Capt. Vevang saved Steamer 32 during the Armistice Day storm

November 11, 2026

The frozen stern of the City of Flint 32. Mason County Historical Society.

This Great Lakes History Log is presented by Filer Credit Union, and the Mason County Historical Society.

Masters of the Ludington Steamers

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

By Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief

The wind was driving massive waves toward Ludington on the evening of Nov. 11, 1940, when Capt. Jens M. Vevang tried to guide the City of Flint 32 carferry through the Ludington harbor entrance. The 369-foot vessel was nearing the end of its crossing from Milwaukee, but the southwest gale had turned the approach into a fight for survival.

The carferry struck the north breakwater and was driven into shallow water near Stearns Park. Waves continued to pound its hull. Vevang, serving as relief captain while the vessel’s regular master, Capt. Charles E. Robertson (1880-1944), was on shore leave, faced an extraordinary decision: He ordered water admitted into the grounded ship to settle it more securely on the lake bottom.

The carferry remained stranded for nearly three days, but its passengers and crew survived. Farther south along the same shoreline, three freighters were being destroyed in the storm, with 59 lives lost. Vevang’s actions became the defining event of a long Great Lakes career and part of one of the deadliest maritime disasters in Lake Michigan history.

SS City of Flint 32. Mason County Historical Society.

The storm builds

Armistice Day began with unseasonably mild weather. Temperatures approached 65 degrees in parts of west Michigan, but a powerful low-pressure system moving northeast across the Midwest brought rain, falling temperatures, snow and violent winds. On Lake Michigan, the winds shifted toward the southwest, driving seas directly against the eastern shoreline.

At Ludington, the wind intensified during the afternoon, briefly subsided and then returned with much greater force about 5 p.m. An anemometer at the Pere Marquette Railway marine office recorded a maximum of 75 mph, with extended periods of 60 to 70 mph winds. Conditions offshore may have been worse.

City of Flint 32 was among the Pere Marquette fleet’s newer carferries. Built at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, it entered service in April 1930. It carried railroad cars and passengers and had 40 staterooms, five parlors and a turboelectric propulsion system developing about 7,200 horsepower. Neither the vessel’s size nor its power could overcome the gale.

Among those aboard was John Meissner, an 18-year-old deckhand who had joined the crew just a month earlier and later became a Great Lakes captain. In recollections of the voyage, he said the wind was already blowing at approximately 50 knots when the vessel departed Milwaukee and that the barometer had fallen into the 28-inch range.

Meissner later questioned the decision to leave port. The Wisconsin shoreline offered some initial protection, but seas worsened as the ferry crossed the lake. Near Ludington, the vessel pitched and rolled heavily, and the crew was told to put on life jackets. His recollections do not establish what weather information Vevang had before departure or why he chose to sail.

Coast Guard crews prepare a rescue from the S.S. City of Flint 32. Mason County Historical Society.

A desperate approach

Another Pere Marquette carferry reached the harbor shortly before Vevang’s vessel. Capt. Arthur Altschwager (1878-1962), master of Pere Marquette 21, had struggled to reach his slip. The wind drove the 348-foot vessel against pilings near the railroad docks, where its crew secured emergency lines to keep it inside the harbor.

Outside the entrance, Coast Guard personnel watched the lights of City of Flint 32 as it approached about two hours behind schedule. The engines and steering equipment were working, but the carferry could not overcome the wind and waves.

Meissner remembered looking through a forecastle porthole and seeing the breakwater drawing closer. Vevang tried to turn toward the entrance, but the gale forced the ship northward. It struck the north breakwater, damaging its hull, then continued toward the beach and grounded in the shallows.

The Ludington Daily News reported that the carferry’s position changed overnight. Its bow initially pointed toward shore, with the stern near the bend in the breakwater. Under the force of the waves, the ship gradually swung until it was nearly parallel to the beach.

Grounding had stopped its forward progress, but the vessel was not safe. Waves threatened to lift the hull and slam it against the bottom or the breakwater. Vevang ordered the seacocks opened, allowing water to enter and settle the ship more firmly into the sand. Meissner later recalled the crew carrying out the order.

Deliberately taking water aboard was a calculated emergency measure. It reduced the hull’s movement and offered a way to protect the people aboard while preserving the possibility of pumping out the water and refloating the ferry after the storm. The immediate mission was no longer to reach the docks; it was to keep the ship intact until help could arrive.

Second Cook Ernest Delatowski of Ludington is rescued from the City of Flint. Mason County Historical Society.

Rescue from the beach

By Tuesday, Nov. 12, the huge carferry was visible from Ludington’s waterfront. The Ludington Daily News placed it about 500 feet offshore, west of Court Street and Lakeshore Drive. Residents gathered to watch, but the emergency continued aboard the ice-covered vessel.

Freezing spray coated its lifeboats, railings, davits and deck equipment. Photographs taken after the grounding show thick ice and icicles hanging from nearly every exposed surface. Snow squalls reduced visibility, and heavy seas made the short distance to shore dangerous to cross.

The Ludington Coast Guard station, under Capt. A. E. Christoffersen, established a breeches buoy between the beach and the stranded ferry. The rescue equipment used lines and a suspended canvas seat to carry people to shore. Waves repeatedly swept over the lines, sometimes submerging the person making the crossing.

Two crewmen reached shore by breeches buoy on Nov. 12. One was second cook Ernest Delatowski, 27, of Ludington, who was partly submerged in icy water and taken to Paulina Stearns Hospital as a precaution. A message he attempted to carry from the ship was lost in the crossing. The other was Luther Ryder, 19, also of Ludington.

The danger prompted rescuers to stop using the apparatus while the seas remained high. Four passengers stayed aboard until Wednesday, Nov. 13, when the Coast Guard removed them by surfboat. The remaining crew stayed to help stabilize and recover the vessel.

An ice-covered automobile on the City of Flint. Mason County Historical Society.

A far greater tragedy

As the emergency at Ludington unfolded, reports of wreckage and missing sailors revealed a catastrophe farther south. Between Ludington and Little Point Sable, three freighters were lost or wrecked in the same gale.

The 420-foot William B. Davock, owned by Pickands Mather & Co. of Cleveland, Ohio, sank with all 33 aboard. The Canadian steamer Anna C. Minch, about 410 feet long, went down with its entire 24-member crew. The Canadian pulp carrier Novadoc grounded near Juniper Beach, south of Pentwater, and broke apart. Two crewmen drowned, while 17 others survived in the wrecked vessel’s forward section.

Together, those three losses accounted for 59 deaths. Other vessels and small boats were damaged or lost elsewhere on the lake. The Armistice Day Storm became one of the defining disasters of Great Lakes shipping in the 20th century.

The 17 Novadoc survivors spent two nights in the battered forward section, with little food and no lifeboats. Lloyd H. Belcher, one of the crewmen, later described the ship breaking apart after grounding and the survivors waiting for help as the seas continued to punish the wreck.

Help came Nov. 13 when Capt. Clyde Cross brought the Pentwater fishing tug Three Brothers II alongside the broken freighter. With crewmen Gustave Fisher and Joe Fontaine, Cross took all 17 survivors aboard and returned them to Pentwater. Their rescue became one of the storm’s most remembered acts of seamanship.

The dead also came ashore. Bodies of sailors from the Davock washed onto the Ludington shoreline as Coast Guard crews and volunteers searched the beaches. Some victims were taken to the Salvation Army building in Ludington for identification. Three unidentified sailors were eventually buried together at Lakeview Cemetery, where a monument commemorates the crews of the Davock and Minch.

The contrast was stark. In the same gale that destroyed those freighters, Vevang’s carferry had grounded close enough to Ludington for rescue crews to reach it. Everyone aboard City of Flint 32 survived.

A bollard mooring post and plaque at Stearns Park in Ludington commemorates the City of Flint 32. Rob Alway photo.

The carferry returns to service

By Thursday, Nov. 14, the weather had moderated enough to begin pulling City of Flint 32 free. Pere Marquette officials coordinated the work with the Chicago tug John F. Cushing and Pere Marquette 21. Water admitted through the seacocks had to be removed, and the railroad needed to determine whether the grounding had caused serious damage.

The carferry was refloated Nov. 14 and, after a preliminary inspection at Ludington, sent to Manitowoc for a more thorough examination. Despite its collision with the breakwater and days in the surf, the ship suffered relatively little damage and returned to service.

City of Flint 32 continued operating on Lake Michigan until 1967 and later was converted into a railroad ferry barge named Roanoke.

Gravesite of Capt. Vevang at Leelanau Township Cemetery, Northport. Rob Alway photo.

The captain behind the decision

Jens M. Vevang was born Dec. 14, 1880, in Vevang, Norway, a coastal community in the Romsdal region. He was the son of Oliver Svendsen Vevang and Anne Pedersdatter. After coming to Michigan, he built a career on the Great Lakes and eventually served as a master in the railroad carferry trade.

A National Register of Historic Places study lists Vevang among the captains of the Grand Trunk Milwaukee Car Ferry Co.’s Milwaukee between 1917 and 1922, when it operated between Grand Haven and Milwaukee. That carferry later sank in a 1929 Lake Michigan storm, taking approximately 47 men with it. Vevang was no longer its captain when it was lost.

By 1940, he was a relief captain with the Ludington-based Pere Marquette fleet. He was nearly 60 when he took command of City of Flint 32 in Robertson’s absence and faced the most clearly documented test of his career.

Vevang died Dec. 8, 1956, and is buried at Leelanau Township Cemetery in Northport. His actions during the storm remain part of the historical record at Ludington. A Michigan historical marker at Stearns Park recalls the grounding, and another monument near the waterfront incorporates a salvaged railroad ferry mooring fitting. Memorials at Lakeview Cemetery and in Pentwater commemorate other victims and survivors of the storm.

The City of Flint 32 could not be kept off the beach on Nov. 11, 1940. But Vevang’s decision to settle the stranded carferry into the shallows helped it withstand the gale until the weather eased and the vessel could be recovered. Everyone aboard survived.

Masters of the Ludington 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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