The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong · Mark Chrisler

Great Lakes Pirates, Part 2: Shiver Me Timbers

January 13, 2026·41 min·2 clips

At 3 a.m., a mystery steamer turned hard into the USS Michigan and kept going.

1. The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong uses Great Lakes piracy, Part 2, to move from fur-era legend to timber theft on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. 2. Mark Kreisler narrates the episode as host, and the names that matter most are Lieutenant George M. Ransom, Commander Abraham Bigelow, Isaac Watts Willard, U.S. Marshal George Rice, and Benjamin Bagnall. 3. The episode asks what piracy meant on the Great Lakes once white pine, naval timber laws, and federal enforcement collided. 4. The story begins with claims of Great Lakes piracy in the early 1700s and then pivots to Bill Johnston, a Canadian smuggler who fought British targets on the lakes. 5. Kreisler explains that the War of 1812 and the Patriot War of 1837 pushed the United States and Britain into demilitarizing the lakes under a treaty that still exists. 6. The USS Michigan enters as the main ship of the episode, described as the first iron-hulled ship in the American Navy and one of the fastest, best-armed vessels afloat. 7. Its launch in Erie, Pennsylvania on December 5, 1843 goes wrong when the ramp is too shallow and the ship sits still for 23 hours before floating away overnight. 8. The Michigan then spends years on seasonal patrols, doing rescues, intimidating ports, and surviving hazards like ice, disease, and a fatal August 27, 1849 salute accident near Millard Fillmore. 9. On May 5, 1853, a steamer later identified as Buffalo collides with the Michigan in the dark after shadowing its course on Lake Huron. 10. Bigelow asks for identification and help, but the other vessel gives a flat “No” and continues toward Detroit after the impact. 11. The episode then shifts to Isaac Watts Willard, whose long Michigan career includes general stores, a riverboat venture, a postmastership, and the founding of Paw Paw. 12. Willard’s obscure federal title, “Timber Agent for Michigan and the Western Territories,” is recast as a job for pirate hunting. 13. Kreisler details how white pine around Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit became the target of illegal cutting, and how the 1831 timber law was expanded by the 1850 Supreme Court ruling in the Ephraim Briggs case. 14. The Department of the Interior responds by sending agents into the woods and promising them half the auction proceeds from seized timber. 15. Timber barons fight back with sham buyers, intimidation, newspaper pressure, and direct attacks, including a hotel fire while Willard sleeps and a dead timber agent in Dubuque in 1852. 16. The episode’s most vivid resistance comes at the Manatee Raid, where Willard and George Rice seize 260,000 feet of lumber and then face a coordinated baron revolt in Chicago and Grand Haven. 17. Willard and Rice arrest several captains, but Captain Clark, Captain Hammond, and Captain Higgy keep slipping loose through corrupt judges, false imprisonment claims, and public interference. 18. When the USS Michigan finally gets secret orders from Naval Secretary James C. Dobbin to work with Willard and Rice, the ship’s speed and firepower change the balance of power for a short time. 19. The episode sounds like a narrated history essay with comic asides, legal detail, and careful scene setting from Erie, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Door County. 20. Listeners who like maritime history, federal law, and strange American economic fights will get the most out of it, while listeners who want a short pirate tale without courts or logging should skip it.

As heard by us

Great Lakes piracy moves from fur pelts to timber, with profit and power driving the story.

This episode of The Constant traces Great Lakes piracy from early fur-pelt theft to a later, timber-heavy version of the same struggle, where the real contest turns on wood, control, and the men trying to claim both.

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Why you'd press play

If you want Great Lakes piracy history with timber, corruption, and no buried treasure, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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