The Remains of a Massive Lumber Schooner

The Remains of a Massive Lumber Schooner. . , The mass of timbers and heavy planks displayed here is thought to be the remains of the lumber schooner Lottie Cooper, lost off of Sheboygan during a raging easterly gale April 9, 1894. The three masted schooner carried a crew of six. One crewman and a portion of her cargo of 230,000 board feet of elm lumber were lost when she sunk., The Lottie Cooper and thousands like her were built in an era when only hand tools were available. Construction materials for a ship of this size would have included lumber from hundreds of hundred year old oak trees and several tons of metal fasteners. A skilled crew of shipbuilders could build a ship such as the Lottie Cooper in three to four months. Typical of nineteenth century Great Lakes schooners, she is testimony to the high degree of craftsmanship exhibited by the shipbuilders of her era. She represents an historic period when hundreds of vessels worked the dangerous waters of the Great Lakes., In July, 1990, prior to the construction of Sheboygan’s Harbor Centre Marina, an underwater archaeological survey of the harbor floor was conducted to assess any submerged cultural resources that might lie in the project arca. Several target areas were identified, and one of them, upon investigation by divers, turned out to be the site of the remains of a wrecked wooden ship., These remains are believed to be the Lottie Cooper, based on the size of the wreckage, the fact that the configuration of the hull is clearly that of a lumber schooner, and the location of the ship - the exact location of the loss of the Cooper., The wreckage was located in ten to fifteen feet of water, just off the present day boat ramp. It was removed from the harbor when the marina area was dredged, and was placed on display in the summer of 1993. The curved sides have been placed as nearly as possible in their original position to give the viewer an idea of the truly massive proportions of a ship of this type. The beam (width) of the ship is twenty-seven feet, which is indicated by the placement of the sides of the vessel. Approximately seven feet of the original floor is missing between the keel and the bottom of the sides., The parts on display are all that remains of the once beautiful lumber schooner. The rest of the vessel has been. broken up and destroyed by weather, ice, and time. A display of an artifact of this size is unusual because, although many Great Lakes shipwrecks have been discovered, very few have been recovered., During the 1880s over 2,000 ships of the schooner type sailed the Great Lakes, transporting cargo of all types. It is estimated that over ten thousand ships have been lost on the Great Lakes, some seven hundred of them on Lake Michigan. Of Sheboygan alone, sixty-one ships have been lost. Fourteen, including the Lottie Cooper, sank in or near the harbor.