Shipwreck a surprise addition to marine sanctuary

The number of shipwrecks in the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary recently increased by one — the St. Peter, a wooden schooner that sank in 1874 while en route from Chicago to Buffalo with a load of 8,000 bushels or more of wheat.

The wreck, which was discovered in 2022 and identified last year, was recently named to both the Wisconsin and National Register of Historic Places.

“We were thrilled,” Russ Green, superintendent of the sanctuary, said Tuesday. “It was kind of a surprise.”

Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historic Preservation Office, said, “It’s always cool to see something new and try to figure out the history that goes with it.”
The St. Peter was discovered about 15 miles east of Port Washington in 450 feet of water. The ship is upright on the lakebed and is mostly intact, although the bowsprit and head rigging were thrown to the side and rest on the lake bottom.

The wreck, said Green, is covered in quagga mussels.

“It’s pretty stunning to see invasive species cover this ship,” he said. “To me, what it drives home is the Great Lakes are fragile — that really struck me.”

Although the St. Peter isn’t as familiar a name as some of the other Lake Michigan wrecks, such as the Niagara or the Rouse Simmons, it’s just as important as they are, both Thomsen and Green said.

“It speaks to the frequency of ships that traveled along this maritime highway,” Thomsen said. “This was a very busy route. There were hundreds if not thousands of ships traveling this route. It was very, very common to just see sails along the horizon when you looked out onto the lake.”

The wreck, Green said, adds to the collection of stories to be told of the Great Lakes and their place in history.

“It’s another picture of Great Lakes trade,” he said, noting coal, salt and lumber as well as grain were often ferried on the lakes.

“It tells us about America’s past, the ships that did this work, and it helps round out the stories of our history.”

The St. Peter was found while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Coast Survey was conducting a bathymetry survey to redo nautical charts of Lake Michigan, Thomsen said.

The survey noted anomalies on the lakebed, then sent a report to the State Historical Society. Many of these anomalies are known shipwrecks or rocks on the lakebed, Thomsen said.

But when this particular anomaly didn’t line up with anything that was known, her office hired Crossmon Consulting to investigate the site using a remotely operated vehicle equipped with video and sonar.

“This very well could have been a pile of rocks,” Thomsen said. “We did not know it was a shipwreck.”

The ROV took video and measurements of the shipwreck, after which her office checked them against records of ships that were lost in the area, ultimately identifying it as the St. Peter.

“We think it’s the St. Peter,” she said. “There’s no name board on it, but it fits the last description of the boat.”

Everything but the reported length of the boat, she said. The official length of the St. Peter is 90 feet, but the wreck is 25 feet longer than that.

That, she added, isn’t unusual for a vessel of that time. Many ships were lengthened by 25 feet, Thomsen said — any longer and the vessel would be too buoyant and sit too high in the water.

“If it was anything but 25 feet, I would be wary,” she said.

“It’s a beautiful shipwreck,” Thomsen added. “It’s worthy of protection.”

The ship’s exact location is not being revealed so people don’t damage the wreck using their own ROVs and other devices, but Thomsen said it is located 15 miles out, about two miles from the wreck of the Senator.

The St. Peter was built in 1868 by master shipbuilder Peter Perry and named for Perry, who operated it for two seasons, and St. Peter of Apostle, the patron saint of shipbuilders.

Its final voyage began on May 5, 1874, when the ship headed out with a reported 8,000 bushels of wheat — although media reports of the time speculated the actual load was 10,000 bushels. The ship encountered a storm while 35 miles northeast of Milwaukee and began to leak. Although the crew spent hours trying to pump the water out, when the water reached three feet it was decided to abandon ship.

Minutes later, the schooner pitched forward and sank bow first. The crew continued rowing, arriving in Milwaukee the next morning.

The St. Peter brings the number of shipwrecks in the marine sanctuary and listed on the National Register to 31, Green said, adding there are about 40 shipwrecks in the sanctuary.

“We’re going to keep looking for them,” he said. “There are more to be found.”

He said that the sanctuary plans to visit the wreck this summer with an autonomous  underwater vehicle equipped with a camera, video equipment, sonar and a laser scanner to visit not only the St. Peter but other sites as well, including a number of depressions in the lakebed near the site.

“They’re large, and there are dozens of them,” he said. “They look like craters in the lake.”