Manitowoc Applies for Port Improvement Grant for Briess Malt and Ingredients

Scrapping of Cuyahoga Begins at Port Colborne

An image on social media Saturday showed scrapping is now underway on the Cuyahoga at Marine Recycling Corp., Port Colborne, ON. The 1942-built vessel arrived at the scrapyard under tow July 29. Fire damaged the Cuayhoga on March 15, 2024, while in win­ter layup at Ashtabula. See image in the gallery below.

Door County shipwreck lost for 138 years found in Lake Michigan near Rowleys Bay

Christopher Clough, Green Bay Press-Gazette
Maia Pandey contributed to this report.
Fri, August 22, 2025

Another long-lost shipwreck in the waters off Door County has been found, this one the wreck of a ship that sank 138 years ago off the town of Liberty Grove.
   The newly found wreck is of the Frank D. Barker, a two-masted wooden cargo schooner, which sank in 1887 after running onto a limestone outcropping in Lake Michigan near the entrance to Rowleys Bay in foggy conditions.
   The wreck was found by a Door County rafter and shipwreck hunter.
   In mid-July, Matt Olson, owner of Door County Adventure Rafting, said he was clicking through satellite images online when he noticed a dark shape in the water near Rowleys Bay.
   A week later, he was in the area scouting for new rafting spots and confirmed the shape was, in fact, a long-lost wreck.
   In follow-up diving missions, the Wisconsin Historical Society’s maritime archaeologists identified the ship as the Frank D. Barker.
   “I was surprised by how big it was,” Olson said. “A lot of it still there today, which is pretty cool because a lot of these wrecks get destroyed by the wind and ice as time goes on.”
   Olson said the Barker is the fourth wreck he’s found or helped identify, with the Grey Eagle and Sunshine among his other discoveries.
   After finding and reporting the Frank D. Barker, he also went back diving for a closer look at the wreck.
   “I took out my 6-year-old son to snorkel on it, too,” Olson added, “so he was one of the first people see this ship in over 100 years.”

Why was the Frank D. Barker missing for 138 years?
   Olson told the Advocate the wreck probably lay undiscovered for 138 years because it’s not that close to where the ship sank. News accounts of the time said the ship wrecked on a reef off Spider Island, but the Barker now lies flattened under about 24 feet of water between two arms of Barker Shoal, thought to be named after vessel, where it apparently washed to after sinking, and Olson added that few if any people go near that shoal.
   Plus, Olson said once it was clear the ship couldn’t be salvaged after the wreck and the pieces and parts that could be salvaged or removed were, it didn’t matter to the maritime industry of the day what happened to the carcass.
   “Salvage crews tended to remove what they could. After that, it sank or was broken apart (by weather and waves),” Olson said. “After that, it was just junk in the water to them, so they didn’t mark it, and it was just forgotten.”

Hauling grain out east, coal back west
   The Frank D. Barker was built in 1867 by Simon G. Johnson in Clayton, New York. According to a news release from the Wisconsin Historical Society, it was specially designed to transport grain from ports in Milwaukee and Chicago to Lake Ontario, then bring coal from ports on Lake Erie that would be used to fuel factories and heat homes of the Midwest on its return trip.
   It was a unique vessel type to the Great Lakes, the news release said. Its canaller type of hull was designed in shape and size to maximize cargo while still fitting the locks of the Welland Canal, a route bypassing Niagara Falls. The hull was boxy with a broad and upright bow, and any overhanging features such as its jibboom, davits and anchor-supporting catheads were designed to pivot upward to allow the vessel to fit through narrow and shallow locks.

The wreck of the Frank D. Barker
   The Barker was bound for Escanaba, Michigan, on Oct. 1, 1887, to collect a load of iron ore, according to the news release and the Wisconsin Shipwrecks website. Bad weather caused the 137-foot-long schooner to run off course. The ship’s captain and crew tried to correct course but instead struck the limestone reef off Spider Island and became stranded.
   The tugboat Spalding was dispatched the following day to recover the ship but was unsuccessful because “the wind and waves had got in their work in the meantime and nothing could be done to save the stranded craft,” the Door County Advocate of Oct. 8, 1887, reported, according to Wisconsin Shipwrecks.
   Salvage missions again were attempted later in October of 1887 and again in June, August, September and October of 1888 but all failed and the vessel was abandoned as a total loss with a value at the time of about $8,000, or more than $250,000 in today’s dollars, the historical society news release said. The Wisconsin Shipwrecks site says what was left of the Barker eventually was blown from the reef and sunk.
   Upon finding the wreck, Olson reported it to the State Historic Preservation Office. Maritime archaeologists with the Wisconsin Historical Society conducted follow-up diving missions that confirmed the wreck as the Barker.

   “The Barker, they knew instantly what it was based on the size and location,” Olson said. “When I gave (historical society maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen) the coordinates, she said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the Barker.'”
   The maritime archaeology team from the historical society now is working to allocate funds for an archaeological survey in 2026 to further document and record the Barker’s wreck site, which would allow it to be eligible for future listing with the National Register of Historic Places. Information about it also will be added to Wisconsin Shipwrecks, an interactive website documenting Wisconsin’s shipwrecks and co-managed by the Wisconsin Historical Society Maritime Preservation Program and the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute.
   State and federal laws protect the wreck of the Frank D. Barker. Divers may not remove artifacts or structure when visiting the site. Removing, defacing, displacing or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime.

Other shipwrecks located in recent years
   The Barker is the latest in a series of shipwrecks from more than 100 years ago in Door County and Kewaunee County waters that were considered lost but recently found, or whose identity was unknown or incorrect until recently. These include the cargo schooners Trinidad (sank in 1881) and the Margaret A. Muir (1893), each found at the bottom of Lake Michigan off the shore in Algoma in 2023 and 2024, respectively, by Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association maritime historians Brendon Baillod, Kevin Cullen and Robert Jaeck.
   Also, the remains of the cargo schooner Grey Eagle were discovered earlier in 2025 in Lake Michigan a little north of Cave Point County Park.
   And, long-known but unidentified debris from a wreck in North Bay was positively identified in 2023 as the wreck of the lumber schooner Sunshine, which sank in 1869, and wreckage in the waters off Baileys Harbor that previously were identified as the Christina Nilsson were re-identified earlier in 2025 as the Joseph Cochrane, which sank in 1870, with the Nilsson’s remains close by.
   For more information on the Wisconsin Historical Society, Visit:  https://wisconsinhistory.org/   For more on the Barker and other Wisconsin shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, visit:  https://www.wisconsinshipwrecks.org/Home#anchor3