Boatnerd Discussion Forum

I think it was traveling from Chicago to Buffalo. It was reported to have left Chicago April 13th, carrying a load of wheat. The loss of the vessel, cargo, and 10 men was valued at $17,000.

My best guess is that the "lower Lake Michigan" thing is a red herring.

That did seem strange. I find no reference to it being lost on "lower Lake Michigan," though. It was bound from Buffalo to Chicago and disappeared, and the assumption may have been it would have been in that area by the time of its lost. In April it would be very unusual for a wreck to travel north. Nevertheless this newspaper dispatch of over a year later indicates it may have hit a reef in northern Lake Michigan, which seems far more probable.

Definitely the one on the Leelanau peninsula. From the Sandusky Register, November 13, 1849:

Upper and lower, It's all relative. The article doesn't state the source of the story, so it could have been a U.P. newspaper report - the Sault, Escanaba, or Marquette. To Yoopers, everything below Beaver Island could be "lower Lake Michigan". Just as, to downstate newspapers, anything that happens above Detroit is "northern Michigan" whether it's the Thumb or the Keweenaw.

And, often, the reporter has absolutely NO idea where the mentioned site actually is - maybe they THOUGHT it was farther down the lake.

Then you could get into the Lake Michigan conundrum... heading to Chicago is "upbound", as it is away from the sea, so some cranks might consider everything flipped anyway.

In today's history page it said the schooner Tribune went missing on this date in lower Lake Michigan, and her masts were discovered by Indians upright in Nov. 1849 off Cathead Point, which is on the Leelanau Peninsula. This is hardly lower Lake Michigan. Is there another Cathead Point on Lake Michigan? Or perhaps there's a mystery here over how a schooner that went missing in lower Lake Michigan ended up on the bottom off the Leelanau Peninsula in Northern Lake Michigan...?