Estonia

Summary

The Estonia was Arthur “Big Art” Larsen’s diesel-powered fishing tug, remembered in Beaver Island retrospectives as the island’s first diesel-powered fishing outfit. Local Beaver Beacon accounts identify it as the vessel that lifted nets near Gull Island during the Armistice Day storm of 11 November 1940, returned toward Saint James Harbor, broke its moorings as the water rose, and drifted unmanned to beach itself gently at the harbor’s northeastern end, between two older shipwrecks.

History

A 1968 Beacon “Beaver Tales” account gives the fullest narrative. On the morning of the storm, Larsen took the Estonia out to his sets off Gull Island in a flat calm with heavy south swells already rolling up the lake. He had lifted and re-set only four boxes of nets, with thirty-six still out, when he saw what looked less like a dark cloud than a fog bank bearing down from the southwest, and turned for home. Other island tugs — Frank Left’s, Andy Gallagher’s, and Roland McCann’s — came in with him; “Shing” Martin’s tug, the Evelyn, arrived with the storm already on it and ran straight up onto the beach rather than try to tie up. The mail boat Mary Margaret, moored at the old Booth Fish Dock, cast off to ride out the storm in open harbor water as her lines began tearing up the dock; every tug but the Estonia did the same, since the wind by then was too strong for lines to hold. As the harbor rose through the afternoon and evening, the Estonia’s dock lines parted, and — with no one aboard — she backed away from the dock and worked her own way to the harbor’s northeastern end, coming to rest gently on the beach between two older wrecks. By morning the storm had passed; the Estonia and the Evelyn were found high and dry but undamaged, while the docks were battered but repairable.

The storm’s real cost was in fishing gear rather than boats. The June 1964 Beacon obituary “Big Art” gives Larsen’s loss as “nearly seven thousand dollars worth of nets,” while the 1968 account describes forty boxes lost from his sets and puts the value of a ten-box gang at close to $1,200 — figures that describe the same loss at different levels of detail rather than conflicting outright. The 1968 piece calls the 1940 storm a turning point for Great Lakes commercial fishing on the island: gear losses coincided with the onset of sea lamprey predation on lake trout, which the article says “many have speculated” contributed to the trout’s subsequent collapse, though it does not treat that link as established.

Helen Hoffman Collar’s September 1964 retrospective, recalling the St. James harbor of 1915, independently calls the Estonia “the first diesel powered outfit on the Island,” adding that every islander’s children could recognize the distinct sound of their own father’s engine.

A February 1965 “Beaver Tales” column, marking the demolition of the old Gallagher Dock, places the Estonia within that dock’s history. Built at the turn of the century by the Roe Brothers on more than 250 pilings, the dock was bought by Booth Fisheries and managed by “Old” James Gallagher, rebuilt on its original pilings in 1917, and sold in 1933 to “Young” James Gallagher, who also hosted pleasure boaters there as the island’s Yacht Dock. It survived a severe ice shove in the mid-1930s and a high-water threat in the early 1950s, when Gallagher weighted it down with rock, before giving way on 8 February 1965 to an expanded Yacht Dock. The column closes with a roster of “the long list of colorful fish tugs that called it home,” naming the Estonia alongside about twenty other Beaver Island tugs — the Silver Moon, La Fond, Silvia S., Agnes S., Nautilus, Two Sisters, Catherine B., Gypsy, Shirley G., Meadow Mac, Lillian Mae, Silver Star, Lady Agnes, Elliot, the Shamrock, the Evelyn, Irene, Elizabeth G., William J., Panther, and Sidonia — and five boats fished out of High Island. The same “Beaver Tales” column was reprinted, essentially unchanged, in the Beacon’s August 1992 issue, and the Armistice Day storm account was independently reprinted in April 1991, evidence that both stories continued to circulate in the paper’s recurring retrospective feature decades after the events themselves.

Larsen continued fishing until the trout decline made it unsustainable, then worked as a diesel engineer aboard other Great Lakes boats, including the White Swan and the North Shore, before his death on 3 June 1964. He was buried in St. James Township Cemetery on 6 June 1964.

Evidence and limits

The sources establish the name, Larsen connection, diesel description, fishing role, and 1940 storm episode in some narrative detail. They do not establish a registry, dimensions, builder, ownership chain beyond the local retrospective, or the vessel’s later disposition after 1940.

Added 1 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes