For 84 years, four unidentified sailors lay in an unmarked grave in Riverside Cemetery.
The four men were crew members of the SS Kamloops, which sank off Isle Royale on Dec. 7, 1927. Their bodies were found with five others in the spring of 1928. Another 13 people were never found, presumably washed out to sea.
The Kamloops was owned by the Canada Steamship Lines and they purchased the burial plot for the four men, but no stone marked the site. The company promised in 1928 to recognize the sailors with a stone.
That day finally came Thursday when a memorial stone was dedicated to the lost sailors by CSL with the help of the Thunder Bay Museum.
“Everybody deserves to be remembered and this was a very historic event,” said Tory Tronrud, director of the Thunder Bay Museum.
“Everybody was lost aboard the ship and most of them were identified but these four were not. They had been lying here for 84 years in a plot with no marker at all. People deserve to recognize their sacrifice and the historical importance of shipping and seafaring in Thunder Bay,” he said.
What caused the three-year-old ship to sink remains a mystery. A note in a bottle washed on the north shore of Lake Superior in 1928. It was written by the 22-year-old female cook of the Kamloops and stated the ship had capsized.
Ken Merryman was one of the divers who discovered the Kamloops near Isle Royale in 1977.
When he and members of the dive team heard a memorial stone was being dedicated to the four unidentified sailors, he decided to make the trip from Minneapolis to Thunder Bay for the ceremony.
He said it’s known as a ghost ship because it disappeared with all hands and few traces.
“Nobody has yet explained why it sank,” he said. “The note in the bottle said it iced up and capsized… it’s an interesting tragedy of that era.”
