The Cross-Lake Ferries to Milwaukee
Near Grand Haven, Michigan
For most of a century, Grand Haven was a doorway across Lake Michigan. Passenger steamers of the Goodrich Line called here, and then in nineteen oh three the Grand Trunk railroad began running enormous car ferries between Grand Haven and Milwaukee. These were not simple passenger boats.
They swallowed whole railroad cars into their holds, letting freight cross the lake and skip the choked rail yards of Chicago entirely. The first ship was even named the Grand Haven. But the lake demands respect, and it took one of these ferries in a disaster the region never forgot.
On the twenty-second of October, nineteen twenty-nine, the car ferry Milwaukee left the Wisconsin shore bound for Grand Haven and sailed straight into a savage storm. Loose freight cars broke against the stern gate, water poured in, and the ship went down with every soul aboard, fifty-two men lost, the worst car ferry disaster in the history of the Great Lakes. A recovered message case held the crew's last words, describing tremendous seas and a ship making water fast.
The Grand Haven ferry terminal closed in nineteen thirty-three, but for thirty years this harbor had been a working bridge across the inland sea.
