The two-masted schooner Trinidad was built in 1867 at Grand Island, New York, to sail in the lucrative Great Lakes trade. It hauled Midwest “prairie gold” wheat from Milwaukee and Chicago to the eastern Great Lakes cities of Buffalo and Oswego, both in New York, and returned laden with coal.
Specially designed to pass through the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the schooner was built with lifeboat davits that could be folded inboard to allow the ship to traverse the Canal and rigged with wire – an uncommon feature aboard ships of that era.
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, the career of the Trinidad was a checkered one as the schooner’s owners failed to invest much time or money into the vessel’s continued upkeep. The hull leaked like a sieve and the captain was nearly killed by a block that fell from the decaying wire rigging.
The lack of care in Trinidad’s condition led to its sad end on May 13, 1881, when the schooner was bound for Milwaukee from Buffalo with a cargo of coal. Shortly after passing through the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal, the schooner sprang a leak – an incident met with a shrug by the crew as leaks were a common experience aboard Trinidad.
Capt. John Higgins decided to continue on course until the vessel suddenly and violently lurched and began to sink. Desperate work at the pumps failed to stem the tide of water flooding into the hold and the captain and crew took to the ship’s yawl just moments before Trinidad sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan with all of the crew’s possessions and, sadly, the captain’s pet Newfoundland dog.
Captain and crew were at the yawl’s oars for eight hours before reaching shore. Higgins later said that he believed Trinidad’s hull had been damaged a few days before it sank while passing through an ice field in the Straits of Mackinac.
This past July, 142 years later, the wreck of Trinidad was finally located in nearly 300 feet of water about 10 miles off Algoma, WI. by a team of local maritime historians, who reported their finding to the Wisconsin Historical Society. A marine archaeologist working with the organization arranged for a submersible side-scan sonar array that verified the schooner’s identity and documented historical artifacts collected from the wreck.
Trinidad “is among the best-preserved shipwrecks in Wisconsin waters with her deck-house still intact, containing the crew’s possessions and her anchors and deck gear still present,” according to a statement from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which is working to have the wreck site added to the National Register of Historic Places.