Captain Charles Autterson knew the fog was wrong. He had already turned back once that morning, sheltering in Thunder Bay while a storm thrashed Lake Superior. When the winds finally eased at 10:15 a.m. on November 6, 1918, he steered the Chester A. Congdon back into open water, her holds packed tight with 380,000 bushels of wheat. The waves still rolled, but the wind had dropped. Then the fog came down. Thick, silent, total. Autterson set a course for Passage Island, planning to anchor if visibility did not improve. His officers never heard the fog signal. At 1:08 p.m., the 525-foot freighter drove onto the southern reef of Canoe Rocks, at the northeast point of Isle Royale. Two days later, a storm broke her in half. She remains there still -- the largest shipwreck at Isle Royale, split across a shoal that now bears her name.
She entered the world under a different name. Launched as the Salt Lake City on August 29, 1907, from the Chicago Shipbuilding Company into the Calumet River, she was hull number 74 -- built for the Holmes Steamship Company of Cleveland and christened by Dorothy Holmes. Among the last of the 10,000-ton capacity class, she set a record for the fastest completion between launch and maiden voyage at a Great Lakes shipyard. Her steel hull stretched over 525 feet, with 32 telescoping hatch covers over an arched-frame cargo hold designed for maximum capacity. A triple-expansion steam engine fed by two coal-fired Scotch marine boilers drove her across the lakes. She was built for grain, and grain is what she carried on her maiden voyage, September 19, 1907.
The freighter had a talent for collisions. In June 1908, still named Salt Lake City, she struck a scow at the Twin Ports. After the Holmes Steamship Company merged into Acme Transit in 1911, she was sold the following year to the Continental Steamship Company of Duluth and renamed Chester A. Congdon, after the prominent lawyer and entrepreneur Chester Adgate Congdon. The name change did nothing for her luck. In April 1912, she broke free of her towing tugs in Milwaukee and slammed into the freighter Charles Weston, denting two of her own hull plates. Four months later, drifting in fog on Lake Michigan, she grounded on a shoal north of Cana Island, damaging 90 hull plates and around 50 frames. In 1913 she struck a breakwater in Fairport, and in 1915 her bilge scraped the bottom of the Detroit River near Grosse Pointe, shearing off rivets and opening leaks. Each time she was repaired. Each time she went back to work.
Her final voyage began at the Ogilvie & Pacific grain elevators in Fort William, Ontario, on November 5, 1918. She loaded 380,000 bushels of wheat, bound for Port McNicoll. Departing at 2:28 a.m. the next morning, she ran straight into a heavy storm beyond Thunder Cape. Captain Autterson wisely retreated to Thunder Bay and anchored. By 10:15 a.m. the wind had subsided, and Autterson headed out again. But Lake Superior was not finished. A thick fog rolled across the water after they passed Thunder Cape. Autterson plotted a course for Passage Island, intending to run for two and a half hours and then anchor if the fog held. The fog signal from Passage Island never reached the pilothouse. At 1:08 p.m., the Chester A. Congdon ground to a halt on the southern reef of Canoe Rocks, at the northeast tip of Isle Royale.
Lifeboats went down immediately. One crew headed for Passage Island to summon the lighthouse keeper; two fishermen took the second mate toward Fort William, though their launch broke down and they did not arrive until the following morning. The Canadian Wrecking & Towing Company dispatched the barge Empire and two tugs. Salvors found multiple tanks flooded but hoped that lightening the cargo might refloat the ship. Then, on November 8, a storm forced the rescue crews to abandon the wreck. When they returned, the Chester A. Congdon had broken in two between her sixth and seventh hatches. The stern had sunk. Only 50,000 to 60,000 bushels were ever recovered. Businessman James Playfair purchased the wreck for $10,000, hoping to raise it in 1919. By December, both halves had slid off opposite sides of the reef and settled on the lake bottom.
No one died when the Chester A. Congdon went down, but the financial toll was staggering. Wartime wheat prices had driven the cargo's value above $893,000. Combined with her hull value of $365,000 and other costs, the total loss exceeded $1.5 million -- making her Lake Superior's first million-dollar shipwreck and the largest financial loss on the Great Lakes up to that time. She held the record for Lake Superior's largest wreck until the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in 1975. Today her remains rest in two pieces on Congdon Shoal. The bow lies on the south side of the reef at a 35- to 59-degree angle, its pilothouse and forecastle deck still intact, living quarters penetrable, and windlass room accessible through a hole in the forward deck. The stern sits on the north side, its engine room and cabins preserved. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the wreck draws recreational divers from around the world -- Isle Royale's third-most visited shipwreck, behind the Emperor and the America, with over 150 dives logged in a single year.
The wreck of SS Chester A. Congdon lies at approximately 48.19°N, 88.51°W, on Congdon Shoal at the northeast point of Isle Royale in Lake Superior. From altitude, Isle Royale is the large island in the northwestern portion of Lake Superior, and Canoe Rocks extend from its northeastern tip near Passage Island. The nearest airports include Thunder Bay International (CYQT) approximately 55 nm to the north across the Canadian border, and Houghton County Memorial Airport (KCMX) about 65 nm to the southeast on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Isle Royale has a seaplane base but no paved runway. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 feet AGL on clear days when the shallow reef and shoal formations are visible through the water.