History & local legend
The Lake Erie monster of Misery Bay survives through a family story and a bronze figurehead. Charles Curriden said he saw a huge, scaly creature with a broad mouth and curling tongue while working as a watchman during the 1913 raising of the brig Niagara.
His son, Captain Chet Curriden, later told the story aboard the yacht Eleanor III when bad weather kept her in port. One young listener was Doug Nagle, who remembered it after becoming a boat owner himself.
Nagle asked fellow sailor Paul Brugger to design the creature. Brugger cast its head in bronze, producing a 108-pound figurehead for Nagle’s yacht Westerly.
