Lake Michigan Maritime Marginalia, Volume 1, Number 3
Near Tragedy, and Resurrection
The Jean R. led an initially uneventful life but, even as the Great Depression deepened, a productive commercial life for the Rodals, fishing out of Frankfort in the waters of northern Lake Michigan. However, the vessel’s placid existence ended abruptly in the late winter of 1934, and nearly spelled tragedy for the family. During the evening of Monday, 5 March 1934, with Louis, Ludwig, and Otto Rodal, and Peter Troan aboard, the Jean R. vainly struggled to make the Frankfort breakwall through heavy ice fields off the harbor. Cold weather fishing out of ports in Michigan where prevailing winds often choked the east shore with ice was a difficult proposition at best, but from harbors like Frankfort, Ludington, and Muskegon it was somewhat easier, though still arduous, since those cities’ year-round carferry traffic assured at least some semblance of a path out of or into the harbor, forged by the ferries maintaining their daily schedules throughout the winter. The powerful carferry Ann Arbor No. 7 224430 [b Viking] had just left Frankfort for Manitowoc; witnessing the tug’s plight, the carferry’s master had his vessel move back and forth three times near the harbor entrance in an attempt to clear a safe route for the Jean R. The ice proved too stubborn, though, and since the weather was clear with moderate southwest winds, the Ann Arbor No. 7 continued on its way, assuming the Jean R. to be in no immediate danger. The Jean R. continued her fruitless pursuit of the harbor entrance throughout the evening, but when the tug was about four hundred feet from the northerly breakwall the wind shifted to the northwest, quickly reaching gale velocity, pushing the ice fields southward. Throughout the night and into the next morning, the wind and ice pushed the Jean R., unable to make any headway whatsoever, closer and closer to the breakwall. The Frankfort Coast Guard station maintained a vigil over the tug’s plight, and thought the crew in no immediate danger. However, at 3 AM Tuesday the Jean R. issued a distress signal as she moved perilously close to the breakwall amid increasingly heavy seas and ice. The ice making the launch of their surfboat impossible, eight Coast Guardsmen clambered over the ice-covered north breakwall, the Jean R. less than a hundred feet from being pounded upon it. The west winds made throwing a line from the breakwall impossible, so the crew of the Jean R. threw a line to the Coast Guardsmen and, holding onto it for their lives, the Rodals and Troan skipped across the surging ice floes to the breakwall and safety. The wind and seas kept forcing the boat toward the breakwall. At 5 AM she had developed a severe list and an hour later a huge breaker hit the tug broadside, capsizing her. She sank immediately, her bow headed east and almost parallel to the breakwall. The shifting ice tore away her superstructure later that day, and her hull settled onto the riprap at the base of the breakwall, tearing out huge sections of her hull. The wind shift and ice trapped three other fish tugs between Frankfort and the Manitous, including the Frankfort boat Grace H. 228549, a staunch wooden Burger boat but five years old, but none suffered as did the Jean R. The ice barrier proved was so profound that the Coast Guard cutter Escanaba took days to battle the ice in an effort to reach the ice-bound tugs, while the Wisconsin-Michigan Steamship Company boat Missouri 200861, a 225-foot steel craft, remained held fast for several days off Frankfort.
Not Much Left
Figure 18 above shows the remains of the Jean R. after she had been brought from the beach south of the south breakwall to the area just west of the Luedtke Engineering Company building where she would be rebuilt. This view clearly shows her hull's "thick" welded seams. Photograph courtesy of the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University. Figure 19 below is graphic testimony as to the abuse she suffered from the ice: Her upperworks and completely sheared off. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Jean Smeltzer.
It would seem the life of the Jean R. had been cut short, that the beating she took from the combined forces of the seas, ice, and breakwall would have rendered her a total loss. A week later "Duke" Luedtke and his crew from the Luedtke Engineering Company of Frankfort, including diver Nes Holtrey, salvaged the boat’s engine, boiler, and net-lifter. However, although her remains seemed a mangle of steel, the overall integrity of the hull (or what remained of it), prompted "Duke" Luedtke to ask the Rodals to consider salvaging the Jean R.; the Rodals resolved to raise the Jean R. and rebuild her. In late March, Luedtke Engineering placed a sling beneath the hull and, between two scows, the remains of the Jean R. were raised and pushed onto the beach just inside the southerly breakwall. When the weather warmed sufficiently, the hull was brought to the southwest corner of the Luedtke property, where the vessel’s rebuilding would be undertaken. Although the Jean R. was uninsured and represented a loss of over $16,000, the Rodals not only pursued her rebuilding, but also leased the two year-old wooden fish tug A. Jeffery 231940 of Manitowoc to fish for the family until the Jean R. was completed. To accomplish this, Otto Rodal mortgaged his family's home at Frankfort.
t
Figure 20. The Rodals leased Albert Jeffrey's almost new fish tug A. Jeffrey to fish for the family while the Jean R. underwent her rebuilding. The A. Jeffrey is shown in Frankfort harbor in spring, 1934. William Lafferty Collection.
To supervise the rebuilding of the Jean R., the Rodals turned to the man who had originally designed her, Fred Peterson. In 1932 Peterson returned to boatbuilding, accepting a position with Palmer Johnson’s Sturgeon Bay Boat Works. The next year he struck out on his own, establishing the reborn Peterson Boat Works and completing his first hull, the fish tug Sally Lou 232836, followed by the Allie Brothers 233516 (still fishing out of Bayfield, Wisconsin). After the Jean R. was raised, the Rodals contacted Peterson about rebuilding their tug. This would
The Jean R. Takes Shape, Again
Figure 21. The extensive damage done to the starboard midsection of the Jean R.'s hull is evident in this view, as the damaged sections have been cut away and her framing straightened to accommodate new welded plating. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Jean Smeltzer.
Figure 22. The form of the old Jean R. reveals itself as the hull repairs reach completion and the superstructure is sheathed in, sometime during the summer of 1934. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Jean Smeltzer.
Figure 23. A second launching, date unknown, but probably around July 1934. She was christened by her namesake, Jean Rodal. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Jean (Rodal) Smeltzer.
Figure 24. A small crowd gathers to view the work-in-progress from the wharf of the Luedtke Engineering Company, shortly after the second launching of the Jean R. Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Jean Smeltzer.
Figure 25. The Jean R. in her new incarnation shortly after her rebuilding, sitting at the Rodal dock at Frankfort with a head of steam. The only obvious difference between her pre-foundering and post-foundering appearances was a smaller skylight over her engine compartment. William Lafferty Collection.
be somewhat unusual work for the fledgling Peterson Boat Works, which built only wooden craft at that point, but in the late spring of 1934 Peterson dispatched a crew to Frankfort to reconstruct the Jean R. Using tools brought from Sturgeon Bay and whatever equipment they could borrow from the Luedtke operation, four Peterson workers, with Fred Peterson’s frequent assistance, began restoring the Jean R. to her former glory. Over the next five months, the Peterson team replaced missing hull plates, straightened framing, constructed an entirely new superstructure, and reinstalled the vessel’s engine, boiler, and net lifter. By late August 1934, the newly-resurrected Jean R. was ready to fish again, looking virtually identical to how she had appeared before her destruction in the ice.
©1999, William Lafferty