Death
In 1845, with the state survey moribund because of the lack of funds, Houghton organized a combined linear and geological survey of the Lake Superior region that was funded by the federal government, but while working on that survey he and two companions drowned in Lake Superior near Eagle River, Michigan when their small boat capsized in a storm. His demise sent waves of shock through Michigan and the entire country, but his reluctance to yield to the expressed concerns of his voyageurs about the worsening weather conditions may have contributed to the disaster. His remains were discovered on the shoreline the next spring 1846 and returned to Detroit, where they were buried in Elmwood Cemetery. Neither of the surveys on which he was working at the time was ever completed.
Read more about this topic: Douglass Houghton
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“And yet the sun pardons our voices still,
And berries in the hedge
Through all the nights of rain have come to the full,
And death seems like long hills, a range
We ride each day towards, and never reach.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“There’s nothing wrong in suffering, if you suffer for a purpose. Our revolution didn’t abolish danger or death. It simply made danger and death worthwhile.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)
“He should be as vigorous as a sugar maple, with sap enough to maintain his own verdure,... and not like a vine, which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the endeavor to heal its wounds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)