The Wexford
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The steamer Wexford , with her flared bow, tall masts, and her open, canvas-sided hurricane deck, charmed spectators as she carried cargo across the Great Lakes. The romance and adventure of her British and French history in the South American trade followed her. Under newly appointed 24-year-old captain Bruce Cameron, her fateful final voyage was punctuated with opportunities to be saved from destruction , but his persistence in trying to make port at Goderich led to tragedy – a victim of the storm of 1913. Over a period of 87 years, she eluded many efforts to locate her remains, but was finally discovered in 2000 by a sailor using a fish-finding device. Since then, she has been visited by thousands, but sadly plundered. Our story traces her history from her British origins in 1883, through the transition to become a «Laker,» the eventful storm, the search, and her ultimate discovery in southern Lake Huron, and the controversy over how she should be protected.
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WEXFORD
From the author’s collection.
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During her first 15 years as an ocean freighter, she also made passage to the Mediterranean Sea. No details have been discovered to confirm her destinations or her cargo under the direction of Master Knox Mogelstine, her skipper from 1891 to 1895.10 In spite of the fact that Mogelstine had been the master of several wrecked vessels prior to his role on the Wexford, this period of time was also uneventful for the British freighter.
Under Master James Sloggett, she made many trips to and from South America in 1896 and 1897. Sloggett was born in Plymouth in 1844, and became a ship’s master at age 30. The Wexford continued to ply the southerly routes until 1897, after which, in probable need of repair and in a time of falling freight rates, she was sold in 1898. She was renamed Elise by her new owner, a Monsieur Dubuisson of Dunkirk, France. Within a few years the new owner found her to be a business liability for the French firm. In 1901 she required the refit of her auxiliary donkey boiler.11 She returned to London, England, and, by 1903, was sold yet again to the Western Steamship Company from Toronto. She was relocated to the Great Lakes, continuing to be registered out of London under her original name, Wexford. It is an interesting side note that the Western Steamship purchased a second vessel,12 the J.A. McKee, a similar size vessel, built in England, at Newcastle-On-Tyne by Swan, Hunter and Richardson in 1908. The voyage of the McKee in the 1913 Great Storm is addressed, in part, later in this account.
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