The schooner St. Peter is located, near the city of Port Washington. Its intact hull sits upright on the bottom of Lake Michigan. The deck, bulwarks, and railing remain intact. The bowsprit and head-rigging are extant, but the ship’s masts and rigging were thrown to the port side of the ship. The cabin roof blew off the vessel with the pressure of sinking but fragments remain within the wreckage.

St. Peter was built by Master Builder Peter Perry at New Baltimore in 1868. The vessel operated in the Great Lakes grain, lumber, and other bulk cargo trades throughout its career. St. Peter experienced groundings, collisions, and a prior sinking that required repairs; however, its ship lines remained the same. On 6 May 1874, St. Peter was bound from Chicago to Toledo and was overloaded with a cargo of wheat. The crew encountered stormy conditions about 35 miles northeast of Milwaukee and St. Peter began to leak with three feet of water in the hold, the crew abandoned the ship to the yawl. They rowed only a few minutes before the ship lurched forward and sank bow first. St. Peter was valued at $4,500, but the owner had insured only the cargo of wheat.

In 2023, the vessel sat upright and largely intact on the lake bottom with all its hull components extant. As an early wooden schooner in Wisconsin waters, St. Peter provides historians and archaeologists the rare chance to study wooden schooner construction and the grain, lumber, and other bulk cargo trades. State and federal laws protect this shipwreck. Divers may not remove artifacts or structure when visiting this site. Removing, defacing, displacing, or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime. More information on Wisconsin’s historic shipwrecks may be found by visiting Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks website.

Wisconsin Shipwrecks