From the Debris Field...
Lake Superior’s Antelope Found
In the late summer of 2016, Lake Superior’s most successful wreck hunters – Jerry Eliason, Ken Merryman, Kraig Smith, and Mike Stone (see Wreck Diving Magazine #31 for their discovery of the freighter, Henry B. Smith, deep in Lake Superior), found yet another deep shipwreck: the towed schooner, Antelope, lying in approximately 400 feet (120 metres) of water off Wisconsin’s Apostle Islands.
The 186-foot (56.4-metre) Antelope, originally built for the Buffalo-to-Chicago passenger and freight service in 1861 as a wooden, twin-decked, propeller-driven steamship at Newport (the town three years later renamed Marine City), Michigan, was a high-quality ship of great beauty and enormous pride. However, after being heavily damaged in a November 1881 storm, the vessel was converted (actually demoted) to a schooner-barge in 1882, and then, in 1888, promoted to a three-masted schooner. This progression of configuration changes was considered quite unusual, and polite newspapers termed hers “a somewhat varied career.”
On October 7, 1897, while being towed towards Duluth with a cargo of coal by the propeller, Hiram W.
