Capt. McClure and the sinking of the Marshall F. Butters

October 7, 2026

The Marshall F. Butters. Photo from the Mason County Historical Society Rose Hawley Archives.

This Great Lakes History Log is presented by Filer Credit Union, the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum and Sable Points Media.

Masters of the Ludington Steamers

Stories of Ludington’s cross-lake rail fleet captains and other port mariners

By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief

On Friday, Oct. 20, 1916, Capt. Charles E. McClure was master of the wooden steamer Marshall F. Butters, bound from Midland, Ontario, to Cleveland with a cargo of lumber when the vessel encountered the Lake Erie storm that Great Lakes mariners would remember as “Black Friday.”

Six days later, McClure was home in Ludington telling the story himself.

Under the front-page headline “Brave Captain Tells of Storm,” the Ludington Chronicle allowed McClure to reconstruct the final hours of his ship largely in his own words.

“Well, I left Midland, Ontario, a week ago Wednesday, the 18th,” McClure said. “Had heavy weather all the way down Lake Huron and had to lay over in Detour Wednesday night on account of it.”

The Marshall F. Butters resumed its voyage at 4 a.m. The wind was fresh from the southeast, and by late morning the vessel was off Southeast Shoal in Lake Erie when the weather changed violently. McClure described a 75 mph gale that later settled back to between 60 and 65 mph.

Capt. Charles McClure. Photo from the Mason County Historical Society Rose Hawley Archives.

At about 1:30 p.m., McClure noticed the first sign that his ship was in serious trouble.

“About 1:30 I noticed that the boat began to list to the starboard; something unusual for her,” he recalled. “I got the crew all on deck and had them shifting the cargo to right her up. Afterwhile I saw it was no use.”

Then the engineer came on deck.

The ship was taking water.

“I told him to put everything on the pumps, syphons, etc., and he replied that he had,” McClure said.

McClure knew he had to get weight off the ship. He turned the Butters so the heavy seas might carry away the lumber stacked on deck.

“We put the trough to sea, and laid there 10 minutes to see if she wouldn’t throw the deckload herself but she wouldn’t let go,” McClure said.

The force of the storm was evident from the engine room. The second engineer saw the squall approaching and closed the shutters over the windows.

“When the wind struck us it picked up the inch lumber off the deck and it went up like paper,” he recalled.

The crew fought to save the ship. Pumps and siphons were running and men threw lumber overboard, but water continued to rise inside the hull. Eventually it reached the machinery spaces and extinguished the fires.

A colorized image of the Marshall F. Butters based on description published in 1986 edition of Mason County Historical Society’s Mason Memories, written by Ray Short. Photo restored by Sable Points Media.

Two other steamers, the F. R. Billings and Fred G. Hartwell, came toward the disabled vessel through the storm.

McClure lowered the starboard lifeboat, and eight men were taken to the Hartwell. Three others eventually went overboard and were picked up by the Billings. McClure remained aboard with a fireman identified by the Chronicle only as Paul.

Then the Butters suddenly settled beneath them.

“I was on the quarterdeck below, but when she sank, rapidly, about 8 feet, I climbed on the hurricane deck,” McClure said. “There I was pinned between the lower and the upper deck and pulled out by Paul, before I was seriously injured.”

McClure then realized that several of the other men who had been with them were gone.

“When I missed the three men who were left with us, I asked Paul where they were and he said, ‘Overboard.’ I said, ‘Paul, stay with me,’ and he replied, ‘You don’t need to tell me that, Captain, I will.'”

The statement offered a glimpse into how one of McClure’s crewmen regarded his captain at a moment when the ship was disappearing beneath them.

The Marshall F. Butters

McClure later praised the masters of both rescue vessels for risking their own ships to save his crew.

Asked by the Chronicle how his men had behaved during the ordeal, he answered simply:

“As cool a bunch of fellows as I ever saw.”

Every man aboard the Marshall F. Butters survived.

The ship did not.

The wooden lumber carrier sank near Southeast Shoal, ending a 34-year career on the Great Lakes. Its wreck remained close enough to the surface that a mast protruded above Lake Erie, and mariners soon warned that the remains had become a hazard to navigation.

For McClure, the sinking became the defining episode of a maritime career that had begun more than four decades earlier.

Charles E. McClure was born Aug. 2, 1861, in Pennsylvania. His parents were William McClure, about 1820-1870, and Eliza S. Taylor McClure, about 1827-1875. His father died when Charles was about 9 years old and his mother when he was 13.

About a year later, McClure went to sea.

He first sailed aboard a sailing vessel on the Atlantic Ocean. Within several years he survived a shipwreck near Chicago. By the time of the Butters disaster, the 55-year-old captain had spent virtually his entire adult life afloat. A Lansing newspaper reporting on his visit to his sister after the Lake Erie storm credited him with 43 years on the Great Lakes and Atlantic.

McClure eventually earned his master’s papers and moved into command.

His career extended well beyond the Marshall F. Butters. Bowling Green State University’s Historical Collections of the Great Lakes identified McClure as captain of the John Otis in 1906 and 1907 and the Mathew Wilson in 1908 and 1909. After surviving the Butters disaster, McClure returned to command. The 1918 International Ship Masters’ Association directory listed him as captain of the C. H. Green.

McClure married Anna C. Jensen McClure, 1867-1931, who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. They married Dec. 24, 1886, and established their family in Ludington. Census records placed them in the city by 1900.

His experience with the Butters also extended beyond its final voyage. McClure commanded the vessel on Lake Michigan and at one point brought it into Manistee for shelter after the ship became heavily iced.

That familiarity made his observation on Oct. 20, 1916 – that the starboard list was “something unusual for her” – especially significant. He knew how his ship normally behaved.

McClure lived only a little more than three years after the sinking.

He died at his Ludington home on Feb. 7, 1920, at age 58. Several years earlier, while loading the Marshall F. Butters at Manistee, he had fallen and broken two ribs. His final illness was attributed in part to complications from those injuries, aggravated by the exposure he endured during the Lake Erie sinking. He was remembered as the last man to leave his ship.

McClure was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ludington.

The vessel with which his name became most closely associated had its own long connection to Mason County’s lumber industry.

The Marshall F. Butters, official number 91408, was built at Milwaukee in 1882 by the Milwaukee Ship Yard Company. The wooden, single-screw steamer was designed for the lumber trade and was commonly described as a lumber hooker or steam barge.

It measured about 164 feet long, 30 feet wide and 11 feet deep and registered 376 gross tons and 229 net tons.

When loaded, great stacks of lumber occupied much of the open deck between the vessel’s forward and after structures. That arrangement allowed the ship to carry large quantities of lumber, but it also created the hazard McClure confronted in 1916 when heavy seas began working against the deck load.

The Butters had undergone substantial work shortly before its loss. During the winter of 1915-1916, Manistee Iron Works installed a replacement boiler and performed strengthening and interior repairs.

The ship had another dark episode in its history more than two decades before McClure took command.

In July 1893, Capt. William Laudner was bringing the Butters from Chicago to Ludington when he died by suicide in his cabin. Crew members discovered his death when they went to call him for breakfast.

A coroner’s inquest was held after the vessel reached Ludington. Marshall F. Butters himself accompanied Laudner’s remains when they were sent by train to Chicago.

By 1905, Robert Reid was listed as captain and Wayne Coates as engineer. By 1916, Charles McClure was in the wheelhouse.

The man whose name the vessel carried was Marshall Francis Butters, born Oct. 28, 1857, in Portage, Wisconsin. He spent most of his life in Mason County and became one of the prominent lumbermen associated with Ludington’s lumber era. He died June 11, 1931, in Ludington.

He was the son of Horace U. Butters, 1833-1905, one of the pioneer lumber operators whose name became permanently associated with Buttersville.

In 1878, Horace Butters entered into partnership with Richard G. Peters in Butters, Peters & Co. The operation later became the Butters & Peters Salt and Lumber Company. Marshall became actively involved in the family enterprise.

The Butters family’s business interests extended inland as well as across Lake Michigan. The Mason & Oceana Railroad moved logs and other freight between the Buttersville mills and timber country to the east and southeast. Horace served as president and Marshall as secretary. The railroad eventually carried farm products, merchandise, fuel and other freight in addition to logs.

Marshall later followed Michigan’s lumber industry north.

The Marshall F. Butters Lumber Company constructed a major mill at L’Anse in the Upper Peninsula. The company had been organized in 1912, reflecting a broader pattern in Michigan lumbering as capital and equipment moved toward remaining timber after much of the Lower Peninsula had been cut over.

The company encountered financial difficulties, however, and receivers were appointed in 1914.

In 1884, Marshall married Margaret “Maggie” Robbins Arnott Butters, 1859-1950. Her family arrived in Ludington in 1874 as the Flint & Pere Marquette Railway reached the community. Her father, Robert Arnott, served as the railway’s first Ludington agent. Margaret graduated from Ludington High School in 1879 as a member of its second graduating class.

By the final years of the Marshall F. Butters, another Ludington lumber empire had become connected to the vessel.

Justus Smith Stearns, 1845-1933, became one of the most prominent industrialists in Ludington history. His interests eventually included lumber, salt, electric power, railroads, manufacturing, banking, hotels and coal.

His wife, Paulina Lyon Stearns, 1849-1904, connected him to the earlier industrial empire of Capt. Eber Brock Ward, 1811-1875. Paulina’s sister Catherine Lyon Ward was Ward’s wife. Ward’s business interests included Great Lakes shipping, iron, railroads and vast timber holdings along the Pere Marquette River.

Stearns moved to Ludington in 1876 and became associated with the continuing Ward interests. He later established his own lumber operations and, in 1898, purchased the T.R. Lyon plant on Pere Marquette Lake, the surviving former Ward north mill. It became part of the Stearns Salt & Lumber Company.

By 1916, the old Marshall F. Butters had entered the Stearns business network. The L’Anse Sentinel reported after the sinking that the ship was owned by the Stearns Lumber Company, while wreck records identified the Ludington Transfer Company.

The ship had been built in 1882 for the lumber economy represented by Horace and Marshall Butters. More than three decades later, it ended its career associated with the industrial empire of Justus Stearns.

The following year, in 1917, the Stearns sawmill on Pere Marquette Lake ceased cutting lumber.

McClure survived the Butters and returned to command another vessel. Marshall Butters lived until 1931. Stearns lived until 1933.

But the old steamer never came home.

Its final voyage brought together several pieces of Mason County history: the Butters lumber family, the Stearns industrial empire and a veteran Ludington captain who stayed with his ship until it was disappearing beneath him.

Masters of the PM Steamers series to date:

In search of information

Editor’s Note: I am seeking historical artifacts and stories from people whose family members worked as ship captains or in Ludington’s maritime industry. While this project focuses on the Ludington carferry fleet, I am also interested in items related to anyone from Mason County who worked on the Great Lakes or oceans.

This series has three goals:

To share Ludington’s rich maritime history with readers of the Mason County Press.
To publish a biographical book about the Ludington fleet captains.
To create an interactive kiosk exhibit at the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum for historical research.

I am looking for artifacts such as photographs, written documents, or digitized materials. Items will be placed in the Mason County Historical Society archives, and donors will receive documentation of their contribution.

If you have items or stories to share, please email editor@mediagroup31.com or call/text 231-757-3202.

Note: I am also interested in collections related to the Mason County railroad industry.

If you would like to financially contribute to the book project, please click here for more information.

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