A tale of a fateful . . . menu. Yes, I will get as many blog entries out of that NYC Library menu site as possible. Today it's the North West, a steamship from the Northwest Company line. (It operated in the North Central region.) It's an example of a forgotten part of Minnesota history: the passenger steamships that plied the Great Lakes, brought to you by a consortium that included - of course - James J. Hill. Details from the front of the menu:
The menu begins thus:
Seems like a lot of money for celery.
As for the ship, it had a grim end. Lots of passenger ships had sad endings; makes you wonder what will become of the enormous liners that sail the seas today, providing they don't have a skipper who runs them into a rock. The North West had a fire, which the crew of any liner will always tell you is the worst-case scenario. I suppose so, but it always seems a bit counterintuitive, since the ships are surrounded by fire's greatest enemy. It's not as if you can run out of water to extinguish it. (Yes, yes, I know that's stupid. But still.)
After that? Here's another page on the ship:
It looked quite different by then, as this page shows, along with the details of its death:
Here's the man who sank it: Captain Gunter Hessler. He sunk 19 ships. He survived the war, and ended up working for the Royal Navy, writing the definitive account of U-boat warfare. More on him here.
