In 1856, the Great Lakes are booming with opportunity and activity.  The new lock opened a year earlier in Sault Ste. Marie and Lake Superior is experiencing exponential growth in prosperity and trade.  The grand palace steamboats now regularly ply her clear cold waters for commerce and tourism.  One of the fastest and most popular is a boat that shares her name with the big lake, Superior.  Only two trips remain for her this season and she is carrying a heavy load of cargo and passengers from Chicago to Superior City in Wisconsin.  An uneventful trip will turn catastrophic as she enters Lake Superior and her infamous autumn gales.  Her shipwreck on an unfathomably dark October night at the spectacular cliffs of Pictured Rocks is only the beginning of this story of horror, heroism, suffering and survival in the greatest maritime tragedy in Lake Superior history.

Author Christian Leathers is a Great Lakes freighter sailor, so his authoring of this story is especially poignant. Leathers lives in the Upper Peninsula, and is also a formidable artist, and we’re thrilled to carry his ceramics in the store.