S.C. BALDWIN Shipwreck (barge)

About this property

SS S. C. Baldwin was a wooden-hulled steam barge built in 1871, that capsized in a storm on August 26, 1908, on Lake Michigan, off Two Rivers, Wisconsin, United States, with the loss of one life. On August 22, 2016 the remnants of S. C. Baldwin were listed in the National Register of Historic Places as reference number 16000565. S. C. Baldwin (Official number 23957) was built in 1871 by Campbell, Owen & Company of Detroit, Michigan for the Escanaba & Lake Michigan Transportation Company to carry iron ore from Escanaba, Michigan to the ports of Chicago, Illinois and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was named after an officer of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. She had a length of 160 feet (49 m), her beam was 30 feet (9.1 m) wide and her cargo hold was 11 feet (3.4 m) deep. She had a gross register tonnage of 418 tons. She was powered by a high pressure steam engine that was built by the Dry Dock Engine Works, and had a cylinder with a 26-inch (660 mm) bore and a stroke measuring 32 inches (810 mm), and "double crank". At the start of her career she had a single deck. In March of 1873 S. C. Baldwin had a second deck added in Chicago, Illinois, this increased her gross register tonnage to 634 tons, and is believed to have made her the first double decked steamer on the lakes. On April 30, 1876 she went ashore at North Point Reef on Lake Huron. On June 18, 1876 S. C. Baldwin collided with the schooner Ellen Spry off Kewaunee, Wisconsin. On April 28, 1877, S. C. Baldwin went ashore near Alpena, Michigan, and was repaired afterwards in Detroit, Michigan. In 1879 S. C. Baldwin was sold to the Inter Ocean Transportation Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In April 1882 she was sold to David Whitney Jr. of Detroit, Michigan, and her second deck was removed in order to refit her for the lumber trade. after the refit, S. C. Baldwin's gross register tonnage was reevaluated to 412.5 tons. In 1884 it was reported that she was damaged near Ashland, Wisconsin. Following engine failure, and a storm near Port Colborne, Ontario. she was rebuilt with steel arches, and her original engine was replaced with a 450-horsepower (340 kW) Steeple compound engine that had a cylinder with a 37-by-32-inch (940 mm × 810 mm) bore and a stroke measuring 21 inches (530 mm). In September 1886 S. C. Baldwin went aground in Lake George in the St. Marys River with the freighter R.J. Hackett; both of them were released by the tug Mystic. In 1891 she was sold to the Whitney Transportation Company of Hamtramck, Michigan. In 1892 S. C. Baldwin was sold to S.R. MacLaren of Toledo, Ohio. On November 5, 1894 S. C. Baldwin collided with the steamer Iron King off Marine City, Michigan, and sank in 35 feet (11 m) of water.

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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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