What's in Bayfield?

To the onlooker from the beaches of Bayfield out onto the Apostle Islands, the scenery is striking for the scattering of land out in the protected waters.  Sailboats in the summer outnumber powerboats. Ferries take their designated line back and forth to Madeline Island carrying enthusiastic tourists. On the backside of Madeline, one of the great camping parks in the state offering wild beaches and ocean like streams flowing inward.  To watercraft, though, navigating this part of Lake Superior would have been a challenging but always dangerous prospect.  Thousands of shipwrecks line the bottom of Lake

Finn McCool

Superior, entombed in freezing water and often found no more than twenty feet from the surface.  Kayaking over one of these great wooden shipwrecks leaves the paddler full of an eery awe -- the shipwreck, by definition, means something bad happened.  Many sunk by fire, many sunk on purpose,  many pulled toward the shallow bottom by storm, and others just worn out, run down, and dead in the water.  The Finn McCool can still be seen only some feet off the shore of Bayfield in 10-20 feet of water.  The Lucerne, likely named after the city in Switzerland, launched in 1873, which hauled grain

The Lucerne

and later coal, made her last run with her mizzen boom broken from outside of Chicago, although at the time considered one of the sturdiest vessels in the lakes.  "In the midst of the storm the Captain of the steam barge Fred Kelley enroute for this place to load iron ore, discerned the ill fated schooner rolling and pitching about on the lake, evidently at the mercy of the wind and waves. She was seen soon afterward to turn about and head for this harbor, but was never seen again as far as known. The Steamer S.B. Barker...while passing the South Channel at Chequamic Point discovered the spars of a vessel just above the water, which proved to be the missing Lucerne. In the rigging were found three crews who were covered with ice from one to six inches. They were cut loose and taken to Bayfield." Today the hull of the ship is largely intact, lying in only 24 feet of water, much of the bottom settled into the sand bottom, but the top of the sternpost is at 15 feet and top of the centerboard is at 12.5 deep.  One wonders if these great wooden shadows might be visible below the ice.