The Copper Bone

Gather around now, with your blankets if you must. This story is based on a real shipwreck that happened right here on Lake Superior, not so far from where we sit tonight. It happened in December of 1927 – a time when winter on the Great Lakes meant something. When the water turned black and cold, when ice coated everything it touched, and when smart captains knew better than to push their luck.

But shipping companies? They wanted one last run before the freeze. One more cargo. One more profit.

The SS Kamloops was a small freighter – just 250 feet long – carrying ordinary things. Wire fencing for farms. Shoes. Candy – Life Savers, the kind you might have in your pocket right now. And 22 souls: men and women, crew members heading out for what they thought would be their last trip of the season before going home for Christmas.

On December 4th, the Kamloops passed through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie and headed out onto Lake Superior. The captain knew a storm was coming. Everyone did. But he’d made this run a hundred times before.

By December 5th, the storm hit.

Now, some of you have seen Lake Superior angry. But imagine this: winds screaming at 30 miles an hour. Waves reaching 26 feet – higher than this room. Temperatures dropping to 38 degrees below zero. Ice coating the ship so thick and heavy that she could barely move. And through it all, that freezing fog that makes it impossible to see what’s ahead of you.

On the evening of December 6th, another ship – the Quedoc – spotted the Kamloops through the blizzard. Both ships were near Isle Royale, trying to find shelter. The crew of the Quedoc saw something massive rising from the water ahead – rocks, probably – and turned hard to avoid it. They tried to warn the Kamloops, blasting their horn, but the visibility was so poor, the wind so loud…

The Kamloops disappeared into the fog.

The Quedoc made it to port. The Kamloops didn’t.

For days, no one knew what happened. By December 12th, when the Kamloops still hadn’t shown up, search parties went out. They looked along the Keweenaw Peninsula, around Isle Royale, everywhere a ship might have wrecked or sheltered. But the storm kept raging, and the searchers found nothing. Not a board. Not a life preserver. Not a single sign.

By December 22nd, they gave up. All 22 people aboard were declared lost. Five ships went down in that storm, but the Kamloops? She’d vanished like a ghost.

Winter closed in. The lake froze. And everyone assumed that was the end of the story.

But it wasn’t.

When spring came in May of 1928, fishermen working near Isle Royale found bodies on the shore at a place called Twelve O’Clock Point. They were wearing life preservers with the word KAMLOOPS stenciled on them. Some of the crew had made it off the ship. They’d made it to the island. But Isle Royale in December? That’s as close to the end of the world as you can get. No shelter. No food. Wolves in the woods and temperatures that’ll freeze you solid.

Some of the dead were found huddled near fire pits they’d tried to build. Others had been taken by the island’s wolves. Nine bodies in all. Only five could be identified.

Among them was a young woman named Alice Bettridge. She was in her early twenties, working as an assistant stewardess on the Kamloops. This was one of her first seasons on the lakes. Her parents identified her from the papers found on her body and her dental records.

But Alice had one more thing to tell.

A year later – December 1928 – a trapper was working along the Agawa River, more than 150 miles from Isle Royale, when he found a bottle. Inside was a note, written in a woman’s handwriting. It said:

“I am the last one left alive, freezing and starving to death on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. I just want mom and dad to know my fate.”

It was signed by Alice.

Her parents confirmed it was her handwriting. She’d survived the wreck. Made it to shore. Watched the others die. And then, knowing she wouldn’t make it, she wrote that note, put it in a bottle, and threw it into the lake – hoping it would reach someone. Hoping her parents would know what happened to her.

The lake carried it 150 miles. But it took a year to be found.

Now, you’d think that would be the end of it, wouldn’t you? A terrible tragedy. A sad story. But that’s not where this gets strange.

For fifty years, no one knew where the Kamloops actually went down. The ship had become one of the “Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes” – lost without a trace.

Until August 21st, 1977.

A group of divers was doing a systematic search near Isle Royale when they found her. She was 260 feet down, lying on her side at the bottom of an underwater cliff. And here’s the thing about Lake Superior at that depth – the water’s so cold, just above freezing, that nothing decays. Not wood. Not metal. Not…

Not bodies.

The Kamloops was perfectly preserved. The cargo still in her holds – those Life Savers candies, the shoes, the wire fencing – all of it looking almost fresh. The wooden steering wheel on the bridge, intact. It was like the ship had sunk yesterday, not fifty years ago.

But when the divers went into the engine room, they found something that made their blood run cold.

There was a crew member still there. Still at his post. Lodged under a stairway, floating in the water.

The cold had done something to his body – turned the fats into a waxy substance that preserved him, kept him from decaying. He glowed white in the divers’ lights. They nicknamed him “Old Whitey.” Some call him “Grandpa.”

And here’s where you might want to pull those blankets a little closer.

Because Old Whitey doesn’t stay put.

Divers who’ve been down to the Kamloops – and only the most experienced are allowed, because it’s considered a grave site – they all tell the same story. Old Whitey follows you. You’ll be exploring the wreck, your light cutting through the pitch-black water, and you’ll turn around and there he is. Behind you. Watching.

Some divers say it’s just the currents from their fins moving the body. But others swear there’s something more. They say he reaches out. They say he touches them. Dive logs from the site are full of entries about “meeting Grandpa” and “shaking hands with Old Whitey.”

And some divers – now listen close – some divers say they’ve seen Old Whitey in two places at once. They’ll see the body in the engine room where it always is. But then they’ll see his ghost somewhere else on the ship. Sitting in the crew bunks. Standing on the deck. Moving through the corridors like he’s still working his shift.

Other spirits too. Crew members eating in the mess hall. Figures working in the shadows. The ship is full of them.

But here’s the thing nobody can quite explain: none of the divers feel scared. Not threatened. They all say the same thing – that Old Whitey seems happy to have company. Like he’s been down there alone for so long, and he’s just glad someone finally came to visit. Almost like he’s been waiting.

The SS Kamloops has been down there for almost a hundred years now. Alice Bettridge’s message in a bottle sits in a museum in Ontario. And somewhere in the engine room, 260 feet below the black surface of Lake Superior, Old Whitey keeps his watch.

They say Lake Superior never gives up her dead. The water’s too cold. The bodies don’t float. They just stay down there in the deep and the dark.

Still waiting.

Still watching.

And maybe – just maybe – still following anyone brave enough to visit.

[The Kamloops claimed one more life in 2013, when a diver lost consciousness at the wreck site and could not be revived.]

So the next time you’re near Lake Superior on a winter night, and the wind is howling, and the ice is forming on the shore… remember the Kamloops. Remember Alice, writing her last message. Remember the 22 souls who never made it home for Christmas.

And remember Old Whitey, still down there in the deep.

Still waiting for visitors.

Now. Who wants to go for a swim?

This story is based on the true events of the SS Kamloops disaster of December 1927. Alice Bettridge’s letter is cataloged at the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre in Ontario and was verified by her family as authentic.