Schooner Daniel Lyons
Historic Shipwreck
Type: Wooden Schooner, three masted
Built: 1873, George Goble, Oswego, N.Y.
Sank: October 18, 1878
Length: 138’ Beam: 26’
Cargo: Wheat
Depth of Wreckage: 110’
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places
About eight miles northeast of here, the wooden schooner Daniel Lyons rests 110 feet beneath Lake Michigan’s waves. The three-masted Daniel Lyons delivered grain to ports around the Great Lakes in the 1870s, until a collision sent her to the bottom in the early morning of Oct. 18, 1878.
On Oct. 17, 1878, the Daniel Lyons departed Chicago at one A.M., loaded with wheat and bound for Buffalo, New York. She made her way up the Wisconsin coastline easily in the light fall breeze, until she was offshore from Clay Banks in Door County. About four A.M., the red and green lights of another vessel appeared in the darkness. It was the Kate Gillett, heavily laden with fence posts and bound for Chicago. The ships tried to avoid one another, but the Kate Gillett rammed the starboard side of the Lyons, piercing her hull.
The two vessels remained locked together long enough for the captain and crew of the Daniel Lyons to jump aboard the Gillett. When the ships separated, the Daniel Lyons quickly sank.
Today, the hull has collapsed. Masts, gaffs, booms, wire rope, and other rigging are strewn about the wreck site, and divers can examine deck winches and a windlass. The site is marked seasonally by a WHS mooring Buoy.
Marker can be reached from Steele Street 0.1 miles east of Lake Street.
Courtesy hmdb.org
