Lake Ontario Maritime History

John S. Parsons   three-masted schooner (US# 76999) 115.26 g.t., 109.50 n.t., 92'7" x  21'4" x 9'4", 1892. Converted to steam barge, 1896; to tow barge by 1910. Owned by Frank Phelps. Foundered off Oswego, Nov. 24, 1913, and broke up.Believed to have been the last commercial schooner built on the Great Lakes.  General William Verbeck was a distinguished military officer and educator. He also served as Brigadier General of the New York Army National Guard from 1910 to 1913.    In the early 1890s, when the Manlius School was known as St. John’s Military Academy, many of its cadets lived so far away it was impractical for them to return home for their summer vacation, but remained at the school.  For the boys who passed the summer at the school, General William Verbeck, president of the school, was looking for ways to keep the cadets occupied. One day in 1892, as he strolled along the wharves on the waterfront, he notice a new three-masted schooner,  its...

Syracuse Herald August 11, 1929 Boat Bones Line Beneath River Water                 ____ Graveyard for Lake Craft  is Discovered Near Chaumont Bridge                ____ Hulls Yield Live Wood               ____ Old and Useless Hulks    Gradually Sink to        Muddy Bottom               ____    Syracusans on the way to Cape Vincent, St. Lawrence river port famous as a fishing ground for generations, where Harold McGrath, Syracuse fiction writer, annual take a big catch from the blue St. Lawrence, pass over a long bridge at Chaumont, 14 miles from Watertown and 11 miles from CapeVincent.    But few of them know that, between this bridge and the railroad bridge paralleling it 75 rods away is a graveyard for schooners and steam mergers that once sailed from one end of the Great Lakes to t...

    Cooper's Ark: A Failed Effort of the War of 1812                       By Richard F. Palmer         Wars always inspire people to come up with innovative ways that might possibly bring a quick end to the conflict. One such person during the War of 1812 was a dapper young man of pleasant manners by the name of William Cooper.  He was the brother  of none other than James Fenimore Cooper,  who had been a midshipman in the  U.S. Navy contingent sent to Oswego to build the brig Oneida in 1808. This was long before  James had gained literary fame as a novelist and historian.      William's plan was to build a floating battery that  could annihilate the British naval force then existing on Lake Ontario. He offered to build such a vessel at his own expense, providing the U.S. government furnished arms and ammunition. (1)     To understand where Co...

 The dock was operated by the Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh Railway. The force behind it was Arthur G. Yates, who was President of BR&P beginning in 1890 and who was a principal of Bell Lewis & Yates Coal Mining.  The coal was routed over the BR&P  to a point north of Dewey Avenue, where a connection enabled BR&P trains to proceed over the Central to Yates Dock.  Empty trains likewise returned south over the New York Central to the connection where they regained their own line.   The Yates Dock remained an important facility until 1909, when the BR&P constructed the new trestle roughly a half mile upriver, and which was accessed entirely over BR&P tracks and no longer requiring trackage over the New York Central.  The BR&P was later absorbed by the Baltimore & Ohio. The last boat to use that was in November 1970. (From “Scanner” of the Toronto Marine Historical Society, Vol. 9, No. 9, Summer, 1977) Built in 190...

                                                                                                                                           Sackets Harbor Battlefield Historic Site