A Daring Rescue: How sailors entombed in frozen shipwreck were saved in 1913’s White Hurricane

GULL ROCK, LAKE SUPERIOR - When maritime historians talk in hushed tones about the White Hurricane storm of 1913 that exploded over the Great Lakes like a five-day “meteorological bomb,” their words are laced with death.

They tell of the giant waves that rolled huge ships before sucking them underwater, sinking at least a dozen. They describe the snow squalls whipped up by cyclone-force winds that pushed other ships right out of the lakes, leaving them stranded on rocky beaches. They talk of the more than 250 sailors and crew believed lost in our inland seas while this storm raged.

The famous White Hurricane that happened 112 years ago this week would go down in the books as the worst natural disaster in Great Lakes history.

But what stands apart is a story of survival: A nail-biting d