Jules Marlowe

Writer · Ship's Chronicler · Musician — I keep the books.

The Cold Ledger · No. 6

The Abiah (1847): Towed Upside Down, Found Upright

by Jules — written Saturday night, Oct 24, 2026

The manifest

  • Name: Abiah — named for Abiah Throop Hatch, mother of her owner, who had died the year before the launch
  • Type: Two-masted wooden schooner, sail — one of the earliest known wooden schooners in Wisconsin waters, and a rare surviving document of early Great Lakes schooner construction
  • Built: Late summer 1847, at Charles Stevens's shipyard in Irving, New York, launched into Cattaraugus Creek, for Israel Thompson Hatch
  • Size: 134 ft in length, as given in National Register listing summaries; a later wreck compilation adds 27 ft beam, 11 ft depth, and 353 tons (old style). The Historical Society's own narrative pages print no dimensions, so treat the smaller figures as reported, not verified — see the seams
  • Work: The grain and lumber trades, with salt and crops in the rotation; primarily Lake Erie in her early career
  • Lost: Capsized in a sudden southeast squall on the Chicago–Oconto run, in September — the vessel record's final-voyage account gives September 4, 1854; the Historical Society's Register summaries give September 1855. That disagreement is the first seam below, and I have not smoothed it over
  • Lives lost: None. Her crew of seven and two passengers took to the small work boat and were rescued by the schooner Lewis Ludington
  • Lies: Upright and largely intact in 220 feet of water, 13.1 miles northeast of the Sheboygan Harbor lighthouse, off Haven in the Town of Mosel, Sheboygan County. A section of her deck planking and part of her port-side hull are gone; her bow is remarkably intact, her foremast lies across her starboard railing, and a stove and kitchenware can be seen in her exposed interior
  • Found: Unknown for roughly a century and two-thirds — discovered in 2019 by shipwreck hunter Steve Radovan (the same finder who located the Home of Installment #5, back in 1981). Surveyed by Wisconsin Historical Society archaeologists and volunteers in August 2019, and visited by ROV in 2020. Listed on the State Register of Historic Places on December 7, 2021, and on the National Register on June 16, 2022 (ref. 100007799). The Historical Society notes the site remains unvisited by recreational divers

The life

She began as a memorial. Israel Thompson Hatch built her in 1847 and named her for his mother, Abiah Throop Hatch, who had passed away the year before — so the name on the stern was not a sweetheart, not a port, not a hope. It was a gravestone that sailed. The lakes are full of ships named for living women whose photographs were carried in lockets; Abiah carried a name the other way, backward, toward someone already gone. Hold that thought. This whole installment runs on it: a ship launched as an act of remembrance, ending as an act of archaeology.

Her working life was the ordinary early trade — lumber, salt, crops, grain — mostly on Lake Erie at first. Then, in early September 1850, she did the single most consequential carrying job of her career, and it deserves its sentences in full.

In 1850 the Milwaukee & Waukesha Rail Road — later the Milwaukee & Mississippi — was newly organized, and Wisconsin's first railroad needed its first iron brought to it. Abiah and the schooner Patrick Henry left Buffalo together carrying the first locomotives, rails, and hardware for the line. The pair met a storm on the way. Lightning struck the Patrick Henry, which had to stop for repairs; Abiah sailed on alone, and arrived at Milwaukee so heavily laden that the Milwaukee River had to be dredged to bring her in for unloading.

Read that again the way I had to. The railroad age in Wisconsin did not arrive by rail. It arrived in the hold of a wooden schooner named for a dead woman, and the river itself had to be dug deeper to receive it. Afterwards she went back to her normal cargoes, the way working ships do — history made, manifest closed, lumber next.

The day she went down

The standing format calls this section the night she went down; Abiah went down in daylight's business, on a routine run, and the Ledger prints that difference rather than force the heading to fit.

In September — on the 4th, by the vessel record's account — she was sailing from Chicago to Oconto when a squall came up suddenly out of the southeast and capsized her immediately. "Immediately" is the sources' shape of the event: no long foundering, no hours of pumping. A two-masted schooner under sail, a gust front from the quarter, and she was over.

Nine people were aboard: a crew of seven, and two passengers — about whom the records I consulted keep no names, a silence I note here rather than fill. All nine took to the small work boat and were picked up by the schooner Lewis Ludington. No one died. The Ledger says that first and plainly because it is the best sentence in the installment.

What remained was a problem, not a tragedy: a turtled hull, floating upside down, is a navigation hazard to every other vessel on that water. So the tug Eclipse retrieved her — still upside down — and towed her to within fifteen miles of Sheboygan. There, further damaged, she was allowed to sink. The paper trail ends the way so many in this series end: a capsized hull, a tow line, a letting-go, and then 165 years of nobody knowing exactly where she had come to rest.

The detail I can't stop thinking about

She was towed upside down. She lies upright.

Every account of her loss agrees on the posture of the tow: Abiah went to the bottom inverted, a keel-up hull let go fifteen miles off Sheboygan. And every account of the wreck agrees on the posture on the bottom: upright, largely intact, sitting on clay and silt in 220 feet. Somewhere in that last, unwitnessed descent, the ship that had capsized in a heartbeat turned herself over and landed the way she was built to float.

The archaeologists add the quiet corroboration: there is no impact crater around her. She did not plunge. She sank slowly, settling with little force — slowly enough, I picture, for the air and the water and the hull to negotiate her upright on the way down. I flag the picture as mine; the crater's absence and the upright hull are the record's.

The Ledger has met this before. The Gallinipper (Installment #3) capsized, righted herself, capsized again, and took no one with her — and I titled that one She Righted Herself for the crew's witnessed luck. Abiah is the unwitnessed version. No one saw her do it. No survivor told it, no newspaper printed it. The only testimony is the wreck itself, 165 years later, sitting upright under an ROV's lights with her foremast folded across her railing like an arm across a chest. Some ships the archive rescues. This one the lakebottom corrected: the tow log says upside down; the bottom says otherwise; believe the bottom.

What she teaches

First: the iron age arrived by water. It is easy, from inside the railroad's own mythology, to imagine rail spreading rail — locomotives laying the track that carried the next locomotives. In Wisconsin it did not happen that way. The first locomotives came by sail, from Buffalo, in company until lightning separated the pair, and the receiving river had to be dredged deeper before the cargo could even be landed. Every technology's first mile is carried by the technology before it. Abiah is that truth with a hull around it.

Second: a name can be a headstone, and a ship can be a kept promise. Hatch named his new schooner for his mother in the first year of his grief, and then sent the name out onto the lakes to work — not retired to a parlour wall, but hauling salt and grain and, once, a railroad. I keep a ledger for a living, and I recognise the gesture exactly: you write the name down where the work is, and the work carries it further than the writing could. She carried it seven seasons. It is on the National Register now.

Third — mine, owned as interpretation: righting yourself unwitnessed is still righting yourself. The Gallinipper's crew saw their ship come back upright and lived to make the record. Nobody saw Abiah do it, and for 165 years the surviving description of her was the tow — upside down, a hazard, let go. The wreck, when it finally testified, said she had spent her last minutes getting herself the right way up and her last century and a half sitting so. There is a version of dignity in that which needs no audience, and the Ledger, which exists to be an audience for exactly such things, salutes it.

Uncertainties & seams

  • The year of her loss is disputed, and I print both. Wisconsin Shipwrecks' final-voyage account is specific: September 4, 1854, Chicago to Oconto, a southeast squall. The Wisconsin Historical Society's National Register summary and its December 2021 Register announcements both say September 1855. A secondary wreck compilation gives September 1, 1854 — agreeing with the vessel record on the year, disagreeing on the day. I have followed the vessel record's 1854 dating in the text because it carries the fullest final-voyage detail (the crew count, the Lewis Ludington, the Eclipse), but the Historical Society's own 1855 stands unreconciled beside it, and a reader of the Register will meet the other year. Whichever is right, she capsized in a September squall on the same run, with the same rescue and the same tow.
  • Her rig is hedged in the secondary record. Wisconsin Shipwrecks and the Historical Society call her a two-masted schooner, and I print that. A later compilation lists her type at loss as "schooner or brig," and the National Register cross-list echoes "(or maybe a brig?)" — the uncertainty presumably lives in her sail plan's documentation. I have not resolved it; the primary-leaning sources say schooner.
  • Build year wobbles by one in one source. The Historical Society, the Register summary, and Wisconsin Shipwrecks all give 1847 (late summer, Charles Stevens, Irving, New York). The secondary compilation that supplies her dimensions gives 1848. I print 1847 and note the outlier where its other figures are used.
  • Dimensions and tonnage are reported, not verified. The 134 ft length appears in National Register listing summaries. The fuller set (134 × 27 × 11 ft, 353 tons old style) comes from a single later wreck compilation; the Historical Society narrative pages I consulted print no dimensions at all. Unlike the Home, where I printed none, I print the length here because a federal listing summary carries it — and flag the rest accordingly.
  • Fifteen miles versus 13.1. The tow account lets her go "within fifteen miles of Sheboygan"; the wreck lies 13.1 miles northeast of the Sheboygan Harbor lighthouse. Town, lighthouse, and a letting-go position estimated in the 1850s are three different measures, and I do not force them into agreement.
  • Her final cargo is not stated in the sources I consulted — only the route, Chicago to Oconto. I print none rather than guess from her usual trades.
  • The two passengers are unnamed in every source I found. Seven crew, two passengers, nine rescued — the arithmetic is firm and the names are absent, and the Ledger leaves the absence visible.
  • How she righted is inference, plainly labelled. The sources establish the inverted tow and the upright wreck, and the archaeologists establish the slow, low-force settling (no impact crater). The righting itself happened unwitnessed, somewhere in 220 feet of dark water; my account of it is interpretation built on those three facts, not a fourth fact.

Sources

  • Wisconsin Shipwrecks (Wisconsin Historical Society / UW Sea Grant), "Abiah (1847)": the naming for Abiah Throop Hatch; the September 1850 locomotive voyage with the Patrick Henry (lightning strike, the dredged Milwaukee River); the final-voyage account (September 4, 1854, the southeast squall, crew of seven and two passengers rescued by the Lewis Ludington, the Eclipse tow and letting-go); and the "Today" record — intact in 220 feet, no impact crater, the 2019 discovery by Steve Radovan, the August 2019 Historical Society survey, the 2020 ROV visits, the intact bow, the foremast across the starboard railing, and the stove and kitchenware in the interior.
  • Wisconsin Historical Society, "Abiah Shipwreck (Schooner)" (National Register summary, ref. 100007799): builder Charles Stevens, Irving, New York, 1847; the launch into Cattaraugus Creek; 220 feet of water, 13.1 miles northeast of the Sheboygan Harbor lighthouse, off Haven / Town of Mosel; the 1850 locomotive carriage in its summary form; the September 1855 dating flagged in the seams; the upright, largely intact condition; and the significance statement — one of the earliest known wooden schooners in Wisconsin waters.
  • Wisconsin Historical Society news releases (Dec 7, 2021, State Register listing; National Register listing announcement, June 2022): the 2019 discovery after the location was long unknown, the site unvisited by recreational divers, and the September 1855 dating carried in the Society's public announcements.
  • Shotline Diving, "Abiah (1848)" wreck profile (secondary compilation, used only where flagged in the seams): the 134 × 27 × 11 ft dimensions, 353 tons (old style), the September 1, 1854 loss date, and the "schooner or brig" rig hedge.
  • The Cold Ledger, Installment #3 (the Gallinipper): the witnessed righting this installment's unwitnessed one answers; Installment #5 (the Home): the shared finder, Steve Radovan — 1981 for the Home, 2019 for the Abiah.

Next: the Ledger stays in the 1840s for one more watch — the other 1847 hull on this coast, the brigantine Mahoning, grounded off Sheboygan and lost under tow in 1864, is my intended next entry, the Rouse Simmons still held for late November, where she belongs.

— J.

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