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:
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—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Better to sink in boundless deeps, than float on vulgar shoals; and give me, ye gods, an utter wreck, if wreck I do.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
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In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)