The Hamonic Burns

During the night the Great Lakes pleasure ship Hamonic moved through Lake St. Clair and up the St. Clair River from Detroit and Windsor. An hour after daybreak she eased into the dock at Point Edward, Ont. Her 247 passengers, most of them Americans, got up drowsily for a picnic ashore. Later, 80-odd more passengers would arrive from Toronto. Then the Canada Steamship Lines' 36-year-old ship would shove off for Duluth, Minn, as she had done many times for many summers.

In the wooden shed alongside, crewmen helped stevedores heave cargo aboard the Hamonic. A few of the passengers gawked at them from the top deck. Others were at breakfast in the long salon, and many were still in their staterooms. Suddenly a truck on the pier backfired and burst into flame. When the fire reached the gasoline tank, a rolling blaze swept up the ship's side, billowed over the deck.

The flames ate into the dry planking, roared toward the bow. Captain Horace Beaton gave orders to cast off. Slowly the burning ship backed out into the stream, slid away from the burning dock, moved forward again and drove sharp against the river bank.

Screaming women and hoarsely shouting men scuttled along the decks, leaped from the rails or slid down ropes into the water. Mothers holding babies made frantic one-armed, flesh-burning descents down the dangling cables. A man grabbed a rope and poised to shove off, let go when two women leaped on his back. The three plunged into the river together. Up to the Hamonic rushed a flotilla of motorboats, rowboats and canoes, led by U.S. Coast Guard craft. The boatmen snatched up those who could not swim ashore.

Searchers groped through the smoke-filled passageways, looking for stragglers. Brother Eugene Benoit, Montreal teacher and member of the Institution of Marist Brothers, went from cabin to cabin, smashing windows with his hands and pushing children out the portholes. Many took him for a priest and asked for absolution. Brother Benoit prayed for them.

The quick-thinking operator of a coal derrick edged his big machine to the bank, swung the bucket of his crane up to the Hamonic's bow, swung it down to earth again when it had taken on its frantic load. Captain Beaton, scorched out of his pilot house, attempted to climb to a lower deck but fell. He plunged into the water from the portside, climbed back aboard up the crane boom, stayed there till all were off.

Miraculously, no one was killed, and few were seriously hurt. But the Hamonic was burned to a shell. Canada Steamship figured the loss, to ship, dock and port equipment, at more than $2,000,000.

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