Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2016 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== The L'Anse Sentinel Saturday, January 29, 1899 BEFORE ST. MARY"S CANAL WAS BUILT Interesting Story of Early Day Navigation On Lake Superior. FIRST SCHOONER IN 1822 First Boats on the Lake Were the Trading Schooners of the Big Fur Companies. Marquette Mining Journal. No one in all the Lake Superior country is better able to speak with authority of the old days here than the HON. PETER WHITE. His reminiscences have made him famous not only through this region, but also through this state and even farther afield. Ten years ago he wrote an article for the Mining Journal on the early history of navigation on this lake. Since then traffic has grown wonderfully, and, a comparison of its present day proportions with its very small beginnings are even more interesting than when MR. WHITE wrote his article. For this reason the Mining Journal has prepared the article for publication again. It is con- densed and somewhat changed in form, but the main facts of the original story are all retained. The article follows: Traffice on Lake Superior in the years prior to the open- ing of the Soo canal was so infinitisimal that no one lack- ing the gift of second sight could possibly have foreseen its growth to its present magnitude. But a backwards look at the craft of the early days shows its wonderful develop- ment better than a score of comparative tables and freight tonnage. The look backwards from the present day of marvelous steel steamships to the time when the first schooners began competition with the Indian's canoe and the voyageur's batteau is but a trifle more than seventy-five years ago. The advent of the first steamer on the lake is a quarter of a century closer. The first vessels of this lake of which there is any record were the Invincible, Otter, Mink, Recovery and Discovery. They were schooners varying in size from 20 to 100 tons and built on the lake by the American, Northwest and Hudson Bay fur companies. The Invincible was wrecked on Whitefish Point about 1822. The Discovery went to pieces in running the Rapids at the Soo. The fate of the Otter is unknown. The Mink went ashore on the Canadian side above the rapids. The Recovery ran the rapids safely in 1829 and finished her service on Lake Erie. Bayfield, while making his survey of Lake Superior in 1823, is sup- posed to have had the Mink loaned him by the Hudson Bay company. For six years after the loss of this fleet the canoes and batteaux had the lake to themselves. The next vessel was the John Jacob Astor, built above the Soo in 1835 by GEORGE W. JONES. She was 113 tons burden. She was wrecked at Copper Harbor Sept. 20, 1844. CAPTAIN C. C. STANNARD, her first master, discovered Stannard rock while sailing up the lake on her maiden trip. The schooner William Brewster, which was named after the agent of the American Fur company at Detroit, was built above the rapids in 1838, but after a few years' service on Lake Superior she was taken to the lower lakes. The fifty-ton Algonquin was the first boat to be hauled over the portage and made her first trip on the lake at the opening of navigation in the season of 1840. MR. WHITE relates that in 1849 the Algonquin took on a load of set- tlers at Sault St. Marie to bring them to Marquette. When the vessel had passed Laughing Whitefish point, though it was a bright clear day in August, CAPTAIN McKAY said he had been into Marquette bay many a time, and that it was no place to be when an east wind was blowing. "There is sunken rocks," said he; "that bay is full on 'em." With that explanation he ran past the harbor and landed his thirty-five passengers on the beach at Little Presque Isle, ten miles north. They were dumped out indiscriminately on the sand with their baggage but no food. They were obliged to camp for the night, and next day walked to Marquette, reaching there in an almost famished condition. In those early days Marquette, in common with all other northern lake cities, was absolutely cut off from civili- zation and supplies during the winter months and the fail- ure of a boat to arrive with a cargo which was destined for the place was apt to mean several months of hardship. A story of this kind is told in connection with the schooner Sis-co-wit. In November, 1849, she took on a load of oats at the Soo for Marquette. For some reason instead of coming in here her captain ran her straight through for L'Anse or Baraga, and laid her up for the winter. But the hardy settlers of Marquette did not intend to suffer for want of the cargo, and two of them, CAPTAIN SAM MOODY and JAMES BROADBENT, went from here to L'Anse on snowshoes, took forcible possession of the vessel, refitted her, and sailed for home on Christmas eve, and arrived here Christ- mas day. The thermometer registered fifteen degrees below zero. It was an heroic effort. After the precious cargo was discharged CAPTAIN MOODY attempted to get the schooner into the mouth of the Chocolay river, but either from lack of water in the channel or too much ice he failed to make the river. The schooner went on the beach a few hundred feet southwest, where her hull now lies buried under the sand. In 1845 the monster schooner Swallow, eighty tons, was brought over the Soo portage. She finally became the pro- perty of of CAPTAIN JAMES BENDRY of Baraga. BENDRY con- sidered the Swallow altogether too large for this lake, and after the canal was opened sent her below. The Merchant was brought over the portage the same year. Two years later she went down off Grand Island with crew and passengers all on board. This is the first serious wreck in the history of Lake Superior navigation. Up to this time none of the vessels - unless the fur companies' boats may be considered to have paid for them- selves indirectly - either built here or brought over, had made any money. The schooner Fur Trader, ninety tons, was the first to break the spell. She was brought over the portage in 1845. CAPTAIN CALVIN RIPLEY sailed her. About this time the great copper excitement sprang up and the Fur Trader coined money from the start. She was a favorite passenger craft, even later on, when there were a few steam vessels on the lakes. "Old Rip," as the captain was called, was a great joker. He was for many years after a pilot on different steamers which came to Lake Superior. 1845 is a notable year in Lake Superior's history, for it marks the advent of the first steamer on its waters. This was the popular Independence, 280 tons burden. CAPTAIN AVERILL was her master and part owner. Her careered was a checkered one. She was full rigged like a vessel and had a powerful steam engine, but she was always in trouble. Neither wind nor steam nor both could make her go right. In 1849 on her first trip up the lake that season she went ashore high and dry in Eagle Harbor. A year or two later she was got off, and slightly after her release when she was about a mile out of the Soo bound up the lake her boiler burst and she was blown into fragments. JONAS W. WATSON, the clerk, was among the saved. He says he went up in the air about 150 feet and as he saw a bundle of hay passing seized it and came down with it. He was not even injured. It is said that so methodical was WATSON that when about to go up he seized the ship's books and papers and saved them. In river improvements at the Soo last summer parts of the old Indpendence, among them the propeller, were recovered. In the summer of 1845 the schooner Napoleon, 120 tons, was built at the Soo. The winter of 1848-49 she was over- hauled and changed into a propeller. She did a good business till the completion of the canal, when she went to the lower lakes, where she remained in commission till a few years ago. On her first trip she came into Marquette, then called Carp river, and anchored a little more than four miles below the present location of the city. The passengers begged CAPTAIN CLARK to weigh anchor and run a little farther up into the bay, but he declared that if other people had no regard for the safety of the vessel he had, and said he had explored every square yard of that bay a thousand times and found it full of sunken rocks. No sane man, he said would ask him to so endanger the safety of his boat. Vessels of thirty times the tonnage of the Napoleon make the harbor nowdays. In the autumn of 1848 the side-wheel steamer Julia Palmer, belonging to CAPTAIN W. F. P. TAYLOR, came to the Soo, and the following winter was rolled over the portage and launched in Lake Superior early in the summer of 1849. At the end of her first season the machinery was taken out of her and the old hull was taken to Waiskia bay and used as a wood dock. Her last trip she was fourteen days out of sight of land and those on board of her had a most perilous time. The next steamer was the fast-sailing, staunch upper cabin propeller Manhattan, of 380 or 400 tons burden, commanded by CAPTAIN CALDWELL. She was brought over the portage and put on Lake Superior in the interest of Spaulding & Bacon, later on Spaulding & Childs. The Manhattan's career on this lake began in 1850, and lasted till she went ashore and was wrecked while trying to enter the harbor of Grand Marais in the summer of 1858. In June, 1851, the propeller Monticello was brought over the portage by COLONEL SHELDEN McKNIGHT. COLONEL McKNIGHT had owned or controlled the Independent and Napoleon, and brought on the Monticello as a rival to the Manhattan. CAPTAIN JOHN WILSON sailed the new boat. A fierce war on passengers and freight commenced. In the month of August of that year a col- lision occurred between the Monticello and the Manhattan. It could have been easily avoided, but each boat was bent on destroying the other. The Manhattan was cut down and sunk near Parisian Island. No lives were lost. Her enterprising owners released her and reconstructed her in six weeks' time. The Manhattan was a popular boat, and on her reappearance at Marquette a deputation of young ladies dressed in white marched down to the Cleveland dock, where the boat was tied up, and presented CAPTAIN CALDWELL with a beautiful flag and bouquets of flowers. The girls sang a song named "The Man- hattan" and composed for the occasion. Then a pompous old doctor by the name of LIVERMORE mounted an old cast iron cylinder and read some high sounding resolutions, which con- cluded with the remarkable prediction that Marquette would grow to be the greatest city in the world. One of the twelve resolutions, however, has had its pre- dictions more than verified. This particular section read: "Resolved, That the time is not far distant when the com- mercial business growing out of these rich and inexhaustible mountains of iron will alone require more shipping than at this time floats upon this lake." The Monticello was thought at the time to be uninjured, but she was doubtless cracked from stem to stern by the collision, for the twenty-fifth of the same month, after coming out of Ontonagon, she was found to be making water fast. Her fires were put out by the water rising to her furnaces. She went on the rocky coast about twenty miles east of Eagle river and rapidly went to pieces. Several of her passengers were drowned. The next steamer was the splendid two-piped, upper cabin, side wheel steamer Baltimore, put on by the McKnight line. She was put across the portage in June and July, 1852. In the season of 1855 she passed through the canal, just then completed, and was lost on Lake Michigan. The propeller Peninsula, put on by the McKnight line in the summer of '53 went ashore the same year at Eagle River. She did not carry passengers to any extent but was a very large freight carrier. The steamer Sam Ward, brought over by CAPTAIN E. B. WARD in 1853, was a very popular boat and paid for herself two or three times over in the two years prior to the open- ing of the canal. When the canal was finished in June, 1855, there came the large steamers Illinois, CAPTAIN WILSON; North Star, CAPTAIN J. B. SWEET; Northener, CAPTAIN ED. TURNER; Lady Elgin, CAPTAIN TOMPKINS; the old Superior, CAPTAIN JONES; also the propellers General Taylor, Mineral Rock, City of Superior, Lac la Belle. The last three were successively commanded by CAPTAIN JOHN SPAULDING. CAPTAIN BEN WILKINS, who afterwards sailed the Winslow for many years, first brought out the propeller ONTONAGON. The Illinois was changed into a barge in 1868. Later the Mineral Rock took the same course. The North Star was burned at her dock in Cleveland in 1862. The Norther- ner was lost on Lake Huron in 1858 by a collision. The loss of the Lady Elgin was attended with the great- est loss of life in the history of the great lakes. She was lost on Lake Michigan by a collision with the schooner Colonel Cook, then named the Augusta, and among the more than 300 lost was the gallant CAPTAIN JACK WILSON, who had sailed so many steamers on the Lake Superior route. He was in command and through his heroic exertions many lives were saved. He could easily have saved himself but would not at the cost of losing others who had trusted themselves to his care and skill. The Superior was wrecked on the Pictured Rocks on the night of October 26, 1856. She was a very old craft, fairly rotten at the time of her loss and should not have been permitted to carry passengers. Twelve of the passengers, and four of the crew were saved. It is a fearful story. Those who were saved caught on a shelf of the rocks under a high cliff, where they clung with great difficulty for five days without food. A snow storm was raging with great fury all the time and the waves continually washed over them. They saw CAPTAIN JONES swim to the foot of the rock below them but were powerless to aid him and he was drowned in their sight. Eight of the strongest of the crew clung to the paddle wheel, the last remnant of the ship remaining above water, and dropped off one by one as their strength gave out and they were unable to hold on longer. The last one had the watches and other valuables of the party on his person. All this happened in plain sight and within 200 feet of the party on the shelf of rock. When the news reached Marquette a hurried public meet- ing was held, money and clothing were given and a re- lief party was dispatched to the scene of the wreck to aid the survivors. The opening of the first ship canal at Sault Ste. Marie practically concludes the history of early navi- gation on the greatest of the great lakes. It gave lake commerce the stimulus which has caused it to de- velop to its present magnificent proportions. Without it marine interests in this lake must have remained much as they were in the period which has been described. ==========================================================================