"A gigantic sea mounted our stern, flooding the fantail, sending torrents of water through the passageways on each side of the cabin, concaving the cabin...
Again and again she plunged forward, only to be baffled in her attempts to run before it...sometimes fetching up standing and trembling from stem to stern. She was buffeted about by the tremendous seas, almost helpless."
- Captain S. A. Lyons, Steamer J. H. Sheadle
(Courtesy of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio)
"The snow by this time was a blizzard - you could not look into it and the wind was a continuous roar. We could not hear our own whistle forward.
We could see a steamer over on Iroquois island but on account of the snow could not make her out; the seas were breaking over her. We also saw a large Tomlinson steamer sunk just below Iroquois light."
- Captain G. A. West, Steamer William G. Mather
(Courtesy of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio)
"No lake master can recall in all his experience a storm of such unprecedented violence with such rapid changes of the wind and its gusts of such fearful speed...
It was unusual and unprecedented and it may be centuries before such a combination of forces may be experienced again."
- Excerpt from the Lake Carriers' Association report, 1913
