SS Superior City
The SS Superior City was considered a pioneer vessel at her launching in 1898. She was the largest vessel ever built on freshwater at that time. She sailed the Great Lakes for twenty-two years until she sank after a collision in 1920 with the steamer Willis L. King in Whitefish Bay of Lake Superior that resulted in the loss of 29 lives. Controversy was immediate over the collision. It was subsequently ruled that the captains of both ships failed to follow the “rules-of-the-road”. Controversy started again in 1988 over photographing and videos of the skeletons of the Superior City crew and continued as late as 1996 over artifacts removed from her wreck. She is now a protected shipwreck in the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve.
Read more about SS Superior City: History, Collision, Casualties and Survivors, Investigation, Rulings, Wreck Controversy, Wreck Diving
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
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—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)