Dreams of the Dead
Author’s Note: From the files of the odd, strange, and curious, this is a story that first appeared in Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers by Richard M. Dorson. I thought it would be an ideal tale to repeat for the month of October. Captain Trudell and his crew of life savers built a reputation as one of the finest crews on the Great Lakes. Heroic rescues were their stock in trade.
A postcard of the Grand Marais Life Saving Crew under the leadership of Captain Benjamin Trudell.
Captain Benjamin Trudell was the Captain of the Grand Marais Life Saving Station. Having participated in many daring rescues, Trudell kept a secret through the years. Captain Trudell makes a confession, “If there is any event of importance happening, I dream about it in advance. I always have. My mother was the same way. She told me I would be gifted with unusual things. Anything important in my work, in my business, I dream of and when it happens the next morning, I remember it. It’s not exactly the same, you know, but the conditions are similar.
“During my second year in the Life Saving Service, in 1892, I was stationed at Deer Park (a ghost town east of Grand Marais). I was called to go on watch at 12 o’clock midnight, so I went to bed and slept from eight till twelve, and the dream happened at the very time a sinking was going on.
“I dreamed I met a man on the beach, coming towards me. He appeared to be an acquaintance, yet I was doubtful as he got nearer. He was very nicely, finely dressed. As I approached him, he held out his hand to shake hands, but his hand was cold and clammy, and I couldn’t hold the grasp. Then he turned and walked towards the water and dissolved into the surf.
” I was awakened standing in the middle of the dormitory, wet with perspiration. The relief watch was holding a lighted lantern up to my face. asking, ‘What is the matter?’
Next Day Tragedy
“That morning at the breakfast table, seven of us were messing together, and I recited the dream to them. They laughed at me, but I said, ‘Watch out.’ As the day wore on and nothing happened, they all began to make fun of me, even the Captain.
“It was blowing a three-day gale, with high seas from the north-west. About two o’clock that afternoon a man stumbled into the station, stating he had been on a wreck and had been washed ashore, the only survivor. Not knowing the direction of any town he followed along the beach until he arrived at Deer Park Life Saving Station. I was called to take the beach patrol west, and I was the first one ashore. There was the body of a man lying on his face, stretched out. He was finely dressed, and appeared to be an aristocrat. As we rolled him over, his hand flipped over and struck mine. And I saw he was the man of my dream. The resemblance was very noticeable. He had a mustache, but no chin whiskers. His clothes were not wet in the dream, though.
“He was Peter G. Minch, millionaire owner of the Western Reserve, the first steel ship to go down in the lakes.
Sinking of the Western Reserve
” The Western Reserve was the flagship of the Minch fleet of fourteen cargo vessels, a record-breaking three-hundred footer. On this trip Peter Minch was taking his family pleasure sailing from the Soo to Two Harbors, Minnesota, there to load up with ore. Proud in the strength of his ship, he sailed beyond Whitefish Point and Point Iroquois into the storm, against the advice of Captain Albert Meyers. The decks buckled before the gale, and about nine o’clock, the evening of April 30th, the steel freighter split in two. Passengers and crew scrambled into a metallic lifeboat and a yawl, and when the lifeboat capsized, all cambered into the yawl. A steamer passed to the west and the huddled group tried to burn a shawl as a signal, without success. The yawl coasted from this point, about twenty-five miles north of Grand Marais, until seven-twenty the following morning, when it overturned in the surf, some fifteen miles west of Deer Park and the Life Saving Station. All the occupants were drowned except the wheelman, Harry Stewart, who snatched a life preserver and made shore at Lonesome Point. It was Stewart, ( a cousin of Trudell) who lurched into the station bringing news of the wreck.
