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On this day September 26, 1915, the three masted schooner CITY OF SHEBOYGAN foundered on Lake Ontario a few miles off Amherst Island taking five with her – Captain MacDonald and his wife, W. Joyner, J. Lavis and Robert Milne. She was loaded with feldspar, sailing from Kingston to Buffalo.
She had previously sunk November 5, 1886, east of Pipe Island near Detour. On that occasion the woman cook drowned. She again was sunk in April 1893 at the mouth of the Chicago harbor. This time during a vicious storm that caused the steamer CITY OF NAPLES to snap her lines and drift into the schooner.
The CITY OF SHEBOYGAN was built in 1871 at Sheboygan, Wis., by Frank Hamilton for Christian Raab of Sheboygan. She measured 135.5 feet in length, 27.4 feet in beam and 10 feet in depth.
She was owned by Winand Schlosser of Milwaukee from 1900 until 1915 when sold Canadian to Edward M. MacDonald of Toronto.
The following story and beautiful photos of her wreck are thanks to our Shipwreck Ambassador Cal Kothrade.
It was 2017, and this was my second trip to dive wrecks in Lake Ontario. My first trip two years prior had been unexpectedly cut short when on the very first dive of the weeklong expedition, a member of our group experienced life threatening issues at depth, and subsequently suffered from decompression sickness. While conscious and breathing pure oxygen, he and the rest of us were rushed to shore by our charter operator’s non-typically fast boat. There he was picked up by an awaiting ambulance at the dock and taken to a local hospital for initial treatment. Later that afternoon he was transported two hours west to Toronto where he spent several hours in a re-compression chamber under the direction of medical professionals to treat and minimize the effects of the DCS. The following day the group chose not to dive. The rest of the week the Great Lakes weather conspired to keep us off the water for the remainder of our trip. That’s wreck diving on the Lakes, sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.
That being said, I was eager to get some dives in on ‘new to me’ wrecks and begin filling my camera’s SD cards with awesome photos. The CITY OF SHEBOYGAN rests peacefully one hundred feet below the waves near the far north eastern end of Lake Ontario, very close to the St Lawrence Seaway. This is the furthest east I have dove a freshwater wreck. The images are quite green in color, this is how it was that June day I photographed the three masted schooner, no doubt an algae bloom in process at the time.
I found the wreck to be very interesting and in quite decent condition. Her mizzen mast was still standing with the lower boom still in place from what I can recall. The bowsprit and jib boom are unfortunately no longer where they ought to be, but there are plenty of other goodies to peruse, such as the catheads, a small bow mounted capstan, windlass, hatch openings, et al.
In past articles, I have discussed the differences of the five Lakes, and even gone so far as to rate them from most to least favorite to dive (in my opinion). Despite great wrecks like the CITY OF SHEBOYGAN, Ontario is only beat out for the bottom spot on my list by Lake Erie. Perhaps this no. 4 spot is ill deserved, my own personal experiences no doubt coloring my feelings the way the algae colored the water. I have only four career dives total on Erie, and as best I can recollect, six on Ontario. If I had lived in closer proximity to Erie and Ontario instead of my hometown of Milwaukee, I would have racked up more dives on them, and perhaps far fewer on Superior, Huron and of course, Michigan. My memories would thus be much different, and perhaps too would be my ratings of Erie and Ontario. None of this matters however, when you the viewer looks at the images, only seeing the historical wreckage on the bottom and not the sacrifices made to capture the images. I’m quite certain my friend who suffered the bends on his first ever Ontario dive would agree with me that our personal experiences forever taint our feelings for some of the wrecks and Lakes we dive. Luckily for me, the CITY OF SHEBOYGAN was a fun and safe adventure shared with good friends on a lake I really should dive more.
Still images were taken with a Canon T1-I Rebel DSLR mated to a Canon 10-22mm super-wide rectilinear lens, in an Ikelite housing using natural light and Ikelite DS-161 Movie strobes X2. Post production was performed in Adobe Lightroom.
Cal Kothrade is the Shipwreck Ambassador of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society, a diver, a photographer and an artist. His work can be viewed at www.calsworld.net and a wall of his photos are on display at Milwaukee’s Riverfront Pizzeria.
ALL photos are emailed to Wisconsin Marine Historical Society members with the story. Help keep history alive. Join the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society. As a member you will receive these stories and much more. For information email us at wmhs@wmhs.org or call 414-286-3074 or visit our webpage at https://wmhs.org/