Anchors Aweigh!

Anchors could be lost when violent storms broke anchor chains and drove ships ashore, or when anchors became hung up on the lake bottom and had to be abandoned. The stock anchor, the shape most familiar to non-sailors, lands on its crown, then tilts with the stock resting on the bottom and the arms parallel; as strain comes onto the chain, the stock digs into the bottom and twists the shank until one of the palms catches and digs in. An anchor of this kind was discovered during a dredging operation in Sturgeon Bay and was used during the 1800s on a wooden schooner or steamer. One such vessel was the James Garrett, a 266-ton three-mastered schooner built by Stokes & Locklin at Sheboygan, Wisconsin. On May 29, 1889, while approaching the pier at Whitefish Bay to load lumber, her captain set the anchor too far from the pier. Instead of raising and resetting it, he added a length of hawser to the anchor chain so the vessel could reach the pier. That night a storm arose, the hawser parted, and the vessel was driven onto the beach and damaged so badly that it was declared a total loss.

Sevastopol, Wisconsin · United States