Snake Soup: A North Manitou Family's Three Days Adrift on Lake Michigan

"Snake Soup" is a family story written out by hand by Elizabeth Robinson about her grandparents and her mother on North Manitou Island in Lake Michigan. The National Park Service has published scans of her pages; this is a retelling.

The island

The Hueys, Robinson's grandparents Pat and Nellie and their daughter Monona ("Ona"), 16, lived in a three-room tent with a wooden floor on the northwest end of the island, near the small lumbering village of Crescent. Their prize possession was an old Edison phonograph. Next door farmed the Swansons, a Swedish family; their boy, Enos, had not gone to school until he was nine, then completed three grades in one term. Ona and Enos studied and went skiing together, and the two families became close.

The village had two stores and two post offices; mail came from Leland to the east end of the island, where there was a lighthouse, and was carried on to Crescent.

Lost in the smoke

Peter Swanson and Pat bought a fishing boat, the Hurry Back, with a one-room cabin on deck. One evening they set their nets at six and turned for shore, but smoke and fog had covered the water. The compass stuck; they could not tell which way to go. The motor ran until the fuel was gone, and then they drifted. On board were Peter, Pat, his wife Nellie and the boy.

On the island, the whole village searched. People lit huge bonfires to help the lighthouse keeper, the sawmill blew its whistle for hours (the wind carried the sound the wrong way), and the life-saving station sent boats three miles out without finding a trace. On the second day one of the year's worst storms blew up; big ships sheltered on the east side of the island, and one lost a whole deck load of lumber. Mrs. Swanson, sure the men were dead, put on black; Ona refused to stay with her and waited alone in the tent, while men from the mill took turns watching over it.

Snake soup

On the boat, Peter sat on the bow singing old Swedish ballads to keep his courage up, and the boy slept on a bench. By the third day, with no food or water, they were close to despair. At dusk the boat began scraping over stones. Peter jumped overboard, found land, and hauled the boat ashore so the others would not have to wade.

In the morning they found only a tumbledown shack. Between the four of them they had half a match, and it lit; Pat said afterwards that if he ever prayed, it was then. Peter came back with a snake he had killed and cleaned, Nellie fetched the pail from the boat, and they boiled the snake in lake water. The broth tasted flat, with nothing to season it, and Enos never once complained of hunger.

Pat set off along the shore and walked about two miles to a settlement, empty except for a 12-year-old girl; everyone else had gone to a celebration. She gave him apples and bread and told him they were on Washington Island, off the Wisconsin shore. By the time he got back to camp he collapsed, his shoes worn off his feet.

Rescue

Across the water, the life-saving station on Plum Island saw their fire. The captain thought it was just hunters, but the keeper insisted on going, and the crew followed. They took the castaways to Plum Island, fed Pat milk and bread until he came round, and told them they had drifted through Death's Door, a rocky passage no large ship could run without an experienced pilot. Word went to North Manitou, and there the bells rang and the whistles blew.

Because Pat was still weak they came home the long way, and it was a week before they reached Manitou harbour, where everyone ran to the shore to meet them. Ona called it the happiest moment of her life. When Robinson wrote the story, the only ones of the party still living were her mother and Enos, both in Traverse City.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Snake Soup," the story by Elizabeth Robinson, with scans of her handwritten pages. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/snake-soup.htm
• Robinson's handwritten pages are not reproduced here.
• The story spells the village both "Cresent" and "Crescent", and Enos also "Enous"; the spellings here are one choice of each.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.