by Sandy Richardson
The Fishing Islands are a group of roughly 80-90, mostly small, rocky islands stretching about 15 kilometres from Oliphant north to Howdenvale off the west coast of the Bruce Peninsula. The shallow waters around these islands, with numerous shoals and sandbanks, have long formed a treacherous barrier for ships between the mainland and the open water of Lake Huron. In the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th a number of ships met a watery grave among these islands, either blown onto an outer reef by a Lake Huron storm, or wrecked while seeking safe passage through the island’s narrow channels. The bones of many of these wrecks lie in waters shallow enough to tempt the curious kayaker.
The Fishing Islands being more or less my backyard, I recently spent time at the Bruce County Archives looking for information about shipwrecks in the area. There I found a treasure trove of information in a 1970 monograph by marine historian Patrick Folkes, The Shipwrecks of the Saugeen. (The Saugeen Peninsula was the original name for what is now called the Bruce Peninsula.) It offers a fascinating look into the history of the ships that foundered in the Fishing Islands and how they met their ends. I was also able to view wonderful old photographs of some of the ships taken by photographer J.H. Scougall from the 1870s through the 1920s.
Of the documented Fishing Islands shipwrecks, the general locations of four are known; we have so far found and explored two of these on GLSKA trips.
The earliest recorded shipwreck in the Fishing Is-lands was the newly built 200-ton brig Philo Scoville.
She was down-bound from Milwaukee to Buffalo with 13,000 bushels of wheat, 300 barrels of flour and 200 barrels of fish in late October 1853 when she was blown off course in a storm and fetched up on a shoal off Scotch Bonnet Island, west of Main Station Island. She broke up where she lay and portions of the wreck floated into the shallows near Scotch Bonnet. (I have not yet found any remains.)
Lost somewhere among the reefs and channels of the Fishing Islands is the wreck of the 150-ton side-wheel steamer Oxford (L. 100′, B. 16′, D. 8′). The Oxford was one of many vessels chartered to haul men and supplies for the building of six Imperial Tower lighthouses between Clark Point and Christian Island; and one of several lost in wild autumn weather. The details and location of the wreck are unknown, only that well after the fact she was recorded as having been wrecked at the Fishing Islands in the autumn of 1855. It is believed that some of the stone used in these lighthouses was quarried in the Fishing Islands.
The tug Blanch Shelby left Howdenvale for Southampton early on October 15, 1885, with a load of fish. She struck a submerged rock in the channel between Main Station Island and Burke Island, and sank immediately. All hands were able to get off safely and made it to Main Station. The location of the wreck is unknown.
The 213-ton schooner Gold Hunter (L. 114′, B. 26′, D. 10′) was built in Prince Edward County in 1862, but spent most of her time in the Lake Huron lumber trade. In November of 1871 she was stranded on Cape Smith, Manitoulin Island; the gunboat Prince Alfred took her under tow to Owen Sound, but cast her adrift off Cabot Head during a terrible snowstorm. The crew were able to work her into Wingfield Basin where she spent the winter; she was seriously damaged and had to be rebuilt the following year.
In October of 1890, under a new owner, Captain Alexander McLeod of Goderich Basin where she spent the winter; she, the Gold Hunter left Howdenvale with a load of cedar logs, and in attempting to pass the narrow channel to the open lake struck a shoal off Ghegheto Island (known locally as Round Island). The crew quickly abandoned her and a few days later she broke up in a nor’wester. The wreck still lies in shallow water where she foundered, and is easily viewed from a kayak or explored with mask and snorkel; we have visited the wreck a number of times on GLSKA Fishing Islands trips. (See the report in Qayaq, Vol. 24, No. 3.)
The 25-ton tug Phoenix (L. 53.5′, B. 13.7′) was lost on November 30, 1901 off the east shore of Main Sta-tion Island. The cause is unknown, but she was likely caught in a storm and subsequently broken up in the winter ice. The wreck is said to lie somewhere in the sand of the shallow channel southeast of Main Station Island. (I have yet to find it.)
The 64-ton schooner Sarah (L. 73′, B. 19.4′, D. 6.6′) was an old ship, sailing out of Kincardine, when Robert Reid of Howdenvale bought her in 1904. Her early his-tory remains obscure, but she was originally called the Emma Laura and had been rebuilt twice, once in 1864 at Port Burwell and again in 1878 at Port Dover. At some point she had been renamed the Sarah.
In late November of 1906 the Sarah was on her way from Goderich to winter lay-up in Howdenvale when she was trapped in ice floes off the east side of Burke Island. Captain Reid, his wife and two crewmen es-caped in the yawl boat and were able to work their way through the floes to safety on the mainland. As winter closed in, the pressure of the ice opened her seams and the Sarah settled to the bottom, where she rests today in about 2 metres of water.
We found the remains of the Sarah on this year’s Fishing Islands trip, as you can read in Kim Gregor’s report in this issue; like the Gold Hunter, the Sarah is easily viewed from a kayak or explored with mask and snorkel. A number of relics from the Sarah wreck are on display at the Lighthouse Museum in Kincardine. (Also on display there is a large wood and brass 8 x 10 view camera used by J.H. Scougall, who was a long-time resident of Kincardine.)
As an interesting aside, both Robert Reid and his wife were among Ivan H. Walton’s informants in his collection of Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. (See Qayaq Vol. 6, No. 4 and Vol. 7, No. 1 for two songs they contributed, and Vol. 14, No. 2 for a review of Walton’s collection.)
REFERENCES:
Cunningham, Doug. Fishing Islands, Qayaq, Vol. 12, No. 3. (Information about kayaking the Fishing Islands.)
Folkes, Patrick. Shipwrecks of the Saugeen, 1970. Monograph in Bruce County Archives.
Gateman, Laura M. Lighthouses Around Bruce County, Spinning Wheel Publishing, Chesley, 1991.
Great Lakes Maritime Database. University of Michigan Library, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/t/tbnms1ic.
Walton, Ivan H. & Joe Grimm. Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors, Wayne State University Press, Detroit, 2002.