November 11, 1883, Oren M. Chase – superintendent of the state fish hatchery – was in Petoskey looking after the new Petoskey Fish Hatchery.
That morning Chase and seven others took a sailboat out to gather a spawn of whitefish. Signs of inclement weather were starting to show around noon.
Three hours later, a strong wind began to blow from the south. They tried to come back to shore when the gale force winds shifted to the northwest. There were flurries of snow. They were two miles from a dock in Petoskey when the sailboat capsized.
Some folks nearby attempted a rescue effort aboard a pleasure yacht called the Coral, but the storm made it impossible to reach them.
Oren M. Chase was from Detroit, but the seven other men were Petoskey residents: the Detwiler family; George Charles and his nephew and George Armstrong the superintendent of the fish hatchery. Moses Detwiler’s body was eventually found but the other six were lost to the sea.
On that same day, three men were aboard the wooden schooner Lucy J. Clark, when it capsized near the shores of Cross Village on the way to Sturgeon Bay.
The schooner's remains were found in Little Traverse Bay. A video of the wreckage was captured by a diver 16-years ago.
The pleasure yacht, the Coral, was featured in a previous Maritime Time. It sank four years later in May, 1887, during a freak storm.
These stories were collected by Renee Tanner and archived newspaper clippings. All of them can be found in Tanner’s booklet “Lost at Sea.”
Contact Greenwood Cemetery in Petoskey if you would like a copy.
