerily reminiscent of her terrible accident some nine years before. In this case, the tugs America and Harvey D. Goulder rescued the helpless ship and brought her to safety before the storm could inflict serious damage to her hull, but the ship's crew must have been haunted by visions of the 1905 tragedy while they waited for assistance.

The Mataafa's old rudder will be stood in Canal Park next to the Visitors Center where it will serve as a reminder of the Mataafa storm and the men who lost their lives that day in 1905.

Pat Labadie is the director of Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center.