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Lucerne (shipwreck)

Schooner wrecked in Lake Superior

Field	Value
section1	{{Infobox ship/image
image	Lucerne with Selah Chamberlain and Raleigh.jpg
image_caption	An early 1880s photograph of Lucerne
section2	{{Infobox ship/career
country	United States
flag
registry	United States
name	Lucerne
owner	William Mack (part owner)
operator	Captain George George S. Lloyd, skipper William Mack
launched	April 23, 1873
fate	Lost with all 10 hands in a storm on November 17 or 18, 1886
status	Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991
notes	Location:
section3	{{Infobox ship/characteristics
type	Schooner
tonnage	728 gross tons
length	195 ft
capacity	1,330
crew	9
section4	{{Infobox NRHP
embed	yes
name	Lucerne (Shipwreck)
nearest_city	La Pointe, Wisconsin
added	December 18, 1991
refnum	91001775

Lucerne was a commercial schooner. In November 1886, she sank due to bad weather in Lake Superior, off Long Island in Chequamegon Bay. The site of the wreck was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

History

Lucerne was launched on April 23, 1873. She was nearly 195 ft long and reportedly cost $55,000 to build.

On November 15, 1886, Lucerne was loaded with 1,200 tons of iron ore at her home port, Ashland, Wisconsin. The load was consigned to Little, Oglebay and Company of Cleveland, Ohio. After the delivery, the captain and crew began a voyage back to Ashland. With new canvas sails and a light wind blowing, all the signs pointed to a speedy voyage home. However, a November snowstorm on the lake began developing that night.

On November 17 or 18, 1886, Lucerne succumbed to the violent storm, and sank off Long Island. At the height of the storm, the captain of the ship Fred Kelly had sighted Lucerne, but Fred Kelly unfortunately could not offer any help to the distressed ship under the circumstances. Nobody witnessed Lucernes final minutes, and none of the crew survived.

William Mack, part owner of Lucerne, became worried when the ship never arrived back at Ashland. He telegraphed Bayfield, Wisconsin, and asked for a search vessel to be sent. The boat S. B. Barker was dispatched for the purpose, but did not have to go far to find the wreckage of Lucerne. The S. B. Barker′s crew discovered three masts sticking out of the water. Upon closer inspection, they saw three of the ship's crew members there, frozen solid in three inches (76 mm) of ice. Apparently they had climbed to the top of the masts to escape the freezing waters of Lake Superior and had perished there while waiting to be rescued. The three bodies were moved to Bayfield.

References

[https://wisconsinshipwrecks.org/vessel/Details/386 Wisconsin Shipwrecks]
"Great Lakes Shipwrecks".
"Lucerne (Shipwreck): La Pointe, Wisconsin". Find the Data.org.
"Service History". Wisconsin Shipwrecks.org.
Keller, James. (1984). "The Unholy Apostles".
"Final Voyage". Wisconsin Shipwrecks.org.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1873-ships maritime-incidents-in-november-1886 shipwrecks-of-the-wisconsin-coast shipwrecks-on-the-national-register-of-historic-places-in-wisconsin shipwrecks-of-lake-superior ships-lost-with-all-hands apostle-islands national-register-of-historic-places-in-ashland-county,-wisconsin

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