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Book

Great Lakes heroes & villains

Call Numbers

  • H 977 K11.4 (CEN)
  • 977 K11.4 (CEN, OSH)

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Edition

1st ed.

Publication Information

Gwinn, Mich. : Avery Color Studios, 2009.

Physical Description

201 p. : ill., map ; 22 cm.

Summary

"This book tells the tales of some of each, heroes who risked all to save the lives of others and those whose lust for money justified their lack of morals. There are the courageous men and women of the United States and Canadian Life-Saving Service and Coast Guard who have heroically risked their lives when the lives of others were in peril. In contrast to the heroics some people have displayed, the Great Lakes have seen some very evil people as well. There were pirates who took ships and cargo by force or lured unsuspecting ships to run up on rocky shoals to be destroyed by the pounding surf, lumber thieves who would clear cut vast tracks of forests which they did not own and gangsters who controlled prostitution, illegal liquor trade, murder for hire, sale of drugs and anything else illegal and who would kill to protect their profits"--P. [4] of cover.

Contents

  • Heroes of the Great Lakes: History of the United States Life-Saving Service
  • History of the United States Coast Guard
  • The wreck of the Henry Cort
  • Billy Gow: hero of the tug Reliance
  • Heroes of the Armistice Day storm of 1940
  • "So long boys, and good luck"
  • The storm of September 1930
  • The Sand Beach Life-Saving Crew and the wreck of the schooner St. Clair
  • Captain Mattison and D. I. Filer
  • Abigail Becker, the heroine of Long Point
  • Right time, right place to be a hero
  • Keeper Captain Kiah and his heroic surfmen
  • The Coast Guard medal: Rescue on the river; Extraordinary heroism at the Cleveland Harbor; Saving a drowning man in Manitowoc (Continued)
  • Contents continued: Villains of the Great Lakes: The King and the Great Lakes
  • Pirates on the Great Lakes: Pirates and Lake Erie's Johnson's Island; Dan Seavey, pirate of the Great Lakes; The Canadian pirate William Johnson
  • The prohibition era, 1920-1933: Prohibition in Michigan; The eighteenth amendment; Bootleggers and rumrunners; Michigan's Whiskey Rebellion; Ben Kerr, a Canadian rumrunner; A ship's cargo ends up on the beach; Moonshiners; Prohibition repealed
  • Villians of the Great Lakes: Purple Gang; Al Capone; Rocco Perri, Canada's "King of the Bootleggers"; Toledo's Licavoli Brothers; Minnesota's Isadore Blumenfeld.

Subjects