There are numerous, very detailed stories in this well-researched book. Many chapters contain quotes meticulously obtained from microfilmed contemporary newspapers that add fascinating depth to these stories about ships, tragedies, and people. The reader will often feel transported in time to the events as they took place. -- Carl Eisenberg , president of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society This is a detailed and fascinating look into the lives of some of the vessels that plied the Great Lakes in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It gives the reader a true idea of the dangers that these ships and those who sailed them had to face. It is a series of fascinating stories involving pianos, a severed ear, a shipwreck behind a barn on a farm with a tree growing through it, and John D. Rockefeller Sr. I know the reader will enjoy it.

-- James Heinz , acquisitions curator, Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.