Maggie L

Picture courtesy of the TI Museum
Maggie L

3D Image 

Maggie LDive site since 1970's
Location: Clayton GPS: 44° 14.644'N, 76° 5.683'W
Depth: 75 Feet
Bottom: Rock and Mud
Access: mooring buoy

Wreck:

Year built: 1889
Build at: Picton, Ont.
Vessel Type: Schooner
Hull: wood
Builder: Redmond
Propulsion : Sail
Length: 67 feet.
Beam: 17 feet.
Depth of hold: 5 feet.
Tonnage: 48
Date of loss: 1929
Cause: collision/sunk

The Maggie L. rests across the channel from Governors Island just off of the village of Clayton, New York. Its bow was cut off during the collision with the steamer Keystate. It is in about 60 to 70 feet of water. The top of the deck is pulled to the side of the hull. This either happened at the time of the collision or afterwards when it may have been hooked by a ship’s anchor. The masts were cut off to about 3 feet above the deck. The ship’s rudder is still intact but the ship’s wheel was removed by scuba divers in the 1970s.

History:

Wreck is of the 90-foot wooden schooner the Maggie L. It was one of the last commercial sailing vessels on the Great Lakes and Upper St. Lawrence River. She sunk when her bow was severed by the steel freighter Keystate on November 4th, 1929. Captain M. H. Mellow, of Bath, Ontario was leaving the main shipping lane for the Clayton docks. The Keystate, a 260-ton freighter was owned by the Keystone Lines of Canada and piloted by Captain E. J. Smith, of Kingston, Ontario. There were no fatalities and the crew reached shore using the life boat which was being towed by the Maggie L. She sunk within minutes of it being struck. The Maggie L. was wrecked only 45 years when it was found in the early 1970’s. Sport scuba diving at the time, like the hard hat diving before it, was primarily involved in salvaging. Before the arrival of the zebra mussel, underwater photography was almost impossible. Like many wrecks from that time, many of its artifacts were salvaged.