Algoma, Wisconsin: The Ghosts of the Ahnapee River

 

What a sight Ahnapee/Algoma must have been in the days of the wind ships. What it must have been like to witness 12 or 15 -  or even more - schooners riding at anchor in the harbor is nearly impossible to imagine. Today we see scores of fishing boats, and perhaps a sailboat or two, while knowing the likes of the Wren, Industry, Shaw, S. Thal, Whirlwind, Evening Star, Glad Tidings, Sea Star and so many more will never be seen again.

The late 1860s was the heyday of Lake Michigan schooner traffic. As steamers and railroads replaced sailing vessels, they began to disappear. Some were scrapped. Some were burned to the waterline and sunk. Others just deteriorated and sank. That’s what happened to Lady Ellen and Spartan whose final resting places are between the present 2^nd and 4^th Street bridges in Algoma.

Lady Ellen’s history is storied in the annals of Algoma. The Spartan? Not so much. For several generations, the Ellen was remembered by Algoma youngsters such as Jag Haegele, who sat on its gunwales each winter while putting on their ice skates for some after school fun. Spartan came to life years later when Jim Kirsten was making preparations for his campground at the corner of 4^th and Navarino.

Spartan made a significant commercial impact on Ahnapee and beyond, and its resting place seems fitting. As early as 1854, Yates and Wild had a mercantile on Capt. K’s spot. Lots 10 and 11 of Block 3 in the Youngs and Steele Plat of the City of Algoma. There were other owners, the most impressive being Detjen Bros. Planning Mill and Dock which opened in 1870. Just over 20 years later, the company became known as Ahnapee Manufacturing Co. Years later the building served as a flour and feed store and then as an annex for Algoma Net Co. , just across the street to the south.

Lady Ellen lives on in the memories of the retired set who remember part of her peeking out of the Ahnapee River near the southwest side of the 2^nd Street Bridge. Built by respected Civil War hero Major William I. Henry, also Ahnapee’s most noted shipwright, the two-masted Lady Ellen was built of walnut that more than likely came from the area’s virgin timber. Henry built the schooner to join Capt. Bill Nelson’s Whiskey Pete in Capt. John McDonald’s stone trade, however she was used for lumbering operations, fishing and was also one of the Christmas tree ships. Lady Ellen was engaged in Lake Michigan traffic until 1899 when she was put out of business by the steamers. The hardworking Ellen was docked on the north side of the river, about 200 feet west of the 2nd Street Bridge where she eventually rotten and sank. (See below for a description of the photo.)

William I. Henry honed his shipbuilding craft  in his native Scotland. Born in 1820, Henry, the old Ahnapee seaman, was credited by the men of Ahnapee  who carefully observed his Civil War battlefield actions, advances and retreats as saving their lives, Henry served General Sherman who used the shipwright's skills on the famous March to the Sea.

Northeast corner of the point at which the Ahnapee River meets Lake Michigan, 1883

It wasn't only the Ellen. Henry designed the largest ship ever built in Ahnapee, the 105-foot, 173-ton Bessie Boalt. Henry’s shipyard was in a small bay, east of the bottom of Church St., behind what became the end of Michigan Street between Algoma Dowell Co. and Algoma Pallet Co., later Pier 42. Henry’s son William I. Henry, Jr. was another sailor, and he sailed the Ellen for over 25 years, from 1871-1899.

Lesser known is the schooner Spartan which sank in the river on the southeast side of the 4^th St. Bridge near the old Detjen dock. Forgotten until in 1985 when Jim Kersten began improving the lot on which Capt. K’s campground sits, the Spartan languished, deteriorated, and faded into history. But what a significant history the Spartan had.

The Spartan, said the Ahnapee Record in September 1885, was the oldest vessel plying the waters of Lake Michigan. Since construction in Montreal in 1838, the schooner had made all 5 Great Lakes and even sailed the Atlantic. Spartan was the largest schooner on the Great Lakes for many years and one of the best sailors afloat, but at the time of the article, the schooner was laid up in the Ahnapee River, its final resting place.

It was only two months earlier that the Spartan was undergoing repairs in Ahnapee when a kettle of pitch on the cabin stove caught fire. Fortunately, the damage was not severe, but when she was bound for Clay Banks two weeks later, exceptionally fierce winds forced her to seek refuge in Ahnapee’s harbor for two days. At the time, September 1885, the owners could not decide whether to strip the vessel or rebuild it. By the 1^st of October, the nearly 50-year-old, mighty schooner was stripped of everything of value and allowed to decay and sink in the Ahnapee River, or possibly serve as a relic to days gone by. It did. (See Detjen's dock description below.)

That decision was not the end of the Spartan.

During 1890 the Advocate carried an article saying the schooner was being broken up. Three years later the Record editorialized saying that the old Spartan was nearly rotted to the waters’ edge and that if it were not removed then, the work would be far more difficult. In April 1894, the paper again called for removal, this time saying that if much more was cut away from the old boat, it would not be self-supporting and that removal would be quite expensive. The paper felt that a powerful tug could lift what was left at substantial savings. The paper also encouraged the City of Ahnapee to have the job looked at by one of experience. What the paper didn’t say was that the city was doing too much diddling around and its failure to act was costing the taxpayers more as the days went on.

As it worked out, it was Jim Kersten who took care of removing the Spartan in 1986, about one hundred years after the mighty vessel was “laid up.”

It is not only the ghosts of the Lady Ellen and the Spartan that inhabit the Ahnapee River.

In 1899, Algoma Record commented on the dredging going on in preparation for the new 2^nd Street Bridge and mentioned the boats sunk in the river. By then, the lower half of the Spartan’s hull was submerged in mud, although broken pieces of its ribs were sticking up above the water. The hulk of the Lady Ellen was in the water, however all the rigging had been cut away. During blasting, rocks and debris was blown higher than the Ellen’s spars, which remained. The paper said since the useless Lady Ellen presented a “bad appearance,” the “whole outfit” should be taken out of the river. It didn’t happen.

At bit up-river beyond the Spartan was the schooner Tempest. A few rotten timber ends were visible at the turn of 1900. The Tempest also figured prominently during the schooner heydays. Town of Carlton’s James Flynn was one who sailed aboard the small schooner and served as her captain. As a footnote, history says in 1862 during the Civil War Flynn fired the first shot when the “formidable Tennessee” was coming down the river through the Union fleet. Porter was created an admiral following the action. Also sunk in the river was the schooner Belle. Who would have believed that after a month, the vessel was raised, taken out of the river and partially rebuilt? The Belle faded away in the local papers, so what happened to her is conjecture.

Beneath the fire engine platform at the foot of 3^rd Street in 1899 was the rudder of the old river tug Betsey/Betsy. Years earlier, in 1892, the paper said plans for the Betsy’s hull was being torn to pieces to be burned for fuel indicating that tug had been in a state of deterioration for at least 5 years. As early as summer 1887, Betsy’s boiler and engine were sold to C.W. Baldwin. The equipment had a history before being put on the tug. The machinery had belonged to the Evelands who arrived in (then) Wolf River in 1854. Interestingly, A.D. Eveland purchased Capt. Ross’s interest in the boat. The tug was built in the 1860s by Orrin Warner, a founder of what is now Algoma, and Charles Ross, an early resident. The Betsey and her companion tug, the Two Davids, towed scows and rafts up and down the Ahnapee River for years. Two Davids disappeared in the river marsh near the old Forestville sawmill.

An 1899 paper opined that the “relics of bygone navigation at ‘The Mouth’” brings a “tinge of sadness as one views the old fragments and thinks of the busy, happy times when the ties, posts, wood bark and provisions constituted the main articles of commerce at this port.”

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Photo description: As the photo indicates, Lady Ellen is west of the present 2^nd Street Bridge and in some ice. Wenniger’s pump factory and saloon, last known as the Northside Tap, is the building with the high roofline right of center. The white building on the hill is Wenniger’s Wilhelmshoeh. By the time of this photo, Wilhelmshoeh was refurbished and sections torn off. It is now an apartment building.

The amounts of wood products to be shipped are evident in this Frank McDonald photo dating to before 1900. Writings prior to 1900 tell about wood products awaiting shipment as far as one could see all along the river’s edge from Ahnapee to Forestville. As the forest was cut, the river was left to bake in the hot sun and eventually seep into the surrounding area leaving the narrow, shallow Ahnapee River that exists today. During the pioneer days of the community, before the trees were all cut, it was possible to make Forestville by boat. In 1834 Joseph McCormick and a party of men sailed upriver to today’s Forestville. Trees made the vast difference.

Photo description: Detjen's Dock was on the river side of the Detjen furniture factory on the northeast corner of S. Water Street (now called Navarino) and what is now the foot of 4th Street. The map section was cut out of the 1873 Ahnaoee Birdseye Map. 

When the river was being dredged to permit the docks shown in this 1986 Harold Heidmann photo of Capt. K's Landing, pieces of the old schooner Spartan, which sunk about 1900, came to the surface. A section of a rib is shown in the H. Nell photo below.

Sources: Ahnapee Record, Algoma Press, Algoma Record, and Algoma Record Herald; Commercial History of the Youngs and Steele Plat, and Other Significant Properties in the City of Algoma, Wisconsin,