Wisconsin Marine Historical Society
Your Source of Great Lakes Marine History
Alpena and streetcar

Alpena

Built in 1909, the Alpena was a self-unloader that carried freight on the Great Lakes. Owned by the Wyandotte Transportation Company of Michigan, she later was rechristened the Sidney E. Smith Jr. by the Erie Sand Steamship Company and scrapped in 1972.

Great Lakes Marine Collection-MPL/WMHS
Angeline-1937-wellsSt

Angeline

The Angeline was a 423-foot freighter built in 1899 in Detroit, Mich. She was sold as a floating grain storage facility in 1955 and scrapped in 1965. Here the vessel is making its way on the Milwaukee River under the Wells Street bridge.

Great Lakes Marine Collection-MPL/WMHS

Edmund Fitzgerald

The Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite iron ore from Duluth, Minn., to iron works near several Great Lakes ports. Launched on June 7, 1958, the 727-foot ship sank during a Lake Superior storm on Nov. 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29.

Great Lakes Marine Collection - MPL / WMHS
Chris Winters WILFRED SYKES CHARLES BEEGHLY JAN 2005

Last Load of Iron Ore

Chris Winters shares his photo of the steamers WILFRED SYKES and CHARLES M. BEEGHLY as they take a last load of iron ore from the Canadian National pellet terminal at Escanaba, Michigan, January 2005. The pusher tug OLIVE L. MOORE is laid up in the foreground.

The WILFRED SYKES was built in 1949 at Lorain, Ohio, by the American Ship Building Co. for the Inland Steel Co.  Her namesake was the President of Inland Steel.  She is currently owned by Central Marine Logistics.

The CHARLES M. BEEGHLY was built in 1959 by the American Ship Building Company at Toledo as the SHENANGO II and renamed the CHARLES M. BEEGHLY in 1967.  In 2010 she was renamed the HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR honoring the former congressman of Minnesota.  She is currently owned by the Interlake Steamship Co.

The tug OLIVE L. MOORE was built in 1928 at Manitowoc by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. as the JOHN F. CUSHING.  She was renamed JAMES E. SKELLY in 1965 and OLIVE L. MOORE in 1966.  She currently is owned by for Grand River Navigation.

 

Book club 2024 Feb Mar

A Navy mutiny plot, a historical novel with Wisconsin locales are book picks

February’s WMHS Book Club pick, The Curse of the Somers: The Secret History Behind the U.S. Navys Most Infamous Mutiny, draws from a rich historical record and the investigation of a ship’s sunken remains.

Author James Delgado focuses on the “greatest controversy” in the history of the U.S. Navy when the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a mutiny that would have turned the U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship.

Members of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society interested in joining the Book Club and receiving information on book discounts may contact the Society at
wmhs@wmhs.org. The club holds Zoom meetings on the third Wednesday of the month.

Rose’s Ring: Inheritors pf Silence and Secrets by Monica Dougherty is the March election. The historical novel tells the story of a TV reporter who finds her story in the plight of Native Oneida people in Wisconsin, Joshua Glover, a runaway slave in Milwaukee, and the sinking in Lake Michigan of The Lady Elgin.

 

 

 

 

Heinz Forest Home Wolf

THE MARITIME HEROES OF FOREST HOME CEMETERY

In this story, Jim Heinz takes you on a tour of Milwaukee’s well-known Forest Home Cemetery where many famous people now reside.

He touches on the lives of Edward Gifford Crosby who died on the TITANIC, Milwaukee shipbuilders Wolf and Davidson, Captain Frederick Pabst, Ben Froemming who built frigates, tug boats and cargo vessels for World War II, Edmund Fitzgerald whose vessel named after him ranks up at the top of recognition with the TITANIC, well known early local diver and inventor Max Nohl, Nels Peterson of the Life Saving Service involved in an 1873 local rescue, legendary North Point lighthouse keeper Georgia Green Stebbins and Jacob Wellauer who is a mystery.  To join the tour, click here.

 

 

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