ATLANTA (steam screw) Shipwreck

About this property

SS Atlanta was a wooden-hulled Great Lakes steamer that sank in Lake Michigan off the coast of Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, United States, after a failed attempt of her being towed to shore ultimately killing five out of her seven crew members on board. Her wreckage still remains at the bottom of the lake, and on November 6, 2017, the wreck of the Atlanta was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Atlanta (Official number 106823) was built in 1891 in Cleveland, Ohio, by the Cleveland Dry Dock Company as a passenger and package freight vessel. She was built for the Goodrich Transportation Company of Kenosha, Wisconsin. The ship had an overall length of 220 feet (67 m) and was 200 feet (61 m) long between perpendiculars. The hull was 32.2 feet (9.8 m) wide and was 22.6 feet (6.9 m) deep. The ship had a gross tonnage of 1129.17 tons and a net tonnage of 958.06 tons. The Atlanta was equipped with a 900-horsepower fore and aft compound steam engine; the steam for the engine was provided by two Scotch marine boilers. The Atlanta was launched on April 25, 1891. The ship was used to transport passengers and package freight across Lake Michigan. The Atlanta regularly made trips to Chicago, Illinois; Muskegon, Michigan; and Grand Haven, Michigan. The ship ran these trips in the shipping season between March and December before it was laid up for the winter. In 1895 the Atlanta's two Scotch boilers were replaced with new ones. The new boilers were located further forward inside the hull, this brought the stern 20 inches (51 cm) out of the water. The ship also received a new and wider afterbody. The Atlanta was later put on Wisconsin's winter fleet, and it visited ports on Lake Michigan from Chicago to Green Bay and Marinette, Wisconsin. On March 18, 1906, the Atlanta was sailing from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with 65 passengers on board. Her cargo hold was filled with miscellaneous items such as metal ware, porcelain enamelware, wooden furniture, porcelain and leather. When she was about 14 miles (23 km) south of Sheboygan, her crew discovered a fire in her cargo hold. The Atlanta's crew tried to combat the fire but failed. Even the automatic fire apparatus that was tested six days before the fire failed to put it out. The fire eventually got so bad that the Atlanta was stopped, and her crew and passengers took to the lifeboats. The fish tug Tessler spotted the burning Atlanta and went to assist the people on board. The Atlanta's deckhand Michael Hickey jumped off his ship, aiming to jump onto the Tessler but misjudged the distance and plummeted to his death between the two vessels. The ship's cook was saved by a fisherman named Charles Klein. The cook was trapped in the pantry of the Atlanta, but luckily Klein heard the cook's screams and climbed up onto the burning vessel and pulled the cook through a porthole. Eventually all the people climbed aboard the Tessler; later all the passengers and crew were transferred to the steamer Georgian which took them back to Sheboygan. The Tessler took the Atlanta in tow, but eventually cut her loose and let her burn to the waterline. The value of the Atlanta and her cargo totaled a $200,000 loss.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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