Dorsey’s sunken steamer eludes search, but fuels local folklore
Nearly 90 years after the mysterious passenger steamboat captain Ralph Dorsey disabled and sank his magnificent craft, Rescue, with an axe on Big Glen Lake, the boat’s whereabouts remain as murky as his motives for doing so. Not even a team of professional scientists from the University of Michigan, a hi-tech underwater robot, more than a dozen local fishermen and storytellers, and boatloads of enthusiastic students who searched the lake together on May 20 and 21, were able to find a trace of the lost steamer – whose story is one of this area’s great mysteries.
Even as the half-million dollar M-ROVER combed the depths in vain for two days in places where locals guessed the Rescue might sit, legends about Dorsey and his peculiar ways seemed to rise to the surface of Glen Lake one after another, like bubbles in a fish tank. And congregating on a flotilla of motorboats and pontoon boats were students from the two local high schools - Leelanau and Glen Lake – to record the lore still leaking from Dorsey’s stunning act back in 1914 and, eventually, to produce a documentary.
Virtually the only clue they had was a black-and white-photograph from Rob Rader’s historical book Beautiful Glen Arbor of the Rescue slowly capsizing in the lake, and a man nearby in a rowboat, presumably its captain. Barely visible in the background is what appears to be Alligator Hill, fueling the theory that Dorsey sank his boat on the northwest end of Big Glen Lake. But that is unclear. The identity of the photographer, and why that person happened to be nearby at the moment in question, is also unknown, especially given that cameras couldn’t have been that numerous in 1914.
“Ralph was a heavy drinker, and his passengers refused to ride with him any longer,” voices one legend. Ralph’s nephews, Jim and John Dorsey, who took a joyride on the lake during the first day of the search, confirmed that their uncle liked to tip back the bottle, even in his latter years living in Frankfort after he brought his boating business here to an abrupt halt. “We were known to drink a little hard cider whenever the neighbors came for a visit,” recalled Jim.
“Nightmares of drowning children haunted Ralph, so he sank his boat before tragedy could strike,” is another theory, introduced by Dave Taghon, the proprietor of the Empire Historical Museum who cruised around in his motor boat on Day One of the search, looking for clues with his fish finder. “Some say he had a premonition that something bad was going to happen,” said Taghon. According to Barb Siepker, who owns the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor and is another local historian by association, Ralph had six brothers, one of whom disappeared while boating in northern Lake Superior. And the first shots of the First World War were fired in June of 1914. Siepker cites these facts as possible ingredients for nightmares.
“Ralph lost the boat in a card game, but didn’t want anyone else to ride off in his mahogany-lined craft,” voiced another, brought to the table by Dottie Lanham, who arrived at the scene on Day Two just after the search had been called off indefinitely. “I heard they played a lot of cards in those days because of the idle time on their hands,” she added. “But these stories have probably been exaggerated as they were passed down through generations.”
“Business was bad, and the frustration of cruising around the lake, only to find no one on the docks waiting for him in need of a lift to Glen Arbor, finally got to Ralph,” is yet another explanation. Dr. Chuck Olsen, the initiator behind this entire project, recalls a story told to him by the late John Tobin, who claimed to be fishing where the Narrows Bridge is today when Dorsey paddled ashore in a rowboat, minutes after having chopped a hole in Rescue’s hull with an axe, muttering “If they won’t ride with me, they won’t ride with anyone else!” Which explanation this eyewitness, one time removed, account supports is anybody’s guess.
Olsen, a part-time local resident, is a former professor at U-M and former trustee at The Leelanau School. He pulled the strings to bring his friend, Guy Meadows a professor at the university’s Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering up here with two assistants, Hans Van Sumeran and Chris Rauch, and their awe-inspiring M-ROVER (Michigan’s Remote Operated Vehicle for Educational Research) to comb the bottom of Big Glen Lake.
The M-ROVER itself is amazing. This 500-pound underwater robot can locate an object as small as a dime in an area as large as a football field (100 yards) with its sonar. It flies like a helicopter does through air, rotates on its own axis, hovers, backs up or flies sideways. The two-man crew operating the M-ROVER at all times can control the amount of thrust to give them complete control over the robot as it illuminates and videotapes whatever it sees underwater. It can reach speeds of up to four miles per hour, lift 100 pounds of in-water weights and cut a line with its razor sharp claw that moves at three different joints. The M-ROVER can reach depths of up to 1,500 feet as a long tether feeds it electricity from the operating ship (or, in this case, a generator on the pontoon boat provided by the Narrows Marina).
So it can penetrate any spot in the Great Lakes, and at approximately 140 feet at its deepest point, Big Glen Lake is cake, technologically. But that’s assuming the M-ROVER has a general idea of where its target is located.
“We’ve never done a project as diffuse as this,” said Professor Meadows. “The underwater vehicle is not ideal for a massive search project. Ideally we’d have a side-scanner from the state police that could cover the distance of a football field on either side of the boat. Without that, the search is for a needle in a haystack.”
When its not busy with educational research projects, the Michigan state police often rent the M-ROVER and its crew to help in dangerous recoveries, such as when a Ford Bronco drove off the Mackinac Bridge one winter. The robot locates drowning victims, snowmobile victims, even weapons. But it doesn’t do rescues (unless the shipwreck in question is named Rescue), because the meticulous machine cannot mobilize quickly enough. “Bottles and beer cans light up well underwater, acoustically,” said Meadows. “What we’re doing with the sonar is basically like giving the lake an ultrasound.”
Sitting on the pontoon boat for two days watching only the lake floor and a few fish pass by on the video screen as crewman Hans Van Sumeran controlled the M-ROVER with his hi-tech joystick eventually proved cumbersome for the local high school students, who let out a “whoop” when the robot suddenly encountered a sunken ice shanty at around 12:30 on Day One. The Rescue search would also unearth a bucket and an errant anchor, but no boat was attached, unfortunately.
Yet Olsen, always the teacher, put the entire project into perspective. “The real advantage here is getting the students involved in something they would never experience otherwise,” he said. Glen Lake student Pete Richards refuted claims that he was “playing hooky” from class and sun-tanning out on the lake. “I’m not skipping,” said Richards, whose video clips will be used in the documentary. “I’m learning more out here right now than I would be, sitting in English class reading a book.” Leelanau student Mark Evans agreed, as sweat poured down his face while he pulled at the tether connected to the powerful M-ROVER, to retrieve it from the depths. “This kind of hands-on learning is what works for me.”
Current Leelanau School teachers Bruce Hood and Norm Wheeler, who secured a grant to make a documentary of the project, also basked in the extensive media coverage that the Rescue search generated, as two local television stations, several newspapers and a radio station all spent time on the lake with the diverse crew. They fended off suggestions that the hunt was a failure just because Dorsey’s boat wasn’t found.
“This is about the process of doing careful research with sophisticated technology for the science students, and the process of gathering stories, of listening to the community’s oral tradition, for the storytelling and videography students,” Wheeler said in a radio interview afterwards. “The Rescue just gives us an excuse to ask questions and to search for something that is elusive.” He teaches a Storytelling class at Leelanau, and runs the Beach Bards Bonfire - a temple for the oral tradition, poetry and music, held on Friday nights throughout the summer on Sleeping Bear Bay. Wheeler isn’t bothered that no steamboat was found, because the stories will live on. In fact, it may never be found.
“I believe, if he wanted people to find it, he wouldn’t have sunk it in the first place,” said Carl McBride, a local fisherman with hide-tough skin who looks like he could weather the worst storm on Big Glen Lake. “I know I wouldn’t chop a hole in a perfectly good boat. I don’t know what he was thinking.” That big Lake Trout mounted in the glass on the wall of Art’s Tavern was hooked by McBride, who enjoys an All Star’s reputation among local fishermen. He claims his fish finder has located the Rescue several times in 85 feet of water, near the lake’s northwest shore by Glen Craft Marina, but every time he tries to pass over a second time, the object down there disappears.
“I’ve lost cannon balls from down riggers. I’ve definitely hit something a couple times,” claimed McBride matter-of-factly. “But that lake is full of odd things. I once went looking for old cars in 45-50 feet of water, thinking I could haul them up and redo them. I never found a Model-T tough.”
McBride’s claim contradicts that of Gil Warnes, who swears his son once found the wreck while diving in water between 100 and 120 feet deep. Warnes wasn’t able to make it out onto the lake because of health reasons, but he sent his grandson, Justin, to deliver the message instead. The M-ROVER team made one last-ditch effort on Day Two to find it where Warnes suggested, but to no avail.
And so, the legend lives on. Captain Ralph Dorsey has gotten his way; if he won’t pilot the Rescue, then no one else will either. “He was upset this morning,” said Jerry Hodge, as he pointed to storm clouds up above on Day One of the search. Hodge is also a member of the Dorsey family, and accompanied Jim and John Dorsey on their joyride. “Ralph is somewhere up there, saying ‘Don’t monkey with my boat!’”
Even as the half-million dollar M-ROVER combed the depths in vain for two days in places where locals guessed the Rescue might sit, legends about Dorsey and his peculiar ways seemed to rise to the surface of Glen Lake one after another, like bubbles in a fish tank. And congregating on a flotilla of motorboats and pontoon boats were students from the two local high schools - Leelanau and Glen Lake – to record the lore still leaking from Dorsey’s stunning act back in 1914 and, eventually, to produce a documentary.
Virtually the only clue they had was a black-and white-photograph from Rob Rader’s historical book Beautiful Glen Arbor of the Rescue slowly capsizing in the lake, and a man nearby in a rowboat, presumably its captain. Barely visible in the background is what appears to be Alligator Hill, fueling the theory that Dorsey sank his boat on the northwest end of Big Glen Lake. But that is unclear. The identity of the photographer, and why that person happened to be nearby at the moment in question, is also unknown, especially given that cameras couldn’t have been that numerous in 1914.
“Ralph was a heavy drinker, and his passengers refused to ride with him any longer,” voices one legend. Ralph’s nephews, Jim and John Dorsey, who took a joyride on the lake during the first day of the search, confirmed that their uncle liked to tip back the bottle, even in his latter years living in Frankfort after he brought his boating business here to an abrupt halt. “We were known to drink a little hard cider whenever the neighbors came for a visit,” recalled Jim.
“Nightmares of drowning children haunted Ralph, so he sank his boat before tragedy could strike,” is another theory, introduced by Dave Taghon, the proprietor of the Empire Historical Museum who cruised around in his motor boat on Day One of the search, looking for clues with his fish finder. “Some say he had a premonition that something bad was going to happen,” said Taghon. According to Barb Siepker, who owns the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor and is another local historian by association, Ralph had six brothers, one of whom disappeared while boating in northern Lake Superior. And the first shots of the First World War were fired in June of 1914. Siepker cites these facts as possible ingredients for nightmares.
“Ralph lost the boat in a card game, but didn’t want anyone else to ride off in his mahogany-lined craft,” voiced another, brought to the table by Dottie Lanham, who arrived at the scene on Day Two just after the search had been called off indefinitely. “I heard they played a lot of cards in those days because of the idle time on their hands,” she added. “But these stories have probably been exaggerated as they were passed down through generations.”
“Business was bad, and the frustration of cruising around the lake, only to find no one on the docks waiting for him in need of a lift to Glen Arbor, finally got to Ralph,” is yet another explanation. Dr. Chuck Olsen, the initiator behind this entire project, recalls a story told to him by the late John Tobin, who claimed to be fishing where the Narrows Bridge is today when Dorsey paddled ashore in a rowboat, minutes after having chopped a hole in Rescue’s hull with an axe, muttering “If they won’t ride with me, they won’t ride with anyone else!” Which explanation this eyewitness, one time removed, account supports is anybody’s guess.
Olsen, a part-time local resident, is a former professor at U-M and former trustee at The Leelanau School. He pulled the strings to bring his friend, Guy Meadows a professor at the university’s Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering up here with two assistants, Hans Van Sumeran and Chris Rauch, and their awe-inspiring M-ROVER (Michigan’s Remote Operated Vehicle for Educational Research) to comb the bottom of Big Glen Lake.
The M-ROVER itself is amazing. This 500-pound underwater robot can locate an object as small as a dime in an area as large as a football field (100 yards) with its sonar. It flies like a helicopter does through air, rotates on its own axis, hovers, backs up or flies sideways. The two-man crew operating the M-ROVER at all times can control the amount of thrust to give them complete control over the robot as it illuminates and videotapes whatever it sees underwater. It can reach speeds of up to four miles per hour, lift 100 pounds of in-water weights and cut a line with its razor sharp claw that moves at three different joints. The M-ROVER can reach depths of up to 1,500 feet as a long tether feeds it electricity from the operating ship (or, in this case, a generator on the pontoon boat provided by the Narrows Marina).
So it can penetrate any spot in the Great Lakes, and at approximately 140 feet at its deepest point, Big Glen Lake is cake, technologically. But that’s assuming the M-ROVER has a general idea of where its target is located.
“We’ve never done a project as diffuse as this,” said Professor Meadows. “The underwater vehicle is not ideal for a massive search project. Ideally we’d have a side-scanner from the state police that could cover the distance of a football field on either side of the boat. Without that, the search is for a needle in a haystack.”
When its not busy with educational research projects, the Michigan state police often rent the M-ROVER and its crew to help in dangerous recoveries, such as when a Ford Bronco drove off the Mackinac Bridge one winter. The robot locates drowning victims, snowmobile victims, even weapons. But it doesn’t do rescues (unless the shipwreck in question is named Rescue), because the meticulous machine cannot mobilize quickly enough. “Bottles and beer cans light up well underwater, acoustically,” said Meadows. “What we’re doing with the sonar is basically like giving the lake an ultrasound.”
Sitting on the pontoon boat for two days watching only the lake floor and a few fish pass by on the video screen as crewman Hans Van Sumeran controlled the M-ROVER with his hi-tech joystick eventually proved cumbersome for the local high school students, who let out a “whoop” when the robot suddenly encountered a sunken ice shanty at around 12:30 on Day One. The Rescue search would also unearth a bucket and an errant anchor, but no boat was attached, unfortunately.
Yet Olsen, always the teacher, put the entire project into perspective. “The real advantage here is getting the students involved in something they would never experience otherwise,” he said. Glen Lake student Pete Richards refuted claims that he was “playing hooky” from class and sun-tanning out on the lake. “I’m not skipping,” said Richards, whose video clips will be used in the documentary. “I’m learning more out here right now than I would be, sitting in English class reading a book.” Leelanau student Mark Evans agreed, as sweat poured down his face while he pulled at the tether connected to the powerful M-ROVER, to retrieve it from the depths. “This kind of hands-on learning is what works for me.”
Current Leelanau School teachers Bruce Hood and Norm Wheeler, who secured a grant to make a documentary of the project, also basked in the extensive media coverage that the Rescue search generated, as two local television stations, several newspapers and a radio station all spent time on the lake with the diverse crew. They fended off suggestions that the hunt was a failure just because Dorsey’s boat wasn’t found.
“This is about the process of doing careful research with sophisticated technology for the science students, and the process of gathering stories, of listening to the community’s oral tradition, for the storytelling and videography students,” Wheeler said in a radio interview afterwards. “The Rescue just gives us an excuse to ask questions and to search for something that is elusive.” He teaches a Storytelling class at Leelanau, and runs the Beach Bards Bonfire - a temple for the oral tradition, poetry and music, held on Friday nights throughout the summer on Sleeping Bear Bay. Wheeler isn’t bothered that no steamboat was found, because the stories will live on. In fact, it may never be found.
“I believe, if he wanted people to find it, he wouldn’t have sunk it in the first place,” said Carl McBride, a local fisherman with hide-tough skin who looks like he could weather the worst storm on Big Glen Lake. “I know I wouldn’t chop a hole in a perfectly good boat. I don’t know what he was thinking.” That big Lake Trout mounted in the glass on the wall of Art’s Tavern was hooked by McBride, who enjoys an All Star’s reputation among local fishermen. He claims his fish finder has located the Rescue several times in 85 feet of water, near the lake’s northwest shore by Glen Craft Marina, but every time he tries to pass over a second time, the object down there disappears.
“I’ve lost cannon balls from down riggers. I’ve definitely hit something a couple times,” claimed McBride matter-of-factly. “But that lake is full of odd things. I once went looking for old cars in 45-50 feet of water, thinking I could haul them up and redo them. I never found a Model-T tough.”
McBride’s claim contradicts that of Gil Warnes, who swears his son once found the wreck while diving in water between 100 and 120 feet deep. Warnes wasn’t able to make it out onto the lake because of health reasons, but he sent his grandson, Justin, to deliver the message instead. The M-ROVER team made one last-ditch effort on Day Two to find it where Warnes suggested, but to no avail.
And so, the legend lives on. Captain Ralph Dorsey has gotten his way; if he won’t pilot the Rescue, then no one else will either. “He was upset this morning,” said Jerry Hodge, as he pointed to storm clouds up above on Day One of the search. Hodge is also a member of the Dorsey family, and accompanied Jim and John Dorsey on their joyride. “Ralph is somewhere up there, saying ‘Don’t monkey with my boat!’”
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