Wreck
On November 6, 1918, the Congdon departed from Thunder Bay, Ontario with 380,000 bushels of wheat aboard. Later that day, the Congdon ran aground in the fog at Canoe Rocks, near Isle Royale, which were subsequently renamed Congdon Shoal. The captain immediately dispatched a boat to nearby Passage Island to request assistance and sent a second boat back to Thunder Bay.
All crew members were rescued, and an attempt to salvage the cargo resulted in only about 20% being saved. A storm on November 8 broke the freighter in two, and it sank. Although another salvage operation was mounted later in 1918, nothing more was recovered from the wreck. The Congdon is significant in that her wreck was the first on Lake Superior to be valued at over a million dollars, and was the largest loss up to that time in both dollar value and net tonnage.
Read more about this topic: Chester A. Congdon (ship)
Famous quotes containing the word wreck:
“The old man had heard that there was a wreck and knew most of the particulars, but he said that he had not been up there since it happened. It was the wrecked weed that concerned him most ... and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the tide cast up, but which were of no use to him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A pseudo-event ... comes about because someone has planned it, planted, or incited it. Typically, it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“And such the trust that still were mine,
Though stormy winds swept o’er the brine,
Or though the tempest’s fiery breath
Roused me from sleep to wreck and death.
In ocean cave, still safe with Thee
The germ of immortality!
And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,
Rocked in the cradle of the deep.”
—Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870)