The Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary is a United States National Marine Sanctuary on Lake Ontario off the coast of the U.S. state of New York. It protects 41 known historically significant shipwrecks spanning 200 years of American maritime history, as well as 19 potential shipwreck sites. [1] [2] [3] [4] One of the wrecks is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and one is listed as a New York State Submerged Cultural Preserve and Dive Site. [5]
| Ship | Ship type | Build date | Sunk date | Depth | Notes | Coordinates | NRHP status | Image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American | Wooden schooner | 1870 | 1894 | The schooner sank on October 1, 1894, off the coast of New York near Stony Point. [6] [7] | 43°50′06″N76°26′09″W / 43.83493°N 076.43574°W | Not listed | ||
| Bay State | Wooden screw steamer | 1852 | 1862 | The screw steamer, a cargo liner, broke up and sank in a storm west of Oswego, New York, on November 5, 1862, with the loss of all on board. (Various sources place the sinking on November 2.) A lifeboat, wreckage, and cargo from the ship washed ashore at Fair Haven, New York. [6] [8] [9] [10] | 43°30′06″N76°32′05″W / 43.50153°N 076.53476°W | Not listed | ||
| David W. Mills | Bulk carrier | 1874 | 1919 | 16 to 20 feet (4.9 to 6.1 m) | The steam barge ran hard aground on Ford Shoal 4.5 miles (7.2 km) west of Oswego, New York, on August 11, 1919, when smoke from forest fires obscured Oswego Lighthouse. The wreck subsequently broke up in a violent storm and sank. It is listed as a New York State Submerged Cultural Preserve and Dive Site. [6] [11] [12] | 43°26.555′N076°35.094′W / 43.442583°N 76.584900°W | Not listed | |
| Ellsworth | Wooden steam barge | 1869 | 1877 | 21 feet (6.4 m) | The schooner-rigged steam barge burned and sank on Juy 10, 1877, off off the southeast point of Stony Island off the coast of New York. A partially successful salvage effort in 1879 resulted in the wreck breaking up. [6] [13] | 43°50′06″N76°26′09″W / 43.83493°N 076.43574°W | Not listed | |
| Hartford | Wooden schooner | 1873 | 1894 | 40 feet (12 m) | The three-masted schooner encountered a storm on October 12, 1894, and anchored in Mexico Bay off the coast of New York near Oswego, but broke up and sank with the loss of all on board. [6] [14] | Not listed | ||
| Queen of the Lake | Wooden scow schooner | 1853 | 1906 | The Canadian scow schooner encountered severe weather off the coast of New York about 10 miles (16 km) from Sodus Point and sank on November 1, 1906. [6] [15] [16] | 43°17′44″N76°58′07″W / 43.2955°N 076.9687°W | Not listed | ||
| St. Peter | Wooden schooner | 1873 | 1898 | 117 feet (36 m) | On October 27, 1898, the 135.7-foot (41.4 m) three-masted schooner sank in a storm off Bear Creek on the coast of New York, just west of Sodus Bay and northeast of Pultneyville, New York. [6] [17] [18] | 43°18′42″N077°07′52″W / 43.31167°N 77.13111°W | Listed |  |
| Three Brothers | Wooden schooner | 1827 | 1833 | The daggerboard schooner disappeared in a storm after departing Oswego, New York, on November 12, 1833, bound for Pultneyville, New York. Her wreck was discovered in 2014 off the coast of New York off Nine Mile Point. [6] [19] | 43°31′18″N76°34′20″W / 43.52178°N 076.57229°W | Not listed | ||
| Washington (also Lady Washington) | Wooden sloop | 1797 | 1803 | On November 6, 1803, the Canadian sloop departed Niagara, Ontario, bound for Kingston, Ontario. She disappeared in a severe storm with the loss of all on board. Wreckage from Washington washed up on the coast of New York near Oswego on November 7. Her wreck, discovered near Oswego in June 2016, is the earliest known shipwreck in the sanctuary. [6] [20] [21] | 43°26′11″N76°42′19″W / 43.43638°N 076.70535°W | Not listed |
The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is a sanctuary off the coast of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in Southern California 350 miles (563 km) south of San Francisco and 95 miles (153 km) north of Los Angeles. It was designated on October 2, 1980, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and was expanded in 2007.
A U.S. National Marine Sanctuary is a federally designated area within United States waters that protects areas of the marine environment with special conservation, recreational, ecological, historical, cultural, archeological, scientific, educational, or aesthetic qualities. The program was established in 1972 by the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act and is currently administered by the National Ocean Service through the National Marine Sanctuaries Act (NMSA).
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve is a United States National Marine Sanctuary on Lake Huron's Thunder Bay, within the northeastern region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It protects an estimated 116 historically significant shipwrecks ranging from nineteenth-century wooden side-wheeler paddle steamers to twentieth-century steel-hulled steamers. There are a great many wrecks in the sanctuary, and their preservation and protection is a concern for United States Government policymakers. The landward boundary of the sanctuary extends from the western boundary of Presque Isle County to the southern boundary of Alcona County. The sanctuary extends east from the lakeshore to the international border. Alpena is the largest city in the area.
USNS Vindicator (T-AGOS-3) was a United States Navy Stalwart-class modified tactical auxiliary general ocean surveillance ship that was in service from 1984 to 1993. Vindicator then served in the United States Coast Guard from 1994 to 2001 as the medium endurance cutter USCGC Vindicator (WMEC-3). From 2004 to 2020, she was in commission in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fleet as the oceanographic research ship NOAAS Hiʻialakai.
Monitor National Marine Sanctuary is the site of the wreck of the USS Monitor, one of the most famous shipwrecks in U.S. history. It was designated as the country's first national marine sanctuary on February 5, 1975, and is one of only two of the seventeen national marine sanctuaries created to protect a cultural resource rather than a natural resource. The sanctuary comprises a column of water 1 nautical mile in diameter extending from the ocean’s surface to the seabed around the wreck of the American Civil War ironclad warship, which lies 16 nautical miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Average water depth in the sanctuary is 230 feet (70 m). Since it sank in 1862, Monitor has become an artificial reef attracting numerous fish species, including amberjack, black sea bass, oyster toadfish, and great barracuda.
PS Portland was a large side-wheel paddle steamer, an ocean-going steamship with side-mounted paddlewheels. She was built in 1889 for passenger service between Boston, Massachusetts, and Portland, Maine. She is best known as the namesake of the infamous Portland Gale of 1898, a massive blizzard that struck coastal New England, claiming the lives of over 400 people and more than 150 vessels.
St. Peter is a historic Great Lakes schooner that sank in 1898 in Lake Ontario near Pultneyville in Wayne County, New York.
This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Presque Isle County, Michigan.
The Kyle Spangler was a wooden schooner; its 1860 wreck site in Lake Huron was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
SS Choctaw was a steel-hulled American freighter in service between 1892 and 1915, on the Great Lakes of North America. She was a so-called monitor vessel, containing elements of traditional lake freighters and the whaleback ships designed by Alexander McDougall. Choctaw was built in 1892 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was originally owned by the Lake Superior Iron Company. She was sold to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in 1894 and spent the rest of her working life with it. On her regular route between Detroit, Escanaba, Marquette, and Cleveland, she carried iron ore downbound, and coal upbound.
The Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary is a national marine sanctuary administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency of the United States Department of Commerce; NOAA co-manages the sanctuary jointly with the State of Wisconsin. It is located in Lake Michigan along the coast of Wisconsin. It was created in 2021 as the 15th national marine sanctuary and protects shipwrecks considered nationally important archaeological resources.
The Lake Ontario National Marine Sanctuary is a National Marine Sanctuary in the waters of the United States in southeastern Lake Ontario off the coast of New York. It was designated on September 6, 2024, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It protects the area's maritime cultural history, including historic shipwrecks, and areas of great cultural, historical, and spiritual importance to Native American peoples of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. It offers opportunities for research, community engagement, education and outreach activities, and maritime-heritage-related tourism.
The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary is a National Marine Sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties on the Central Coast of California. It was designated on October 11, 2024, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is the first marine sanctuary to have been proposed by an Indigenous group. It protects nationally significant natural, cultural, and historical resources in Central California's coastal and ocean waters and offers opportunities for research, community engagement, and education and outreach activities.
The Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary is a National Marine Sanctuary in the United States located in the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland. It is best known for the "Ghost Fleet," 118 historic shipwrecks in Mallows Bay in the sanctuary's northeast corner which is the largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere. They are among more than 200 shipwrecks in the sanctuary, some of which date as far back as the American Revolutionary War and others to the American Civil War.
