Sheboygan County shipwreck listed in National Register of Historic Places

Brandon Reid, Sheboygan Press
·1 min read
The wreck of the Advance, an early wooden schooner built in Milwaukee in 1853 that capsized on Lake Michigan near Sheboygan in September 1885, claiming six lives and leaving one survivor.
The wreck of the Advance, an early wooden schooner built in Milwaukee in 1853 that capsized on Lake Michigan near Sheboygan in September 1885, claiming six lives and leaving one survivor.

TOWN OF HOLLAND – The wreck of an early wooden schooner that capsized on Lake Michigan 9-1/2 miles southeast of Sheboygan in September 1885 has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Advance was built in 1853 in Milwaukee and operated in the Great Lakes lumber and grain trades throughout its career. On Sept. 8, 1885, the vessel began to leak during a gale while carrying a cargo of bark wood and capsized while 9-1/2 miles southeast of Sheboygan near town of Holland. The captain, four crew members and two passengers made it to the vessel’s yawl. All but one drowned within 200 feet of shore when the small boat overturned in the crashing surf.

Today, the vessel sits upright and broken on the bottom of Lake Michigan with most of its hull components extant and artifacts within the hull.

Shipwreck discovery: Remains of the Phoenix, one of Lake Michigan’s deadliest shipwrecks, discovered 175 years after sinking off Sheboygan's shore

Wisconsin Historical Society said the Advance was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 5. As an early wooden schooner, Advance provides historians and archaeologists the chance to study early schooner construction as well as the Great Lakes lumber and grain trades, the Historical Society said.

The Advance is the 63rd Sheboygan County site to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to a Wikipedia listing.

More about the Advance is at https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/NationalRegister/NR2765 while more about Wisconsin’s historic shipwrecks can be found at wisconsinshipwrecks.org.

The Lottie Cooper: Wreckage of this ship, on display on Sheboygan’s lakefront, was pulled from Lake Michigan’s icy waters in the 1990s. | Throwback Thursday

Contact Brandon Reid at 920-686-2984 or breid@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @breidHTRNews.

This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Sheboygan Lake Michigan shipwreck on National Register Historic Places