Here’s a small-press book that sets out to revitalize the history of
Canada’s Great Lake steamships – and proves wonderfully successful. Frightful Disaster! by Douglas Hunter treats the mysterious disappearance in 1879 of the steamer Waubuno. The book turns that Georgian Bay catastrophe — and the deaths of 20 to 28 people – into a time capsule that sheds light on “the life on the colonizing state pushing into the hinterlands of the Great Lakes.” The steamer’s loss led to two sensational jury trials. Hunter uses this single maritime mystery to create an all-encompassing picture of life in that time and place – a world free of regulations on cargo loads and numbers of passengers and subject to “the malign role of political loyalties and cronyism.” Published by Gin Rocks Press, the book is subtitled The Disappearance of the Great Lakes Steamer Waubuno, and the Pursuit of Justice for All Who Were Lost. Exhaustively researched, the book sets a new standard for works on Great Lakes shipwrecks.