The storm of November 9-11, 1913, was the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of the Great Lakes, with unprecedented devastation that killed more than two hundred-fifty sailors and sank or destroyed twenty-five ships, several of which were never found. The five-year-old steamer Howard M. Hanna, Jr., which had left Lorain, Ohio, on the morning of Saturday, November 8, carrying coal northbound under Captain William Hagen and a crew of twenty-four, was typical of ships lost in the storm except that her entire crew survived. By Sunday afternoon, November 9, after rounding the tip of Michigan's Thumb, the vessel encountered blizzard-like conditions, thirty-five-foot seas, and sustained winds of seventy to ninety miles per hour. Unable to make headway, she was forced to stop and became trapped in a trough between mountainous waves. After Captain Hagan sighted the Port Austin Reef Light and realized the ship was in danger of being blown onto the reef, anchors were dropped but failed to hold, and the vessel was driven sideways onto the reef, narrowly missing the lighthouse by about five hundred feet. Trapped broadside and exposed to the full force of the wind and seas, the steamer was pounded for more than two days until she finally broke in half. The crew, stranded at each end of the hull without heat and soaked by freezing water, endured terrible conditions until the storm began to weaken on November 11. Several men in the stern, under the command of twenty-year-old second mate Guy H. Taylor, launched the only intact lifeboat and reached shore, while the rest of the crew was rescued after a heroic struggle by the Port Austin Life Saving Service surfboat. At the official inquiry, survivors said they owed their survival to the courageous efforts of the ship's cook, Mrs. Sadie Black, who worked waist-deep in the flooded galley to provide meals. The vessel was later salvaged by the Reid Wrecking Company of Port Huron, rebuilt over the next two years, sailed for many more years, and ended her career in 1983 as the Canadian-owned Lionel Parsons.