Lake Ontario Maritime History

The schooner John S. Parsons was the last commercial sailing vessel built on the Great Lakes at the Frank D. Phelps shipyard in Chaumont. It was named for the noted Oswego ship chandler. It was 92’7” inches long, 21’ 4” beam, 9’4”  hold and registered at 122 gross tons.It was later cut down to a steam barge in 1895 and was wrecked a half mile west of Oswego on Nov. 24, 1913 during a storm with a cargo of coal. In the 1890s it was a summer training ship for cadets from the Manlius Military Academy the Thousand Islands. [From:   "Sunlight Pictures of the Thousand Islands, Half Tones from Photographs by McIntyre," Artotype Publishing Company, New York, 1895]

  This 3-masted schooner was built by Hiram Copley at Chaumont in 1874 (US #80428). It was 126 feet long, 26’5” beam (width) and 13’ depth of hold and registered at 308 tons. The ship’s carpenter was Edward Bertrand  and was jointly owned by Copley and the Folger Brothers of Kingston. It went ashore at Ontario (Bear Creek) east of Rochester on March 29, 1890 with a cargo of 500 tons of ice from Kingston bound for Charlotte, consigned to E. M. Upton.  The tug Charley Ferris from Oswego with pumps was unable to free the schooner after two days of effort.  The Rochester Transportation Co. purchased the wreck and salvaged materials to refit the schooner John T. Mott which was sunk in 1884 at Point Pelee. The Watertown was valued at about $7,000 and was uninsured. The cargo was worth about $800.  (Source: Buffalo Courier, April 2, April 4 and April 7, 1890. [Collection of Randy Marshall, Syracuse, N.Y.]