Pictured: a built model of this ship — not the historical vessel.

Challenge (Great Lakes Schooner)

Type

Schooner

Period

19th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: Challenge was a two-masted, centerboard clipper schooner built in 1852 by shipwright William Wallace Bates at the Bates & Son yard in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and is widely regarded as the first true clipper-type schooner built on the Great Lakes. Contemporary newspapers were enthusiastic about her lines even before launch, with the Buffalo Daily Courier reprinting a report that in the water she "looked all symmetry, all life" and rivaled the yacht America for beauty. Specifications: At roughly 90 feet in length, Challenge cost about $4,500 to build; period sources note she "drafted 3 1/2 feet empty and 5 foot 8 inches loaded," a shoal draft suited to the undeveloped lumber harbors of the upper lakes. She carried a fore-and-aft schooner rig with a single centerboard rather than the square-rigged brig or barkentine configuration common on the lakes at the time, and her first owners found her a fast vessel, "once reaching 15 miles per hour." Service History: Built for Platt & Brother, Challenge spent her career hauling lumber, cordwood, and tan bark around Lake Michigan; a Discovery World account describes her as the "Semi truck of the Great Lakes" for the cargo she carried. She stranded at Baileys Harbor in December 1901 and was recovered in 1907, continuing to sail for several more seasons before, in her 58th season, developing a leak while carrying cordwood from Frankfort, Michigan. Loss: In September 1910, after failing to make Port Washington in fog and becoming entangled in fishing pound nets while trying to return to Sheboygan harbor, Challenge began leaking; contemporary reporting states she "lies on the beach twelve miles south of this city (Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin) a total wreck," and her running gear and sails were stripped and placed on the beach before she was abandoned near what is now Kohler-Andrae State Park. Notable Facts: Her salvaged keel remains are displayed near the nature center at Kohler-Andrae State Park, and an 85%-scale interactive replica of her bow — with about 20 feet of her midsection cut out to fit the building — is on exhibit at Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin in Milwaukee, giving modelers a rare life-size reference for hull lines and rigging of a Great Lakes centerboard clipper schooner. A. J. Fisher has produced a scale model kit of the vessel for ship modelers; note that an unrelated, more famous full-rigged clipper ship also named "Challenge" (built 1851 in New York) is sometimes confused with this Great Lakes schooner in image searches and should not be conflated with her.