“The vessel tossed wildly”— Cleveland/Great Lakes Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin

Today, the Cleveland/Great Lakes Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin remembers when the Griffin left port as the first sailing vessel on Lake Erie 338 years ago.

From La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West by Francis Parkman, published in 1899:

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The “Griffin” had lain moored by the shore, so near that Hennepin could preach on Sundays from the deck to the men encamped along the bank.

She was now forced up against the current with tow ropes and sails, till she reached the calm entrance of Lake Erie.

On the seventh of August, La Salle and his followers embarked, sang Te Deum, and fired their cannon.

A fresh breeze sprang up; and with swelling canvas the “Griffin” ploughed the virgin waves of Lake Erie, where sail was never seen before.

For three days they held their course over these unknown waters, and on the fourth turned northward into the Strait of Detroit.

Here, on the right hand and on the left, lay verdant prairies, dotted with groves and bordered with lofty forests.

They saw walnut, chestnut, and wild plum trees, and oaks festooned with grape-vines; herds of deer, and flocks of swans and wild turkeys.

The bulwarks of the “Griffin” were plentifully hung with game which the men killed on shore, and among the rest with a number of bears, much commended by Hennepin for their want of ferocity and the excellence of their flesh.

“Those,” he says, “who will one day have the happiness to possess this fertile and pleasant strait, will be very much obliged to those who have shown them the way.”

They crossed Lake St. Clair, and still sailed northward against the current, till now, sparkling in the sun, Lake Huron spread before them like a sea.

For a time they bore on prosperously.

Then the wind died to a calm, then freshened to a gale, then rose to a furious tempest; and the vessel tossed wildly among the short, steep, perilous waves of the raging lake.

Even La Salle called on his followers to commend themselves to Heaven.

All fell to their prayers but the godless pilot, who was loud in complaint against his commander for having brought him, after the honor he had won on the ocean, to drown at last ignominiously in fresh water.

The rest clamored to the saints.

St. Anthony of Padua was promised a chapel to be built in his honor, if he would but save them from their jeopardy; while in the same breath La Salle and the friars declared him patron of their great enterprise.

The saint heard their prayers.

The obedient winds were tamed; and the “Griffin” plunged on her way through foaming surges that still grew calmer as she advanced.

Now the sun shone forth on woody islands, Bois Blanc and Mackinaw and the distant Manitoulins, — on the forest wastes of Michigan and the vast blue bosom of the angry lake; and now her port was won, and she found her rest behind the point of St. Ignace of Michilimackinac, floating in that tranquil cove where crystal waters cover but cannot hide the pebbly depths beneath.

Before her rose the house and chapel of the Jesuits, enclosed with palisades; on the right, the Huron village, with its bark cabins and its fence of tall pickets; on the left, the square compact houses of the French traders; and, not far off, the clustered wigwams of an Ottawa village.

Here was a centre of the Jesuit missions, and a centre of the Indian trade; and here, under the shadow of the cross, was much sharp practice in the service of Mammon.

Keen traders, with or without a license, and lawless coureurs de bois, whom a few years of forest life had weaned from civilization, made St. Ignace their resort; and here there were many of them when the “Griffin ” came.

They and their employers hated and feared La Salle, who, sustained as he was by the governor, might set at nought the prohibition of the King, debarring him from traffic with these tribes.

Yet, while plotting against him, they took pains to allay his distrust by a show of welcome.

The “Griffin” fired her cannon, and the Indians yelped in wonder and amazement.

The adventurers landed in state, and marched under arms to the bark chapel of the Ottawa village, where they heard mass.

La Salle knelt before the altar, in a mantle of scarlet bordered with gold.

Soldiers, sailors, and artisans knelt around him, —black Jesuits, gray Récollets, swarthy voyageurs, and painted savages; a devout but motley concourse.

As they left the chapel, the Ottawa chiefs came to bid them welcome, and the Hurons saluted them with a volley of musketry.

They saw the “ Griffin ” at her anchorage, surrounded by more than a hundred bark canoes, like a Triton among minnows.

Yet it was with more wonder than good-will that the Indians of the mission gazed on the “floating fort,” for so they called the vessel.

A deep jealousy of La Salle’s designs had been infused into them. His own followers, too, had been tampered with.

In the autumn before, it may be remembered, he had sent fifteen men up the lakes to trade for him, with orders to go thence to the Illinois and make preparation against his coming.

Early in the summer, Tonty had been dispatched in a canoe from Niagara to look after them.

It was high time. Most of the men had been seduced from their duty, and had disobeyed their orders, squandered the goods entrusted to them, or used them in trading on their own account.

La Salle found four of them at Michilimackinac.

These he arrested, and sent Tonty to the Falls of Ste. Marie, where two others were captured, with their plunder.

The rest were in the woods, and it was useless to pursue them.

Anxious and troubled as to the condition of his affairs in Canada, La Salle had meant, after seeing his party safe at Michilimackinac, to leave Tonty to conduct it to the Illinois, while he himself returned to the colony.

But Tonty was still at Ste. Marie, and he had none to trust but himself.

Therefore, he resolved at all risks to remain with his men; “for,” he says, “I judged my presence absolutely necessary to retain such of them as were left me, and prevent them from being enticed away during the winter.”

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The Cleveland/Great Lakes Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin shows with an artist’s image, circa 1698, of La Salle and priests on shore with supplies being unloaded from ship.

Cleveland/Great Lakes Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin