A Few Downriver Swashbucklers and Steamers
by Kathy Warnes
The old passenger steamer Dove plied up and down the Detroit River during the 1860s, including the Civil War years, providing a stable sight in years of constant change. Detroiters and Downriver citizens loved the old passenger steamer which was built in Trenton in 1863 and for about eleven years it ran between Detroit and Amherstburg with stops in Ecorse, Wyandotte and Grosse Isle. Her first master was Captain Johan A. Sloan and later Captain Duncan Nicholson who became superintendent of the Detroit, Belle Isle & Windsor Ferry Company sailed her.
Later after being sold to parties in Bay City, the Dove ran between Bay City and Alpena for many years, and then her owners sold her back to Detroit people. Again, she piled the Detroit River between Detroit and Toledo until she burned at her dock in Toledo on November 24, 1897.
After the Civil War, Ecorse and most of Downriver remained a farming, shipping and resort area with muskrat hunters poling the marshes in wooden boats and watching the parade of ships in the River. This parade included the Island Queen of Johnson’s Island fame. An advertisement in the Detroit Evening News of August 23, 1873 advised the public that the Island Queen, D. Nicholson, Master, leaves daily from Ward’s Dock at the foot of Wayne Street at 3 o’clock p.m. for Wyandotte, Ecorse, Grosse Isle, Trenton and Gibraltar.
In the summer of 1868 the propeller B.F. Wade raced successfully up and down the Detroit River and elsewhere, much to the delight of the shore side gamblers. In July, some of the citizens of Detroit presented the officers and the crew of the propeller B.F. Wade with a flag manufactured by Messrs. Hoffner & Mayes of Detroit. The flag had a white background on which were placed a circle of red and blue stars. In the center in large red letters were the words, “Put Up Or Shut Up!”
It seems that piracy was a problem on the Detroit and other rivers including the Rouge, Ecorse, and St. Clair decades before the Prohibition Days of the 1920s and 1930s. It isn’t difficult to imagine competing French and British traders hijacking of canoes loaded with furs and supplies for the Indians during the 17th and 18th centuries and there are well documented instances of British, American, and Canadian acts of piracy later in history.
By the mid-nineteenth century the pirates seemed to have evolved from patriots or partisans to mere ruffians. The Detroit Post and Tribune in 1877 reported that a gang of pirates had been plundering the entire length of the Detroit and St. Clair rivers for a time. River watchers had seen a new black sloop scow about 40 feet long by 12 feet wide, with a covered cabin about 16 feet long and five feet high lying along the shores at different times.
On the night of October 3, 1877, the scow’s crew carried away 100 bushes of barley from Henry Rankin and about November 4th stolen 150 bushels of barley from another Henry, Henry Caswell. Between October 3 and November 4th, the crew of the black scow had stolen 60 bushels of oats from Harsen’s Island on Lake St. Clair. The boat, which carried no name, reportedly had a good supply of bags for storing and selling the contraband. Six of the bags were marked “R” in black paint, two with a blue cross, and one with”W.I.L.”
Eventually the Downriver authorities monitored the ship and one night they raided her and captured the ship and one seaman. The Post noted rather snippily “had there been less haste, the balance of the gang, together with their boats might have been captured.” The authorities secured the captured pirate in jail, but when an officer delivered a warm breakfast to him he discovered the jail doors and the pirate missing.
Eight years later the pirate problem had still not abated. On August 2, 1885, an officer at Wyandotte tied up the scow schooner Trader, hailing from Alpena, on a charge of piracy. Downriver authorities began to suspect the Trader’s crew of appropriating the loose property of vessels lying in harbor at Detroit and neighboring ports. A few nights before a topsail disappeared from a yacht at Amherstburg and the next morning the owner spotted his sail on the Trader, being used as an awning. He immediately filed a complaint, and authorities arrested Captain Williams of the Trader, brought him to Detroit and lodged him in jail.
A search of the Trader uncovered a treasure trove of pirate plunder from ships, a number of fishing nets, and several cans of paint identified as belonging to the steam yacht Sigma. Officials also found a complete camping outfit stolen from a party of anglers camped at the mouth of the River Rouge.
Evidently the Trader wasn’t the only ship engaged in the pirate trade, because just five weeks later on September 15, the Detroit Post reported that river pirates continued to victimize the craft lying along the docks. The schooner M.P. Barkalow, the latest victim, had been tied to the wharf at the foot of Eighteen Street three days ago when someone emptied her supply box of its contents, valued at $18.
The piracy problem continued into the 1890s and with the case of the Emma, assumed international proportions. Charles Gilman was sailing his bumboat in the St. Clair River near Stag Island in Canadian waters when he spotted the trading schooner Emma and hailed her. Once engaged in the opium smuggling business, the Emma was also cruising near Stag Island with a crew of six men and an equal number of women aboard. The crew composed of William Johnson, William Murphy, William Cooper, Thomas Willis, Patrick McLaughlin and Grant Gray entered into negotiations with Charles Gilman for several dozen eggs. Gilman charged that while part of the crew negotiated the egg deal, the others busied themselves stealing his towline, and pocket book containing $23.00 which the crew purportedly divided equally between them.
Authorities arrested the Emma’s crew and took them to jail in Port Huron where they were all charged with piracy. Assistant United States Attorney Wilkins received a letter from Deputy United States Marshal Petit at Port Huron informing him that the men were to be tried under the state law on the charge of robbery. Wilkins said that under the interpretation of the law that the Supreme Court decided in the famous Alaska case, the lakes were declared to be high seas and he could charge the Emma and her crew with piracy. The penalty under the United States statutes for piracy was hanging. The Canadian authorities applied for the extradition of the crew of the Emma, but extradition was refused, although the offense was committed in Canadian waters. The Emma sank in a storm on Lake Huron in 1896.
Sea serpents also lurked in the Great Lakes and in the Detroit River. The Detroit Democratic Free Press started its May 1835, sea serpent story by asking “who has not heard of the enormous serpent or snake of Lake Superior?” Different writers and travelers had mentioned the Lake Superior sea serpent, and then the story posed another question, “why would the sea serpent leave Lake Superior?”
Whatever the sea serpent’s reasoning, it did leave Lake Superior that fateful May. On May 12, 1835 between the hours of 5 and 6 p.m., a serpent without a mane or phrenological bumps or bunches, slim in body and apparently not less than 75 feet long and five feet circumference and about 20 inches in diameter, floated down the Detroit River. As it passed the city of Detroit it held up its head five to eight feet and moved its head back and forth presumably giving equal time to surveying the American and Canadian scenery.
Sometimes the sea serpent seemed to let the current carry it and other times coiled as if prepared to spring on its prey. Other times it stretched forward full length, displaying its back of a dark brown color, its deep green sides and its dingy white belly. It did not have any fins, but did have small green, glistening eyes, circled with red. Finally, after it passed Detroit and was headed Downriver toward Ecorse when it disappeared into the depths of the majestic Detroit River.
Captain Goldsmith first sighted a sea serpent near Fighting Island in June 1860 when master of the schooner Nevermore. His description on the Fighting Island Sea Serpent closely matched the one that he reportedly saw twenty three years later on Wednesday November 22, 1883, off Long Point. Now the master of the Wabash steamer Morley, Captain Goldsmith reported that while his ship lay under Long Point during some heavy weather, he spied something about 1,000 feet from the Morley.
Examining the object with a strong glass, he discovered that it was not a piece of a wreck as he had first thought, but had a body of a terra cotta color with enough life in it to move up the lake at five miles per hour. The captain said that the creature kept its head, about the size of a barrel, well out of the water. About where the head joined the body were two arms or wings, which measured about five feet across. The tails – it appeared to have two tails-churned the water vigorously. As a precaution, Captain Goldsmith had Steward Brown examine the creature with a glass and he corroborated the Captain’s statement.
Click here to read about Light Keeper Gus Gramer and Ecorse
The old passenger steamer Dove plied up and down the Detroit River during the 1860s, including the Civil War years, providing a stable sight in years of constant change. Detroiters and Downriver citizens loved the old passenger steamer which was built in Trenton in 1863 and for about eleven years it ran between Detroit and Amherstburg with stops in Ecorse, Wyandotte and Grosse Isle. Her first master was Captain Johan A. Sloan and later Captain Duncan Nicholson who became superintendent of the Detroit, Belle Isle & Windsor Ferry Company sailed her.
Later after being sold to parties in Bay City, the Dove ran between Bay City and Alpena for many years, and then her owners sold her back to Detroit people. Again, she piled the Detroit River between Detroit and Toledo until she burned at her dock in Toledo on November 24, 1897.
After the Civil War, Ecorse and most of Downriver remained a farming, shipping and resort area with muskrat hunters poling the marshes in wooden boats and watching the parade of ships in the River. This parade included the Island Queen of Johnson’s Island fame. An advertisement in the Detroit Evening News of August 23, 1873 advised the public that the Island Queen, D. Nicholson, Master, leaves daily from Ward’s Dock at the foot of Wayne Street at 3 o’clock p.m. for Wyandotte, Ecorse, Grosse Isle, Trenton and Gibraltar.
In the summer of 1868 the propeller B.F. Wade raced successfully up and down the Detroit River and elsewhere, much to the delight of the shore side gamblers. In July, some of the citizens of Detroit presented the officers and the crew of the propeller B.F. Wade with a flag manufactured by Messrs. Hoffner & Mayes of Detroit. The flag had a white background on which were placed a circle of red and blue stars. In the center in large red letters were the words, “Put Up Or Shut Up!”
It seems that piracy was a problem on the Detroit and other rivers including the Rouge, Ecorse, and St. Clair decades before the Prohibition Days of the 1920s and 1930s. It isn’t difficult to imagine competing French and British traders hijacking of canoes loaded with furs and supplies for the Indians during the 17th and 18th centuries and there are well documented instances of British, American, and Canadian acts of piracy later in history.
By the mid-nineteenth century the pirates seemed to have evolved from patriots or partisans to mere ruffians. The Detroit Post and Tribune in 1877 reported that a gang of pirates had been plundering the entire length of the Detroit and St. Clair rivers for a time. River watchers had seen a new black sloop scow about 40 feet long by 12 feet wide, with a covered cabin about 16 feet long and five feet high lying along the shores at different times.
On the night of October 3, 1877, the scow’s crew carried away 100 bushes of barley from Henry Rankin and about November 4th stolen 150 bushels of barley from another Henry, Henry Caswell. Between October 3 and November 4th, the crew of the black scow had stolen 60 bushels of oats from Harsen’s Island on Lake St. Clair. The boat, which carried no name, reportedly had a good supply of bags for storing and selling the contraband. Six of the bags were marked “R” in black paint, two with a blue cross, and one with”W.I.L.”
Eventually the Downriver authorities monitored the ship and one night they raided her and captured the ship and one seaman. The Post noted rather snippily “had there been less haste, the balance of the gang, together with their boats might have been captured.” The authorities secured the captured pirate in jail, but when an officer delivered a warm breakfast to him he discovered the jail doors and the pirate missing.
Eight years later the pirate problem had still not abated. On August 2, 1885, an officer at Wyandotte tied up the scow schooner Trader, hailing from Alpena, on a charge of piracy. Downriver authorities began to suspect the Trader’s crew of appropriating the loose property of vessels lying in harbor at Detroit and neighboring ports. A few nights before a topsail disappeared from a yacht at Amherstburg and the next morning the owner spotted his sail on the Trader, being used as an awning. He immediately filed a complaint, and authorities arrested Captain Williams of the Trader, brought him to Detroit and lodged him in jail.
A search of the Trader uncovered a treasure trove of pirate plunder from ships, a number of fishing nets, and several cans of paint identified as belonging to the steam yacht Sigma. Officials also found a complete camping outfit stolen from a party of anglers camped at the mouth of the River Rouge.
Evidently the Trader wasn’t the only ship engaged in the pirate trade, because just five weeks later on September 15, the Detroit Post reported that river pirates continued to victimize the craft lying along the docks. The schooner M.P. Barkalow, the latest victim, had been tied to the wharf at the foot of Eighteen Street three days ago when someone emptied her supply box of its contents, valued at $18.
The piracy problem continued into the 1890s and with the case of the Emma, assumed international proportions. Charles Gilman was sailing his bumboat in the St. Clair River near Stag Island in Canadian waters when he spotted the trading schooner Emma and hailed her. Once engaged in the opium smuggling business, the Emma was also cruising near Stag Island with a crew of six men and an equal number of women aboard. The crew composed of William Johnson, William Murphy, William Cooper, Thomas Willis, Patrick McLaughlin and Grant Gray entered into negotiations with Charles Gilman for several dozen eggs. Gilman charged that while part of the crew negotiated the egg deal, the others busied themselves stealing his towline, and pocket book containing $23.00 which the crew purportedly divided equally between them.
Authorities arrested the Emma’s crew and took them to jail in Port Huron where they were all charged with piracy. Assistant United States Attorney Wilkins received a letter from Deputy United States Marshal Petit at Port Huron informing him that the men were to be tried under the state law on the charge of robbery. Wilkins said that under the interpretation of the law that the Supreme Court decided in the famous Alaska case, the lakes were declared to be high seas and he could charge the Emma and her crew with piracy. The penalty under the United States statutes for piracy was hanging. The Canadian authorities applied for the extradition of the crew of the Emma, but extradition was refused, although the offense was committed in Canadian waters. The Emma sank in a storm on Lake Huron in 1896.
Sea serpents also lurked in the Great Lakes and in the Detroit River. The Detroit Democratic Free Press started its May 1835, sea serpent story by asking “who has not heard of the enormous serpent or snake of Lake Superior?” Different writers and travelers had mentioned the Lake Superior sea serpent, and then the story posed another question, “why would the sea serpent leave Lake Superior?”
Whatever the sea serpent’s reasoning, it did leave Lake Superior that fateful May. On May 12, 1835 between the hours of 5 and 6 p.m., a serpent without a mane or phrenological bumps or bunches, slim in body and apparently not less than 75 feet long and five feet circumference and about 20 inches in diameter, floated down the Detroit River. As it passed the city of Detroit it held up its head five to eight feet and moved its head back and forth presumably giving equal time to surveying the American and Canadian scenery.
Sometimes the sea serpent seemed to let the current carry it and other times coiled as if prepared to spring on its prey. Other times it stretched forward full length, displaying its back of a dark brown color, its deep green sides and its dingy white belly. It did not have any fins, but did have small green, glistening eyes, circled with red. Finally, after it passed Detroit and was headed Downriver toward Ecorse when it disappeared into the depths of the majestic Detroit River.
Captain Goldsmith first sighted a sea serpent near Fighting Island in June 1860 when master of the schooner Nevermore. His description on the Fighting Island Sea Serpent closely matched the one that he reportedly saw twenty three years later on Wednesday November 22, 1883, off Long Point. Now the master of the Wabash steamer Morley, Captain Goldsmith reported that while his ship lay under Long Point during some heavy weather, he spied something about 1,000 feet from the Morley.
Examining the object with a strong glass, he discovered that it was not a piece of a wreck as he had first thought, but had a body of a terra cotta color with enough life in it to move up the lake at five miles per hour. The captain said that the creature kept its head, about the size of a barrel, well out of the water. About where the head joined the body were two arms or wings, which measured about five feet across. The tails – it appeared to have two tails-churned the water vigorously. As a precaution, Captain Goldsmith had Steward Brown examine the creature with a glass and he corroborated the Captain’s statement.
Click here to read about Light Keeper Gus Gramer and Ecorse