by Chad Fraser
A Clandestine Sailing
One day in mid-November, 1922, McQueen looked on as the City of Dresden was loaded with one of her more lucrative cargoes: 1,000 cases and 500 kegs of Corby’s Special Select whiskey and Old Crow bourbon — CAD$65,000 worth in all. As she lay docked at Belleville, Ontario, the hooch was stowed in the hold and, when that was full, in just about any corner of the boat where space could be found. Finally, forty-two cases were lashed topside, to the Dresden’s main deck. Belleville, located on Lake Ontario’s Bay of Quinte, not far from the Corby distillery, was at the time a central transit point for illicit liquor on its way to the “dry” United States.
When the cargo was finally secured into what was now a near-bursting Dresden, McQueen would likely have glanced over his clearance papers, with their final destination listed as “Mexico,” and chuckled to himself. This was, of course, the OTA’s Achilles heel. For even though liquor was effectively banned from being sold in Ontario, nothing in the law prevented distillers from making the spirits and selling them “to persons in other provinces or in foreign lands.” With no mandate to scrutinize the destinations of shipments leaving the country, Canadian customs officials were forced to look the other way when small motorboats and even rowboats laden with booze set off for exotic destinations like “Mexico,” only to return empty mere hours later. “Mexico,” in the Dresden’s case, was Port Huron, Michigan, at the northern end of the St. Clair River.
But as the Dresden emerged onto Lake Erie from the Welland Canal early on Friday, November 17, it was starting to become clear to her captain and her five-man crew that this would not be just another routine rum-run. Dark clouds filled the sky and the rising north wind began to buffet the old steamer. Up in the wheelhouse, McQueen felt its pull on the ship’s wheel as the Dresden, her engines already working at full steam, began to lose speed. But McQueen, who was no stranger to this run, was reluctant to turn back; he had an appointment to keep, and he was eager to get the Dresden’s cargo, worth so much to him and his crew, into the hands of its thirsty buyers and get his boat safely back into Canadian waters as quickly as possible.
At best, it was an ill-conceived decision. McQueen had put in enough years on Lake Erie to know that he was choosing an unnecessarily risky course. But if he gave any thought to the perils that loomed before him, he showed no sign of it. Like many a captain who had been wrecked on Lake Erie before him, he was confident in his skills as a mariner, the abilities of his crew, and in his boat, which, of course, he had rebuilt with his own two hands.
By the time the Dresden began to round Long Point later that afternoon, the weather had worsened so much that the waves were now crashing over the deck, and the Dresden, with her antiquated engines, was barely able to make any headway. Worse, the old steamer was entering an area long known for its sandbars, many of which lurked just below the surface of the water. McQueen and his men now had a full-blown crisis on their hands.
The old captain was not a man who easily changed his mind, but by this point he had seen enough. In the hope of riding out the storm, he decided to anchor the Dresden four kilometres to the west of the Long Point lighthouse on the Point’s south shore. There, the crew, which included McQueen’s twenty-one-year-old son, Peregrine, put in a horrible night as the whiskey-laden vessel strained heavily on her anchor chains under the full fury of the wind. The men must have dreaded that at any moment the Dresden would slip its chains and they would all be pitched into the raging, freezing water. No one got much sleep that night, but the men did what they could in what had become an impossible situation, and, as day broke, the Dresden continued to hold firm, though just barely.
It was late in the morning when McQueen accepted the inevitable — the storm was not abating, and he had to move the Dresden to a less vulnerable spot or risk losing everything, including the lives of his crew. Tentatively, he ordered the men to haul up the anchor and, as soon as the Dresden floated free, McQueen gently coaxed her back toward what he hoped was safety on the north side of the point. But it was not to be — the Dresden rolled deeply and made little forward progress. McQueen was in a state of disbelief; he looked at the small fortune in whiskey strapped to his deck and knew that there was no other choice — if the Dresden was to survive the day, the booze, the sheer weight of which was literally driving the old steamer to a watery grave, had to go. Through gritted teeth, McQueen gave the fateful order.
When confronted with saving either their cargo or their own skins, the men showed no hesitation; the result was certainly one of the more peculiar scenes in Lake Erie’s history as, one by one, forty-two cases of whiskey flew over the Dresden’s deck railing and splashed into the frothing water below.
For a moment, it looked as though this just might be enough to save the rapidly foundering vessel. Ever so slowly, she came to heel and for the moment managed to hold her own in the face of the blistering wind. But this was simply not McQueen’s day, for no sooner had he managed to coax the Dresden around the tip of the point than the unbelievable happened. The wind, which had been blowing out of the north, shifted suddenly. Now howling out of the southwest, it shoved the Dresden back toward the beach. On top of this, in the words of the November 22, 1922, Simcoe British Canadian, the boat “sprung a leak, and the water poured in so fast that all hope of reaching Port Burwell was abandoned, and Captain McQueen headed the vessel for shore.” The Dresden’s engineer, Ray Sawyer, did what he could, but this was no trickle — the very seams of the ship were actually beginning to split apart under the enormous strain of the wind and the heavy cargo. With the hull now compromised, water surged into the hold and soon overwhelmed the pumps. The Dresden was entering her final moments.
At 4:30 in the afternoon, about ten kilometres to the west of Port Rowan, the Dresden hit a sandbar, lurched over onto her side, and almost immediately began to break apart. All the while, McQueen yanked as hard as he could on the steam whistle, hoping against hope that rescue might find its way to him. But in such a sea, he must have known how hopeless his situation was.
Then, unbelievably, things found a way to get even worse for McQueen and his besieged rum-runners. As the men were attempting to lower one of the Dresden’s two lifeboats, the tiny craft was flipped over by a large wave, leaving them with only one boat. But as the crew scrambled aboard, disaster struck yet again; Peregrine McQueen, who had been trying to help a crewman who was hobbled by a wooden leg, was suddenly swept over the side. In desperation, his father reached out, but was seconds too late to grab hold of Peregrine as he was swept away by the frigid current — although he did manage to pull the disabled crewman back into the lifeboat. Even worse, the men discovered that the lifeboat’s oars were no longer aboard as it parted ways with the sinking Dresden.
As the crew did their best to keep the little craft upright in the howling gale, safe from the shipwreck, but still adrift and very much in danger, their minds would have been focused entirely on their own survival. But they would also likely have caught at least a glimpse of the crowd that was beginning to gather on the beach, a mere three hundred metres away and, knowing how interesting they would find the wrecked steamer’s cargo, had an inkling of the chaos that was about to begin.
A Prohibition Beach Party
According to local legend, the first local to profit from the whiskey wave that was about to wash over Long Point was a crew member from the point’s lifesaving station, who had been walking along the tip of Long Point that day, watching carefully as the Dresden finally made her turn around the peninsula. When he looked out into the waves breaking over the shore, something else caught his eye — a lone case of whiskey bobbing in the surf. Quickly forgetting about the struggling mariners (he would be far from the first to do so that day), he rounded up as many cases as washed ashore and buried them in the sand, using the telephone poles leading out to the Long Point lighthouse as markers. Once the dust settled, he is rumoured to have sold the cases — over forty in all — to local bootleggers for a very tidy profit.
Meanwhile, the residents of Port Rowan and the surrounding countryside were making their way to the beach, drawn by the wail of the Dresden’s steam whistle. Among them were two women from a nearby farm: Pearl Rockefeller and her niece, Viola Blackenbury.
The wreck, it seemed, made a good Saturday evening show for those with time on their hands. They watched as the first lifeboat capsized and was swept away by the storm, followed by the second, successful launch that killed Peregrine McQueen. As the men of Port Rowan gathered on the shore, rumours of the boat’s business in the area began to spread. When one old farmer was heard to utter that the boat could indeed be carrying whiskey, the crowd erupted in a frenzy, and from that moment on, both the best and the worst in human nature was put on display. As Pearl Rockefeller and her niece kept an eye on the struggling sailors in the lifeboat, the crowd’s suspicions about the Dresden’s illicit cargo were confirmed. Under the heading “Woman Saves Crew, Men Salvage Liquor,” the British Canadian reported:
As case after case came crashing to the shore, while hundreds of bottles from broken cases were bobbing about in the surf, willing farmers eagerly gathered the welcome spoils. Farmers fetched their wagons and trucks, others came with bags, and the liquor was quickly gathered up. The harvest of the storm was nearly all gathered when License Inspector Edmonds, Provincial Constable Lawrence and County Constable Alway arrived on the scene and upon arrival there was little left for the officers to seize.
Some of the men were so happy for the chance to have a drink after so many dry years under the OTA, they simply guzzled much of the blessed cargo right then and there, often while standing knee-deep in the surf. But for those with more long-term plans, there were logistical concerns to think about. Not wanting to lose a single bottle, they hauled away as much as they could, and buried the rest in the sand to retrieve later. Again, according to the British Canadian:
All Sunday afternoon it was reported that a number of those who had benefited by their salvage operations were busily engaged in driving backward and forward to the beach and in various directions along the roads, making it impossible for the officers who were attempting to trace down the liquor to follow tracks into the various farmyards.
The remaining crewmembers of the Dresden were able to guide their lifeboat to shore, with no small thanks being owed to Mrs. Rockefeller, who, in a twentieth-century impression of Abigail Becker (see Chapter 5), waded out into the frigid water to grab hold of a rope that the crew tossed to her. The British Canadian showed no restraint in praising her efforts, declaring: “Alone she ventured out into the surf and by dint of daring and great efforts managed to drag the helpless and exhausted men to the shore.” In all likelihood, Rockefeller had at least some help with her rescue effort, but her care for the men, and her subsequent feeding and tending to them at the Rockefeller farm, is a part of the Dresden story that is often, unfortunately, overlooked.
Peregrine McQueen’s body washed up the following day, just as the looters were claiming the last few bottles of whiskey from the beach. His father, suffering from exhaustion and exposure, was, according to the November 23, 1922, Simcoe Reformer, in a state of “shock from which the aged mariner may never recover.” McQueen, with the help of his brother, who had hurried to the scene from Belleville, claimed his son’s body and took it back to the family home in Amherstburg.
A Lasting Legend
The police, led by Inspector “Dickey” Edmonds, didn’t respond to the accident until Sunday evening. The delayed response, along with the confused initial police reports of the Dresden sinking, including a November 24 Toronto Star article that reported that “the officers state that the liquor is at the bottom of the lake,” were likely caused, at least in part, by a loss of communication with the nearby town of Simcoe, where the authorities were based. The farmers had a friendly saboteur, it seemed, who cut the phone line, thus keeping the police at bay a little longer while they hid their haul. Regardless, according to the Reformer, the police “were too late to discover anything except empty cases and strewn labels.”
Still, enough suspicion had been raised about the Dresden and her fishy cargo that the Simcoe crown attorney, W.E. Kelly, was ordered to make his way to Port Rowan to find out what he could about the legality of the shipment, while, on the spot, the police were doing all they could to round up suspects. The investigation began to resemble something of a witch hunt, with Edmonds and his men conducting surprise spot searches in hopes of catching guilty scavengers red-handed. And the farmers went to great lengths to try to outsmart him. One was rumoured to have lined the eavestroughs of his barn with bottles, laid end to end, and was surely relieved when Edmonds and his men searched his property and came up empty. Others simply hid bottles in false ceilings, dropped them down wells, laid them in feed troughs, or covered them with canvas and old feed bags in their barns.
But any real evidence continued to elude Edmonds. The farmers, and everyone else in town for that matter, were no help, either. When six of them were finally charged with stealing from the wreck, Kelly had a hard time building any kind of a case against them, mainly due to a lack of witnesses willing to testify. This frustrated things so much that the magistrate ordered the proceedings delayed for a week so Kelly could find some bodies to fill the witness chair. The December 7, 1922, Simcoe Reformer said that a clearly frustrated Kelly had “indicated” that his predicament was “a serious reflection on the manhood of the community.” And those who did come forward had little new to offer, and in many cases simply added to Kelly’s anguish. In the words of an article in the December 28, 1922, Reformer:
Mr. Brewster, K.C., of Brantford, and Mr. H.P. Innes, K.C., for the defence, had a quiet afternoon, while Crown Attorney Kelly, K.C., tried every resort to bring out new and incriminating evidence. The majority of the witnesses, however, were at the scene of the wreck within hours of the catastrophe, but remembered little of what took place.
But the authorities weren’t ready to give up just yet — especially Inspector Edmonds. He vowed to keep searching for another month, despite the high seas that flooded the wreck site and the frigid temperatures, which plummeted even further as winter approached. Still, despite all the tough talk, the investigation continued to sputter. In the case of Delbert Rockefeller, who was one of the accused, the December 21, 1922, Simcoe Reformer reported: “. . . officers testified that ring marks of ten kegs were found in his wagon on the Monday following the wreck, and also that his horses were rarin’ in the stables with harness on.” This was hardly the stuff of a solid prosecution.
In the end three farmers, including Rockefeller, probably hoping the whole mess would just go away, turned up at court and pleaded guilty to drinking in a public place. They were fined $100 each, which was the sum total of the charges that were levelled in the City of Dresden incident. The vast majority of the steamer’s massive liquor cargo was never accounted for, although bottles continued to be found along the beach long after the fact.
As for the Dresden herself, the storm did to her what collision and hard labour could not, permanently ending her career on the Great Lakes and scattering her wreckage along the Long Point shoreline. The only thing of any real value that McQueen was able to recover was her engine, which he had installed himself after he had bought the old steamer back in 1914. Returning to the wreck site a year after the tragedy, he and Ray Sawyer somehow managed to pry it loose from Lake Erie’s sandy bottom and haul it away. But even though the City of Dresden is no more, the rumours, tall tales, and intrigue that she spawned remain, and will likely last for generations to come.
Acknowledgements
This book has been many years in the making. Unofficially, I can trace its roots back to the early 1980s when my late father, Brad Fraser, introduced me to Lake Erie in the only way fathers of the time knew how — by nudging me into its warm waters one summer afternoon at the government dock in Kingsville, Ontario. While I have long since forgiven him, I have never forgotten his message: love the lake,
and treasure the time you spend on her. But always respect her.
As a kid, I would visit my grandparents, Ken and Margaret Fraser, at their cottage on Pelee Island. Pelee has always intrigued me, and I particularly remember the tall tales that were told around the fireplace that kept that old cottage toasty on chilly late-summer nights. Members of my family have fished the waters of Erie’s western basin for many years, and fishing and boating yarns were the main fare, but every now and then someone would offer up something unexpected, like the legend of Huldah, a Native woman who, in the throes of despair over a lost British lover, threw herself off a high rock on the island’s west side.
These were the stories that fired my imagination, and I knew there had to be more out there, just waiting to be uncovered. Over the years since, I have, both consciously and unconsciously, been looking for more evidence of the people who have shaped Lake Erie — and been shaped by her. This book is the result of those explorations.
As with any project of this scope, there is no way it could have come together without the help of a huge group of talented and generous people. Tony Hawke, my editor at Dundurn Press, believed in the idea from the start, and his encouragement and enthusiasm inspired me to keep digging into Lake Erie’s intriguing past. My colleague Stephen Bishop selflessly dedicated countless hours to reading draft chapters, and was quick to point out historical inaccuracies.
