SS Myron underway
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History | |
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United States | |
Name: | SS Myron |
Owner: | Captain Harris Baker, original owner |
Operator: | O.W. Blodgett Lumber Company |
Port of registry: | Grand Haven, Michigan |
Builder: | Mechanics Dry Dock Company |
Completed: | 1888 |
Identification: | Official No. 91993 |
Fate: | Foundered 1.5 mi (2.4 km) west of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior on 23 November 1919 while her tow, schooner Miztec, survived the gale. |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Steamer, propeller, barge |
Tonnage: | 493.7 Net Register Tonnage |
Length: | 186 ft (57 m) |
Beam: | 32.5 ft (9.9 m) |
Depth: | 13 ft (4.0 m) |
Installed power: | steam |
Propulsion: | Screw |
Crew: | 18 |
Notes: | 17 lives lost, the Captain was rescued |
The SS Myron was a wooden steamship built in 1888. She spent her 31-year career as lumber hooker, towing schooner barges on the Great Lakes. She sank in 1919 in a Lake Superior November gale. All of her 17 crew members were killed but her captain survived. He was found drifting on wreckage near Ile Parisienne. Her tow, the Miztec, survived. The Myron defied the adage that Lake Superior "seldom gives up her dead” when all 17 crewmembers were found frozen to death wearing their life jackets. Local residents chopped eight of the Myron sailors from the ice on the shore of Whitefish Bay and buried them at the Mission Hill Cemetery in Bay Mills Township, Michigan.
The Myron's steering wheel, steam whistle, and many other artifacts were illegally removed from her wreck site in the 1980s by members of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. Her artifacts are now the property of the State of Michigan and are on display as a loan to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The wreck of the Myron is protected as part of an underwater museum in the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve.
The 186-foot (57 m) wooden steamer Myron was built as a lumber hooker in 1888 in Grand Haven, Michigan. She was originally named Mark Hopkins for the son of Captain Harris Baker, the first of a series of owners. Her name was changed to Myron in 1902.