SS Monarch

Monarch (Official Number 96843) was a wooden passenger-cargo ship built in 1890 in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, by John Dyble[3] for the Northwest Transportation Company.[4][5] She was launched on June 27, 1890, the last ship built in Sarnia until World War II.[3] The ship was 259 feet (79 meters) long, 35 feet (11 meters) in beam, and 15 feet (4.6 meters) in depth.[4] She had a 900-hp (671-kW) triple-expansion steam engine with two Scotch boilers, allowing her to attain 14 mph.[4] The ship's hull was heavily reinforced with iron, and she was fitted with 65 cabins.[3][4]

Monarch was used to transport both passengers and packages on the Great Lakes throughout her career,[6] primarily running between Sarnia, Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Duluth, Minnesota.[3] In 1899, Northwest Transportation merged with another company to form the Northern Navigation Company, Ltd.[3]

On December 6, 1906, the Monarch finished loading a cargo of wheat, oats, salmon, and general merchandise and departed Thunder Bay for Sarnia in a blinding snowstorm.[3][4] For some reason, the ship headed off her planned course, and that night she ran at full speed into the palisade area on the north side of Blake Point on Isle Royale.[4][5] The ship's engineer kept the engine engaged to maintain the ship's position on the shore, and John D. McCallum, brother of first mate Burt McCallum, carried a line to shore through the rough seas.[4] The crew and passengers used the line to escape the wreck, and only one person perished.[4] The survivors camped on Isle Royale for four days, salvaging food from the wreck and keeping signal fires alight, before they were rescued on December 10, 1906.[3][4]

During the night of 11–12 December 1906, the wreck broke into two pieces, leaving only the bow section visible.[7] Salvage operations on Monarch were carried out over the next two years,[3] and the engine and associated machinery was salvaged in 1908.[3]

The wooden wreck has disintegrated, although a number of pieces of wreckage can be seen.[4] Large pieces of wooden wreckage are scattered on the bottom of Lake Superior at depths of 10 to 80 feet (3.0 to 24.4 meters),[5] and there is a trove of Monarch′s cargo still lying on the bottom near the wreck.[4] Approximately 85 dives were made on the wreck in 2009 out of 1,062 dives made to wrecks in the Isle Royale National Park.[8]

• Daniel J. Lenihan (1994), Shipwrecks of Isle Royale National Park: The Archeological Survey, Lake Superior Port Cities, ISBN 0-942235-18-5, archived from the original on 2010-11-25
• Daniel Lenihan; Toni Carrell; Thom Holden; C. Patrick Labadie; Larry Murphy; Ken Vrana (1987), Daniel Lenihan (ed.), Submerged Cultural Resources Study: Isle Royale National Park (PDF), Southwest Cultural Resources Center