Duluth Herald late-edition special report
Thursday, Jan. 28, 1915
By Joe Crisp, Senior Shipping Reporter

A famed local maritime drinking establishment has shut its doors. This is the ship’s pilot house on the tip of Timber Point in the harbor. For 16 years it has operated as the Pilot House bar. Initially serving a clientele made up exclusively of members of the Great Lakes Life Saving Service, soon it caught on with sailors and dock workers. Older Duluthians recall its origin, as the pilot house of the doomed Marchande which stuck out of the water in the shipping lanes for weeks in 1899. She had sunk by the stern as her cargo shifted, but her nose bobbed up. Using a floating crane, the Life Savers salvaged the pilot house and installed it on Timber Point. There they collectively owned and operated it as a business, until last night.

Because today, as the war in Europe heats up, the 45-year-old Life Saving Service has been officially subsumed into the Revenue Cutter Service. The resulting compound organization forms the newest branch of the armed forces, the United States Coast Guard. The Pilot House is a casualty of new regulations and a wave of retirements. Some old-timer Life Savers don’t wish to adapt, nor to compete against much younger men in basic training, to re-qualify for what will be different jobs. Many jobs are being eliminated. All three of Duluth’s Life Saving stations — at Park Point, Lester River, and Stony Point — have been officially replaced by the single new Coast Guard station in the harbor. The oars and battered wooden surfboats of the Life-Savers have given way to a steel steam-powered Coast Guard cutter, and a modern Life-Saving station complete with radio equipment and a machine shop. Among the sweeping changes are rules prohibiting Coast Guard personnel profiting from salvage. And since all the booze served at the Pilot House was salvaged from local shipwrecks, this effectively puts the bar out of business. Last night was last call.

Duluth Life Saving Service on Park Point circa 1900

Your reporter was lucky enough to get himself invited, having befriended some of these grizzled seadogs and their esteemed ladies. Near the Aerial Bridge, I climbed down onto the frozen harbor and walked to the Pilot House, following the trail of footprints across the shallow snow. The wind was low and the stars were high. The ice made weird noises but it’s two feet thick. Drawing closer I heard merriment instead of mourning. The red lights were on downstairs and the blue lights were on upstairs. These oil lamps of beach glass, crafted by one of the Life Savers’ wives, burned Duluth’s last stores of whale oil. Woodsmoke drifted back from the smokestack on the roof, and I imagined the Timber Pier was a freighter steaming for the Aerial Bridge. Stepping up onto the pier, I was greeted from above. On the walkway around the bar’s second floor stood Captain Erasmus Butterfield, braving the cold to puff a cigar and take in the view, probably reminiscing about his days at sea, his disgrace, and eventual redemption leading the Stony Point Life Saving station. “You’re just in time,” he called down. “We’re about to open the good stuff. Come up if you can fight to the stairs.” “Right away, Captain!”

In a few steps I was on the lower deck. Walking to the door I peeked in the red light portholes. The place was packed. People danced around the ship’s wheel as “The Jelly Roll Blues” played on the Victrola. I kicked snow off my boots and went inside, stuffing my gloves and scarf in my coat, placing it on the coat bench pile. Woodstove blazing, the hoar frost melted from my eyebrows. Two bartenders worked framed by the Aerial Bridge, its white lights backlighting them through the windows. The taps had run dry but they were handing out cans, pouring wine, and mixing cocktails. The tip jars were full. On my way to the spiral staircase I ran into another old sailor I know, Jimmy Bigsbee, who became a surfman at the Lester River station. He held a can of beer. “What’re they serving tonight, Jimmy?” “It’s the last of those cases of Fitger’s, from the barge that sank at the brewery dock.” “I thought those would never run out.” “They’re running out tonight, everything is.” Readers may start suspecting I was actually a regular at this establishment. I confess it. To me the Pilot House was a church.

I left the red light downstairs, rising into the more rarified stately blue air of the upper deck. People came up here when they were ready to slow down for a minute. Captain Butterworth was just stepping inside from the wing deck. “Glad you could make it. Have a seat.” He gestured to his booth against the wall and I took a plush chair on the outside. There was a bottle of something dark and a bowl of oversized clear ice cubes on the table. A few old surfmen and sailors gathered around as Captain Butterworth put his hand on the bottle. It had an envelope tied to it with twine which he cut with a knife, revealing a water-damaged label. It read “Kill-the-Devil Nelson’s Blood, 1865.”

He cleared his throat. “There was a time when a bottle of this smoked rum was accepted as legal tender in France. It was widely believed to be from the rum barrel Admiral Nelson was shipped home in. When the barrel arrived from Trafalgar, holes were discovered drilled in it, and not a sip of rum was left, only Nelson. This bottle doesn’t have that vintage. But it was 25 years old when a crate of it was boarded onto the steamer Zeno, as the high-end rum for the ship’s saloon. Only one bottle was left when the Zeno sank off Stony Point. She just didn’t have the time she needed, or she could have gone the distance. Salvage efforts by the Life Saving Service yielded, among other things, this bottle. It has remained unopened until tonight. Before we taste it, as always when we open new stock, I will read a copy of the shipwreck report.”

He opened the envelope with the knife. More people gathered. The Crowd noise downstairs fell away as someone behind me whispered, “That bottle is from his old ship. They took his Captain’s license for this wreck.”

Shipwreck Report
Great Lakes Life Saving Service, Stony Point Station, Duluth Minnesota
Submitted by: Deputy Station Keeper Les Harris
Name of ship/s: The Zeno
Date of incident: February 21, 1901

Description of incident: At 0800 hours, Surfman Jenkins reported seeing an unmanned lifeboat from the observation tower. It was being blown in on swells along with large chunks of ice, ahead of dark clouds approaching from the northeast. The team made to intercept the lifeboat down the beach a mile or so. It rode low and heavy. As it neared shore we pulled it onto the rocks with boat hooks. Looking inside it was full of clear ice which contained eight frozen bodies. The lifeboat nameboard indicated it was from the Zeno.

A few hours later, wind and sea kicking up, a badly listing steamship appeared on the horizon. We assumed it was the Zeno. This was confirmed by one of the surfmen who had seen the ship before. He recognized her from her 600-foot length and her unusually tall mast topped with a barely adequate crow’s nest. The Zeno sent up a red Coston flare and we fired one in return to let them know they’d been seen. Weather conditions worsened as we prepared to row out and meet them. We thought the ship must have taken on water in the storm she was racing. We surmised the lifeboat had been launched in a panic in high seas, which filled it. Air temperature was minus thirteen. The Zeno limped toward us as Captain Butterworth tried to ground her before the lake took her. We hoped she could avoid the rocky shoal 500 feet out. Thinking she might make it to the shallows, we prepared the rope and grappling hook for the Lyle gun.

But she didn’t make it. The boilers flooded and she lost power. Then waves lifted and dropped her hard upon the shoal. Now she tottered between shallow and deep water. We observed Captain Butterworth corralling his surviving crew and passengers to the front of the ship to balance her. But waves started washing her decks. Additional lifeboats were launched but all capsized and their occupants drowned, or got crushed between the lifeboats and the ship’s hull. Captain Butterworth continued efforts to lighten the ship. He drove a herd of oxen over the side from the hold, and the animals loudly drowned alongside the people. The ship lay just out of range of the Lyle gun. We fired line after line into the wind but not even the lightest could reach. Instead of being able to affix it and pulley people to safety, we reeled in the grappling hook pulling up bodies. Fishermen had set nets close to shore, snagging the dead, the oxen, ice, and our grapple lines.

Captain Butterworth was eventually the Zeno’s last survivor. He avoided being swept overboard by tying himself to the ice-covered mast, something he tried helping others with first but to no avail. Then he scaled its ladder somehow, and tied himself to the crow’s nest which was a pair of trowels sticking out the sides of the mast. The buffeted ship finally slipped off the ledge. As it sank the mast moved in a wide circular motion flinging Captain Butterworth out sideways like a banner. But he stayed on as the water’s surface drew up to him. The water boiled as the air left the vessel, ejecting flotsam and jetsam enough for multiple ships.

As it turns out the crow’s nest was 100 feet high but the water was only 85 feet deep. When the ship slammed into the bottom of the sea, Captain Butterworth’s rope was slipping off and his arms were stiff inside frozen sleeves. But he hung on. We tried launching surfboats to him but were driven back each time, with many surfmen almost lost. Meanwhile colorful fruit from the Zeno’s hold washed up on the stone beach coated with ice. By nightfall the waves had died enough to successfully launch a surfboat, and we rowed out to the mast. He dropped in at the crest of a wave and we pulled for shore. He was not improved by his ordeal but he is alive and gaining strength.

After the strain of rescuing Captain Butterworth, Station Keeper Braxton was so exhausted he dropped dead within an hour. Let his death not be in vain. And let the great loss of life on the Zeno not be in vain. Captain Butterworth’s license has been revoked as a result of the wreck, and we of the Stony Point Life Saving Station unanimously object to that. Captain Butterworth was a victim of bad luck. We personally witnessed his heroic attempts to save his passengers and crew, and we hope you consider accepting his application to become our new Station Keeper.

Captain Butterworth quit reading in the blue light. They had drummed him from the Seaman’s Union for the Zeno disaster, but everyone here still called him Captain. People peeked up from the staircase. He uncorked the rum and a round of applause filled the Pilot House. From the bowl on the table, he plucked oversized cubes of clear Lake Superior ice into waiting glasses. Where his fingertips were missing, little points of bone poked out the ends, perfect for picking up ice. He poured me a double shipwreck shot, saying, “This bottle was found on the frozen lifeboat, beneath the coat of the Zeno’s purser, clutched to his heart. He knew it was good enough to steal.” Captain Butterworth poured everyone a double. Then we toasted the dead, tasting sweet smoke.

After that I drank champagne from the wreck of the Ophelia, which broke apart in the surf in 1898. I drank port from the wreck of the Eventide, which sank off the mouth of the French River in 1871 and was explored by divers. I drank whiskey from the wreck of the John C. Calhoun, the paddle steamer which burned to the waterline in 1910 in the shallows off Brighton Beach, survived by only a few scattered artifacts. And I drank Canadian beer from a tug, the Three Sisters, which capsized last year in the harbor. But try as we might, we couldn’t finish off everything from this lost golden age of shipwrecks. So, bottles and crates were sent home with folks. I woke up under the coat bench cursing the morning. Last call at the Pilot House.

The pilot house on present-day Timber Point is from the Irvin L. Clymer and was installed in 1994.

An index of Jim Richardson’s writing may be found here.