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  Date / Time: 12/10/2008 5:57 AM UTC

  John Thompson
  

  http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/stm_1913.php

   

  ..."HELL HATH' NO FURY LIKE A GREAT LAKES FALL STORM"...

  ....... GREAT LAKES WHITE HURRICANE NOVEMBER 1913......

  By: William R. Deedler, Weather Historian, WFO Pontiac/Detroit Mi

   

  Story excerpt:

   

  "They came draped over life preservers, they came wrapped in each others arms, and they came frozen together in clusters. All week long they came, to be collected by area farmers who some- times had to dig half-buried bodies out of the sand that was trying to cover them."

   

  It's sad to say, that even with the horrible outcome of those sailors and the grief their family and friends endured, some looting of the bodies and cargo from the ships quickly became a problem. The local police were notified and they, along with the Sarnia police, enforced a stiff fine and up to 3 years in jail if caught looting. News quickly spread of the mass graveyard along the Canadian beach and scores of relatives and friends of the sailors came and identified the bodies. Unfortunately, after a few days, a change in the wind and lake currents caused some bodies to drift back out into the lake, never to be found.

   

  Some strange tales also arose from this tragedy, such as, the sailor who washed ashore from the Charles S. Price...with a life preserver from the Regina! This spawned a rash of theories on how it got there. Did the ships collide and thus, some men from the Price were rescued by the crew of the Regina...only later to go down herself?  Or, where they (Regina crew) unable to rescue the men but still threw them life preservers? Another possibility, maybe the life preserver just floated in after the sailor and ended up on top of him. Another tale surrounded a

  unidentified sailor with the initials J.T. on his arm. After reading about it in the paper, Mrs Edward Ward, telegrammed her father, Thomas Thompson of Hamilton, Ontario, telling him his son (her brother) John, must be the unidentified man. John Thompson had been on the Carruthers, like the unidentified man and also had a tattoo with the initials J.T. on his arm. Therefore, Thomas rushed to the funeral home to identify the body. The body was badly battered but the facial features, similar to John's, were still largely recognizable. Other similarities were compelling, the feet had crossed toes, just like John's, the tattoo was on the left arm, like John's and a scar on the nose and leg matched John's perfectly. Not to mention, the body's teeth had the same teeth missing as John's! There was, however, a puzzling fact that didn't match...the hair color. The corpse's hair was light brown, while John's was almost black! The undertaker dismissed this fact, figuring the body, being immersed in cold water for a long time could have caused the hair to be lighter. In light of all the remarkable similarities, they went ahead with the funeral. You guessed it, it wasn't John. Right in the middle of John's memorial service, in walks John! You could have knocked over the mourners with a feather as they stood there, stunned as the resemblance was uncanny! Evidently, John had jumped ship to be on a ship called the Maple and waited out the storm in Toronto, where he read about his "death." Thinking it would be a real good joke, he said nothing to his family and friends and thus, walked in on his own funeral!

   

  The unidentified man remained so and was buried with four other anonymous souls. All together, only 56 bodies would be recovered on Canadian beaches along with one near Port Sanilac, Michigan.

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