PENTWATER, Mich. (WZZM) – November 11, 1940.
For those who were alive on that date, especially in the Midwest region of the United States, it was a day never to be forgotten.
More than 150 people lost their lives, including 64 sailors on Lake Michigan, as the result of a rare and tragic weather event that would literally change the way weather forecasting was done, and is the reason we benefit from 24-hour weather forecasting today.
It was Armistice Day – the day observed annually to celebrate the end of World War I. Today, it's called Veterans Day.
For those who were caught off guard but survived this unannounced storm, they remember Armistice Day for something other than commemorating the end of a war. Instead, they remember it as the day they were at war against the fury of Mother Nature.
November 11, 2015 marks the 75th anniversary of the great Armistice Day Storm of 1940.
"It was a weather anomaly that has never been equaled in the Midwest, or on the Great Lakes, since," said Valerie van Heest, who is a maritime author and director of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association. "It led to one of the most disastrous days ever for commercial shipping on Lake Michigan."
Three massive steel freighters succumbed to the storm just a few miles and a few hours from each other, between Pentwater, Michigan and Ludington, Michigan.
The storm was caused by the convergence of three weather systems, and once all three collided over southeastern Minnesota, a low pressure storm of record proportions had organized and was charging due east, catching everybody in its path by surprise.
"In 1940, weather forecasting wasn't 24/7/365 like it is today, so nobody was aware that this explosive storm was about to hammer the entire region," added van Heest.
Van Heest says the genesis of the storm began in the Pacific Northwest on November 7, 1940.
That's the day the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in the U.S. state of Washington. Excessively high winds caused the suspension bridge to sway uncontrollably. Eventually, a 600-foot section of the bridge broke free, and the entire structure collapsed into the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound.
A few days after the bridge fell, a storm system in the southern Rocky Mountains began to organize. This was a secondary system related to the offshore low that was present at the time of the bridge's fall.
These two systems would converge over the middle of the United States that would eventually cut a 1,000-mile-wide swath from Kansas to Michigan.
"As this monster storm raged east, it collided with unseasonably warm temperatures that had settled over the Midwest and the Great Lakes region," van Heest said.
When the two converging systems met the warm air mass in the Midwest, it created an extra-tropical cyclone event that turned an unseasonably warm Armistice Day, with temperatures hovering in the mid-60s, into a hurricane-like blizzard in a matter of hours.
"This was literally a weather bomb," said van Heest. "No one had ever seen anything like this storm since the Great Lakes storm of 1913, which remains the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, killing more than 250 people and destroying 19 ships."
On November 11th, 1940, the U.S. Weather Bureau had not forecast this pending weather disaster, and had missed the maturing storm out west because the weather office in Chicago, which was in charge of issuing warnings, had closed after operating for just a half day on Sunday, November 10th, as it typically did on Sundays.
"The day before the storm hit, weather forecasters left work early," said van Heest. "When they left, there was no indication that the storm that had hit the west coast and was going to go any farther than the Rocky Mountains."
When the forecasters got to work the next morning, they collected their data and realized that a tremendous storm had matured and was heading right for the Great Lakes.
"The forecasters began trying to quickly get the word out that a bad storm was coming," said van Heest. "Many of the ships were already in transit on Lake Michigan that day and they didn't have radios."
Meantime, the intense low pressure system was tracking from the southern plains states northeastward into western Wisconsin, pulling Gulf of Mexico moisture up from the south and pulling a cold arctic air mass down from the north.
A November Gale, packing a deathly punch, was imminent for the region, and it was impossible for anybody in the six states affected to prepare for it.
The result of all this weather convergence was a raging blizzard that would last two days. Snowfalls were measured up to 27 inches, sustained winds were 50-80 mph with gusts topping 110 mph, 30-40 foot swells built quickly on Lake Michigan, and a 50-degree Fahrenheit temperature drop over parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
"The storm formed on November 10 and didn't dissipate until two days later," van Heest said. "Some wind speeds were clocked at 126 mph at certain places on Lake Michigan, and none worse than off the shores of West Michigan, where the vortex of the storm was believed to have been the worst."
At its lowest, the central pressure of this storm stood at 956 mb (28.23 inches Hg), equivalent to what would be expected in a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, which is a system that classifies hurricanes that exceed the intensities of tropical depressions, and tropical storms, into five categories distinguished by the intensities of their sustained winds.
"The storm wreaked havoc on almost the entire 300 miles of Lake Michigan," said van Heest. "Dozens of ships were badly damaged; four of them were thrown up on shore, almost total losses."
The four ships that were tossed on shore by the storm were: Sinaloa, Arthur Orr, Conneaut and City of Flint.
On that day, there were three ships in particular caught in the storm's vortex just a few miles off shore between Pentwater and Ludington that would meet their demise, and would ultimately take the lives of 56 sailors.
"The Novadoc, the Anna C. Minch and the William B. Davock all found themselves within miles of each other near Pentwater," said van Heest. "All three ships would become total losses."
The 253-foot steel freighter Novadoc was bound from Chicago for Port Alfred, Quebec. It was carrying powdered coal and was shorthanded with 21 crewmen were on board, according to the official records.
"The captain decided to stay close to the eastern shore of Lake Michigan since the wind was coming from the southeast," said van Heest. "But the wind suddenly shifted to the southwest and began to increase."
According to van Heest, as the captain attempted to turn the freighter in the fierce wind, it became caught in a trough and began to roll.
The winds were too strong, and the Novadoc found itself being shoved by the swells closer to shore. The ship was being pounded to pieces by the huge waves, and it eventually began taking on water.
The Novadoc would run aground and break in half. All electrical lines were cut off, meaning no communications could reach the ship, and the crew was unable to radio for help.
"It was cold and within minutes [after grounding] a big wave crashed through a skylight and pulled two crewmen into the churning waters," said van Heest. "Both men were lost.
"The remaining crewmen hunkered down for the night; half of the crew was trapped in the bow section of the ship and the other half in the stern," added van Heest. "Since the ship had cracked in the middle, the two halves of the crew were unable to join each other."
"When morning broke, there was nobody on shore that knew of their plight," said van Heest, referring to the Novadoc's crew. "It took until noon the next day [November 12] until curious people walking the beach saw the freighter."
The Novadoc was half out of the water, and covered in ice, when it was spotted by onlookers.
"People saw a white blanket being dangled out of one of the windows on the ship," said van Heest. "Only 500 feet separated the Novadoc from the shoreline of what is now Silver Lake Beach."
Finally, after 36 hours of waiting on the sinking ship, in frigid waters, help came in the form of a small fishing boat, manned by Captain Clyde Cross, Gustav Fisher and Joe Fountain.
"In a colossal case of miscommunication, nobody took charge of the Novadoc disaster," said van Heest. "The U.S. Coast Guard refused to come to its aid."
Cross and his crew chose to no longer wait for authorities and took matters in their own hands by rescuing the remaining 17 crewmen from the Novadoc.
The Novadoc could not be salvaged and, to this day, remains in about 15 feet of water off the coast of Silver Lake Beach in Oceana County. The water is typically clear here, and you can look down over the side of your watercraft and see it.
Another one of the ships lost near Pentwater, during the 1940 storm, was the Anna C. Minch, a 380-foot-long Canadian steel steamer.
"The Minch was last spotted off Pentwater," said van Heest. "It was on its way to Chicago."
According to an investigation conducted by the Canadian Government and concluded on December 21, 1940, since there were no survivors, there is no eye witness evidence as to the events that occurred aboard the Minch just prior to her demise, nor is there any documentation detailing the actual manner in which she met her end.
The investigation went on to read that the last time the Minch was sighted by any person was when the crew of the Novadoc saw her shortly before 4 p.m. near Grand Haven, Michigan, heading in a southerly or southwesterly direction.
"It's believed that when the storm started moving across Lake Michigan, the strong winds from the southwest kicked up enough surge to push the Minch all the way back up to Pentwater, where it ultimately sank," added van Heest."It was a couple days after the storm passed that a fisherman spotted a spar of the tell-tale vessel sticking above the water, just south of the Pentwater channel.
"It would be the Minch."
All 21 crewmen died, though only eight of the bodies from the Minch were recovered when they washed up on shore days after the storm.
The wreck of the Anna C. Minch was surveyed by van Heest and the team from the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association (MSRA) from 2008 to 2015.
"Dives to the site, in about 35 feet of water, revealed the Minch had broken into two halves, and the sections were separated by about 500 feet," said van Heest. "The wreckage of this ship is extremely damaged and broken up, due to it having been dynamited to eliminate it as a hazard to navigation and the action of the surf over time."
Van Heest added that the triple boilers from the Minch come within about 20 feet of the surface of the water.
Nearby, the third freighter lost on Lake Michigan during the Armistice Day storm was the William B. Davock, a 420-foot steel steamer bound for Chicago, Illinois from Erie, Pennsylvania.
"When the Davock failed to show up in Chicago after the storm, people began assuming it and the Anna C. Minch had collided during the storm, and the Davock sliced the Minch in two," van Heest said. "Soon after the storm, a search began for the Davock, near where the Minch sank, and it kept up for months, but it was never found."
The William B. Davock went down, taking all 33 sailors with it.
"The Tuesday morning after the storm, bodies started washing up on shore between Pentwater and Ludington," said van Heest. "They were wearing life jackets with the name 'Davock' stenciled on them."
Sixteen bodies from the Davock would be recovered and identified. It is believed to this day that the remains of the other 17 crewmen are entombed somewhere inside the sunken ship.
One of the sailors who was aboard the Davock the night she went down was Harold F. Mullen, who served as an engineer.
Mullen's body was never recovered.
"I remember being in school in Sault Ste. Marie the day after the storm," said Harold T. Mullen, now 85, who was 10 years old when he lost his father. "The police came and got my three siblings and me out of school, and took us home."
Mullen, who now lives in Midland, Michigan, said when officers led him into his house, all of his family members were there, and he immediately knew something bad had happened.
"It was hard to believe; couldn't believe it, didn't believe it, didn't want to believe it," said Mullen, recalling the moment the authorities told the family that the Davock likely sank during the storm. "I still never believed it when I was older, and I always thought I'd run into him somewhere."
Harold Mullen, along with his brother John and his sisters Marjorie and Shirley, grew up without their father, and without any idea of what truly happened to him. The younger Harold never fully accepted that his father was dead, even decades after the disappearance of the Davock.
"I remember dreaming one time that I was working on a steel job and I met my father," said Mullen. "In the dream, I asked him what happened, but he never responded to me."
Mullen would spend more than three decades searching for answers and wondering what happened to both the William B. Davock and his father.
"Very few days go by when I don't think about it," said Mullen, with a tear streaming down his cheek. "I just can't get it out of my head."
In 1972, a group of pioneering scuba divers found the wreck of the Davock in 210 feet of water, less than two miles northwest of the Little Sable Point Lighthouse.
"Visibility in those days was pretty bad," said van Heest. "All divers could see and report was that the wreck was upside down."
What was immediately determined was that the wreck of the Davock was far from the final resting place for the Anna C. Minch, so the theory that the two ships collided was immediately dropped.
When Harold Mullen learned of the 1972 discovery of the Davock, he says he experienced some level of relief, but not closure, from what happened on that day in 1940.
"Most people visit cemeteries to mourn their loved ones when they pass," said Mullen. "My father's cemetery is Lake Michigan, and it's an awfully big cemetery."
Since 1997, Harold Mullen and his companion, Helen Wentz, have traveled every November 11th from Midland to Pentwater to spend the day wondering and reflecting. The first stop on the couple's annual pilgrimage is always Little Sable Point, which is located just south of Pentwater in Oceana County.
"I'd stand there at the water's edge, and just look out at the lake knowing this is the closest I will ever get to my father," Mullen said, as his eyes filled with tears. "The not knowing is the worst thing that can happen to you."
Once Harold and Helen felt they'd spent sufficient time at the lake, Mullen says they'd continue their travels north to Ludington's Lakeview Cemetery where they'd visit a gravesite that is dedicated to the victims of the Armistice Day storm.
Three of the unidentified victims from the William B. Davock and the Anna C. Minch are buried in this plot.
"Helen and I always place flowers on the gravesite, and I always write down my phone number and leave it on the headstone, hoping other family members of Davock victims might contact me," said Mullen. "But standing over the gravesite in the cemetery won't compare to getting the chance to stand over my father's real gravesite out there in Lake Michigan."
With the approach of the 75th anniversary of the Armistice Day storm coming up in 2015, van Heest and the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association thought it was finally time to investigate the wreck of the Davock in hopes of determining what caused it to capsize and sink. The MSRA team dove the wreck in the fall of 2014, because the colder water typically offers the best visibility.
"We've never seen such clear-cut proof before and we've surveyed dozens of shipwrecks," explained van Heest. "The answer lies in the stern; the rudder is broken and one of the four blades on the propeller is snapped clean off."
Van Heest believes the waves were so strong on November 11, 1940, they must have snapped the rudder's connection, which swung over and struck the propeller, snapping off a blade.
"With no power or steering, the Davock would have been at the mercy of the storm," van Heest concluded. "And apparently turned sideways to the waves and capsized."
In early spring of 2015, the MSRA publicly revealed the findings of their dive on the William B. Davock, and once that information became news, it spread over to the east side of the state. That's when Harold T. Mullen read about it and contacted van Heest.
"We met with Mr. Mullen and showed him some of the underwater video our technical divers shot of the Davock, and it seemed like a cathartic moment for him, considering his father's body is in all likelihood still trapped in the engine room," said van Heest. "Harold told me that for decades he had been making an annual pilgrimage to Little Sable Point to gaze at the lake and wonder where the Davock went down, and it was at that moment I realized that it might be of some comfort for Harold to travel to the site by boat to be close to his father's final resting place."
On September 20, 2015, Harold T. Mullen finally got his chance to stand over his father's real gravesite. Calm waters graced the surface of Lake Michigan, and the Sunday morning air temperatures settled in the mid-60s in Pentwater.
Van Heest, along with her husband Jack, Harold Mullen, Helen Wentz and two members of the WZZM News team ventured out to the exact location where the William B. Davock met its demise.
N 43° 40.367′, W 086° 36.335′
1.9 miles off Little Sable Light, 200-feet deep
"Today, I'm going to find it," said Mullen emphatically prior to boarding the boat. "I'm going to find it on the GPS; I'm going to find it on the charts; I'm going to find it, and that's it.
"This is it," said Mullen. "This is the end for me."
"We hope in doing the kind of work that we do that we're able to offer Mr. Mullen the closure that he's been seeking for all these years," said van Heest.
Once the boat ventured past the end of the Pentwater channel and into Lake Michigan, it only took 20 minutes to reach the Davock wreck site.
"That's it, right there," said Jack van Heest, Valerie's husband and boat captain, pointing to the large anomaly that began to appear on sonar. "We just crossed over top of it."
Mullen was glued to the sonar screen, as he saw the 420-foot tomb that likely still contains his father's remains, along with the remains of 16 other sailors.
Jack van Heest turned the boat engine off, and the sound of the engine rattling was quickly replaced by the soothing sound of silence. Nobody on the boat spoke a word for several minutes, knowing that the moment Harold T. Mullen had been waiting 75 years for was now unfolding.
Valerie van Heest brought a wreath, made up of fresh-cut flowers, along on the trip so Mullen had something to place on his father's true gravesite. Before that happened, a short ceremony was conducted on the boat, led by Valerie and Jack van Heest.
"It's a different day today than it was 75 years ago, when your dad was on the William B. Davock with his fellow crewmates," Valerie said, as she began the ceremony. "It's hard to imagine, when you consider the beautiful day we have here today, and being so close to shore, the tragedy that occurred here."
Valerie handed the wreath to Mullen, then proceeded to explain to him the decision behind the arrangement and the colors of flowers that adorned it.
"There's 16 white flowers for the men whose bodies were recovered; there's 16 blue flowers for the men who are trapped on the ship below us, and there's one purple flower for your father, Harold F. Mullen, who is with his crewmates just beneath us," van Heest told Mullen.
Mullen clung to the wreath during the ceremony, knowing that soon he'd be laying it on the surface of the water, roughly 200 feet directly above where his father is entombed.
After Valerie read aloud the names of all 33 men who died on the Davock, Mullen appeared to realize he was not alone in his grief.
"That's a lot of men," Mullen said, with a tear rolling down his cheek.
After Jack van Heest read a Psalm passage from the Bible, and offered a short prayer, the moment had arrived for Harold T. Mullen to try to put some of his immediate thoughts into words.
"It's been a long, long time," said Mullen, holding the wreath and choking up. "It's been a lifetime, but somehow I knew that before I was done, I'd be out here."
Mullen turned around, bent over, and gently tossed the wreath onto the surface of the water.
"This isn't just for [my father]; it's for all of them," Mullen said, referring to all 17 men who remain inside the Davock. "I'm convinced now, and I know exactly where he is."
As he watched the wreath drift further and further away, Mullen quickly realized the moment was metaphorical, revealing to him how he should approach this tragedy during his remaining living years.
"Maybe I'll drift away [from constantly wondering] now," Mullen said, as he stared at the wreath bobbing in the waves. "Maybe that's why I'm here today, and maybe that's how it should be now."
For several minutes, all aboard the boat watched the wreath slowly drift away.
Harold T. Mullen said he has fleeting thoughts, wondering how his father died aboard the Davock on that stormy November day, but added he no longer needs to obsess about where exactly his father likely is. Even though he finally made it to his father's gravesite after 75 years, he and Helen Wentz will continue to make their annual pilgrimage every November 11th from Midland to both Little Sable Point and Lakeview Cemetery in Ludington.
"Next time, when I stand on the beach, I won't just gaze at the lake and wonder where or why," Mullen said. "I will be able to look two miles northwest of the lighthouse, and know right where my dad is."
Along with the Novadoc, William B. Davock and the Anna C. Minch, two other vessels foundered on Lake Michigan in the Armistice Day storm of 1940, taking eight more lives.
The 43-foot-long fishing tug named Richard H. was lost off the coast of South Haven, Michigan. All three crewmen perished. Also lost off South Haven on that fateful day was the 40-foot-long fishing tug named Indian, which took all five crewmen down with it during the storm.
Prior to this rare weather event, all weather forecasts for the region originated in Chicago, Illinois, but the tragic losses caused by the storm due to the failure to provide accurate forecasting in November, 1940, prompted the Weather Bureau to expand forecasting responsibilities to include 24-hour coverage, which has been in place around the United States ever since.
Additionally, more weather offices were created, allowing for more localized forecasts, with the hope that people, both on land and on the waters, would always be prepared and properly warned when conditions are favorable for violent storms to mature.
Special thanks to the following contributors for helping this story come together:
