Boats
Uncounted thousands of vessels have made their entrance into Round Lake. The early lifelines between the ports of the Great Lakes, magnificent schooners arrived daily. Here an audacious captain shows off his skills by bringing his ship full sail into the channel when the lighthouse was on the north pier.
The schooner Porter dries her sails at the Clinton Street dock. At right, the billboard for Wizard Oil proclaims a popular cure-all of the era. The Charlevoix Sentinel of July 13, 1892 reported: “The famous Wizard Oil people are occupying the Lewis Grand Opera House every evening this week with a free entertainment embracing stereopticon views, songs, athletics, etc. While the entertainment is good and costs nothing, Wizard Oil is the ‘burden of their song.’
Schooners line up at the Antrim Street dock. From left: Fearless, Black Hawk, Linerla, Peoria, and the Chippewa.
Schooners often came into Round Lake not on business but to seek refuge from the sudden squalls that could roar out of nowhere on the big lake. They raced for shelter, tied up wherever they could find space, often next to a sister ship, and spent a day or two drying their sails before they ventured forth to continue their journeys. This was a common sight on Round Lake for decades.
Some schooners even wintered here. The Sea Gem, whose home port was Charlevoix, rests next to the channel revetment beside the grist mill. She was built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin in 1863, and was often used for the transportation of grain to, and processed flour from, the mill. Above her bow appears the Fountain City House hotel. The Sea Gem was wrecked in a 1902 storm.
Mackinac boats were the lifelines within the Great Lakes ports and a little way beyond them. When many were out under full sail, they looked like a flock of moths flittering over the water. Local boat builder Roy Ranger, could produce one in three to four weeks for $350-$400. With the advent of the gasoline motor, however, the Mackinac became outmoded and he stopped building around 1910. The Shoodle shown here was commissioned from Ranger by J. P. Wilson of the Chicago Club resort and is still in use today as a club workboat, without its rigging.
The City of Boyne ferried passengers and freight mainly between Charlevoix and Boyne City with stops along Lake Charlevoix. She was badly damaged by fire in September of 1912.
The Hum was a popular little passenger steamer that ran three to four times a day between Charlevoix and East Jordan. George Jepson of East Jordan converted the yacht Pilgrim to the Hum in 1905, naming her for Florence “Hum” Smith, daughter of Charlevoix Sentinel publisher/editor Willard Smith. The two families were longtime friends. Little Florence had acquired the nickname as she played with her dolls, humming to them, and the sound made by his boat reminded Jepson of the child.
The Thomas Friant, which ran between Harbor Springs, Petoskey, Charlevoix, and East Jordan, was one of the busiest boats of the area. Barely visible above her bow awning, just under the topmost trestle railing, appear the remains of the once great Fox & Rose dock, now much broken apart and disintegrating.
On the night of June 16, 1887 the passenger steamer Champlain burned and ran aground off Fisherman’s Island with a known loss of twenty-two lives. Thought to be the result of a fallen lantern in a cabin, the fire broke out shortly before midnight. The wooden boat went up in a flash. Her captain raced for land so fast there was no way to lower the lifeboats. Passengers and crew went overboard, clinging to each other and anything they could find. The smoldering hull was towed to the south pier the next day. It was the worst maritime disaster in Charlevoix’s history. The vessel was rebuilt as the City of Charlevoix.
The Missouri, launched in 1904, rests at Wilbur’s Dock beside the channel. In the foreground is Beauvais’ canoe livery, all the boats numbered except for Thelma. In the distance sits the Pine Lake, the Charlevoix Lumber Company’s lumber hooker beside mountains of wood on the company dock. This was the vessel that laid the first telephone cable to Beaver Island on September 14, 1905.
When the Missouri and her sister ship the Illinois, launched in 1899, were in port together, there was no room to accommodate both of them at Wilbur’s Dock. One had to tie up against the other. Its passengers walked through the innermost vessel to disembark. This view is from the Clinton Street dock. Both vessels cruised the lakes for just over forty years.
The “Greyhound of the Great Lakes,” the mighty Manitou was an opulent gliding luxury hotel that carried nearly 400 passengers. The Manitou made the Chicago-direct-to-Charlevoix-Harbor Springs-Mackinac Island and back route three times a week, calling at Charlevoix three times on the way up and three on the way down. The first leg up took twenty hours non-stop, a record at the time. On her first visit to Charlevoix on June 21, 1896, three years after she was launched, the whole town turned out to welcome her into Round Lake.
The North American, launched in 1913, was one of the most frequent visitors to Charlevoix. She and her sister ship the South American, launched a year later, each had a crew of 155 and could carry up to 450 passengers. Charlevoix became a regular port of call, their entries into Round Lake special events. People lined the harbor to watch her circle the lake to the city dock where eager local kids waited to scramble for coins tossed overboard by the passengers. This view was taken from the water tower that stood above Park Avenue.
The South American leaves the channel. How can one tell the North American from the South American? The North displayed a long row of rectangular portholes. The South’s were circular. The North retired in 1964. The South’s last appearance in Charlevoix was in 1967. Taken off the lakes because of her flammable wooden superstructure, she rotted away at a shipyard in Camden, New Jersey. At the same time, the North American was being towed to Maryland to be used as a training ship when, on September 4, 1967, she sank in 400 feet of Atlantic waters off Nantucket.
On June 24, 1943 the 346-foot Milwaukee Clipper made her only entrance into Round Lake. Charlevoix had tried many times for her to make an appearance, but the owners and captain were leery of the lengthy vessel’s chances with the channel bend. Finally they were convinced they could do it. But there was limited space to tie up. In order to position the gangway, the bow had to almost touch the old pilings of the Charlevoix Lumber Company. This blocked the channel for several hours. Once was enough for all parties. The Clipper steamed out and never returned.
The lumber hooker Three Brothers, at 162 feet the pride of the fleet of the White Brothers of Boyne City, on July 10, 1911, loaded with 935,000 feet of hardwood and hemlock. She passed through Charlevoix many times on her way to her route between Buffalo and Chicago. Two months after this photo was taken, the 23-year-old boat hit a gale south of Charlevoix and her hull planking began to separate. She headed for South Manitou Island where she hit the beach so hard she split in two. Her load of lumber littered the island’s beaches. Lake Michigan ripped her remains to pieces.
U. S. Government tug General Williams passes through the upper channel past the Charlevoix Resort Association, later the Belvedere Club, around 1890.
Charlevoix has been the principal port of embarkation for Beaver Island for generations. The Beaver Island Boat Dock and the city dock at the channel neck are one and the same. Many vessels have served the route, including Emerald Isle I, Mary Margaret, North Shore, Beaver, Bainbridge, Rambler, Oval Agitator, Bruce, Columbia, Erie L. Hackley, James E. Sanford, Ossian Bedell, Marold II and others.
Their destination was the port of St. James thirty-two miles away. This was the principal settlement of Mormon King James Strang, and named after him. It was on a harbor dock, on a day in June, 1856 that Strang was shot by two disaffected followers. He died on July 9 at his parents’ home in Wisconsin. Had Strang not been killed, increasingly strengthening Mormon influence might well have radiated from this spot to convert all of northern Michigan and far beyond into a Mormon territory comparable to Brigham Young’s achievement in Utah.
In late July, 1908 and again in early August, the Straits of Mackinac railcar ferry Manistique brought boatloads of excursionists to the Mason Street dock, accompanied by a brass band on the top deck. She was the largest ship to negotiate the channel bend after the Manitou.
Charlevoix has been a magnet for some of the most palatial yachts that ever plied the inland seas. The Venetia rests against the channel revetment by the Coast Guard station and fish hatchery.
Queen of them all, Logan Thompson’s 191-foot Sylvia enters the upper channel for her farewell trip down Lake Charlevoix on May 3, 1942 prior to service in World War II. Many considered the Sylvia to be the most beautiful craft ever to grace the waters of Charlevoix. When she glided across Round Lake to and from her berth near the Belvedere Club, traffic on Bridge Street often came to a halt. After the war, the Sylvia was purchased from the government for relief work in Greece and became a freighter in the Aegean. Charlevoix never saw her again.
In the middle background, the Sylvia rests at her berth near the Belvedere Club. To her right is the Reomar IV. This had been the Sylvia IV until Logan Thompson sold the 135-foot yacht to auto magnate Ransom E. Olds once he bought the larger unnumbered Sylvia. Olds named his boats after the initials of his name and the first three letters of his wife’s name. Like most of her kind, she was confiscated by the government for war duty in 1942. Thompson had built the long boathouse for the Sylvia IV. The building is now the Harbour Club Condominiums.
Roy Brady, renowned racing boat builder shown here with his wife, built this boat in Charlevoix. On August 7, 1927 he entered Miss Charlevoix in a five-mile event on Lake Charlevoix. The first 2.5 miles were covered in just under 2 minutes, 20 seconds for an average 64.5 miles per hour, a world record. On September 2, Brady went from a standing start to the mile mark in 68 seconds, a state record. The Charlevoix Courier said, “ . . . very few boats in the entire world . . . can show her a clean pair of heels.”
Manitou, the North Manitou Shoal Light Vessel #56 that protected boats on the Lake Michigan shipping lane off North Manitou Island near the Leelanau Peninsula south of Charlevoix, often wintered here until the island’s offshore lighthouse was constructed in 1935 and a lightship was no longer needed.
In the late 1950s a rural electric plant was constructed near Boyne City at the end of Lake Charlevoix. It required thousands of tons of coal. Lake freighters began to pass through Charlevoix on a regular basis eight to thirteen times a year. Traffic on Bridge Street could freeze for half an hour or more. On busy summer days the lines of cars might stretch half a mile or more on both sides of town. The Hennepin was named after the French priest who accompanied LaSalle on his explorations of New France in the late 1600s. Father Charlevoix gave him prominent mention in his journals
The narrow entrance to the channel from Lake Michigan has sometimes been a tricky target for vessels that aimed at the slot and missed, ending up stranded on the beach. Roaring seas, strong and changeable winds, pilot error, alcohol, and vanity have all been factors. Here the schooner Jenny Mullen lists to starboard on the Lake Michigan Beach. She was not considered seaworthy after she was righted and moved off the sand, and was towed to the ships’ graveyard at Lake Charlevoix’s Oyster Bay about three miles east of town where she was scuttled and sunk.
The passenger liner Illinois ran aground on a stormy August 26, 1906 with about 500 passengers and crew. She sped for the piers just as a schooner was heading in also. The captain of the Illinois saw he was on a collision course, swerved, and overshot the piers to crunch onto the sand. The Life-Saving Service rigged a breeches buoy from the south pier and managed to take off about 135. But this was not fast enough, so rescue boats were launched. In terrible conditions, the Life-Savers took off the other 365 throughout the night, with no injuries or loss of life
The freighter Welcome was stranded on the South Point rocks southwest of the piers around 1904-05. A few years of battering began to take her apart. One particularly severe winter saw her lifted and listing to port as if on a frozen wave.