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Thomas Friant Shipwreck

Dec. 16, 2019

Bayfield County, Wisconsin — The Wisconsin Historical Society has announced the listing of the Thomas Friant Shipwreck (Gill Net Tug) in the vicinity of Bayfield  County, in the National Register of Historic Places. National Register designation provides access to certain benefits, including qualification for grants and for rehabilitation income tax credits, while it does not restrict private property owners in the use of their property.

The Thomas Friant represents multiple eras of ship construction and use on the Great Lakes. Originally constructed as a passenger steamer in 1883, it was later converted to a gill net fish tug in 1910. The shipwreck site remains remarkably intact. The Thomas Friant was launched at the Robertson & Co. Shipyard in Grand Haven, Michigan. Built for Captain Rueben Vander Hoef, the vessel primarily operated in passenger and freight service on Michigan inland waterways during its early career. In 1897, the Thomas Friant began to traverse Lake Michigan and Lake Superior as an excursion vessel, taking passengers and freight between ports. In December of 1908, the vessel caught fire while at the dock and burned to the waterline. By 1910, the vessel’s upper decks were rebuilt, and the Thomas Friant was relaunched as a gill net fish tug. As a fish tug, the Thomas Friant operated on Lake Superior until January of 1924, when the vessel became trapped in an ice floe. Eventually, the ice punctured a hole in the vessel’s hull and it began to sink. All men aboard escaped in the vessel’s small boat and were rescued. Although the sinking occurred relatively far from shore, no lives were lost. With its high level of integrity, the Thomas Friant site has already produced archaeological knowledge about converted passenger steamers and fish tug construction. Because of the equipment found on the vessel, the study of this equipment has the potential to yield knowledge about the local fishing industry along Lake Superior’s southern shore.

State and federal laws protect this shipwreck. Divers may not remove artifacts or structure when visiting this site. Removing, defacing, displacing or destroying the artifacts or sites is a crime. More information on Wisconsin’s historic shipwrecks may be found by visiting Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks website, wisconsinshipwrecks.org.

 The register is the official national list of historic properties in America deemed worthy of preservation and is maintained by the National Park Service in the U.S. Department of the Interior. The Wisconsin Historical Society administers the program within Wisconsin. It includes sites, buildings, structures, objects and districts that are significant in national, state or local history, architecture, archaeology, engineering or culture.

To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit wisconsinhistory.org.

About the Wisconsin Historical Society
The Wisconsin Historical Society, founded in 1846, ranks as one of the largest, most active and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, its mission is to help people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. The Wisconsin Historical Society serves millions of people every year through a wide range of sites, programs and services. For more information, visit wisconsinhistory.org.