Students document Fleetwing shipwreck changes

According to researchers at East Carolina University, the Fleetwing ship wreck in Garrett Bay is changing. For three weeks in September, graduate students of the college’s Maritime Studies program and their director Bradley A. Rodgers, Ph.D., spent a majority of their time underwater documenting how the wreck has evolved from calculations taken years ago.

Rodgers, who has worked on documenting the wreck in 1986 and now in 2015, said that by determining what is going on underwater, there is a better chance of extended protection and preservation.

The Fleetwing schooner was built in 1867 in Manitowoc for businessmen Peter Johnston and Sylvester Goodenew by a Mr. Henry Burger. The ship was known as one of the fastest and strongest schooners in the Great Lakes. Her main duties were running grain and coal between Wisconsin, Chicago and even as far as Buffalo, N.Y.

On Sept. 26, 1888, the Fleetwing was running a load of lumber out of Menominee, Mich., destined for Chicago. Visibility was low and the ship was headed towards Death’s Door passage. A northwest gale proved to be the beginning of the end for the Fleetwing. Captain Andrew McGraw thought he was rounding Table Bluff, which leads to the passage, when the clipper ran aground into Garrett Bay, located southwest of the bluff in northern Door County.

According to Theresa Hicks, operations manager with Inland Seas Institute (ISI), a maritime conservation organization supporting the work on the Fleetwing, the captain had miscounted the number of bluffs the ship had passed, causing the end of the 21-year life of the schooner.

Everyone on board survived, but it took too long to notify the proper authorities that the ship was damaged, and the opportunity to repair her was lost. Another storm came through, keeping the Fleetwing prisoner to Garrett Bay waters.

When Rodgers first visited in 1986, the Fleetwing was the first vessel to be archaeologically documented in Lake Michigan and second in Wisconsin waters overall. The site is about 25-30 feet offshore, and is broken into multiple pieces.

With the help of contemporary research and the Wisconsin Historical Society, the public can learn more about how the ship has changed through interventions of people, ice, invasive species and other factors. Since 2001, the site has been on the National Register of Historic Places and has been a popular tourist destination for dive charters and cruise boats. ISI is hoping to find a future for the Fleetwing by way of preservation.

Rodgers, who is also president of ISI, said they wanted to know more about how the schooner sailed, what technology was used, how it was constructed and how it could go so fast. He said that the Fleetwing was more of hybrid, because it was a schooner, but not made for the Welland Canal connecting Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

“We can’t really understand how a vessel moves unless we are out there,” Rodgers said.

Six students of the Maritime Studies program in their second year of graduate school came out to the Door County site to analyze and document the ship. They took underwater readings with a baseline measurement from the center of the ship.

Once everything is pieced together, the visuals will be digitized. In addition to the dives, the students spent time in local libraries and museums to learn about the culture of the time to understand what was happening on shore. A broader understanding gives insight to the local economy, businesses and industries, as a lot of it would be reflected into what was happening in the water. The Fleetwing is part of a large archaeological site that includes remains from an old quarry, inns and wharfs.

In the future, an academic report will be published and made for public use. The documents will eventually be made available on the East Carolina University and Inland Seas Institute websites and with the Wisconsin Historical Society. The original report from the 1980s is already available.

The six graduate students include Kelsey Dwyer, Tori Kiefer, Mitchell Freitas, Katie Clevenger, Sydney Swierenga and Lauren Christian. They along with Rodgers and Hicks stayed in a house in Algoma during their extended stay.

For more information about the work of Inland Seas Institute, visit them online at www.inlandseasinstitute.com or on Facebook.