Challenge
Schooner · Lost 1910 · Chicago & Southern Lake Michigan
The schooner Challenge was beached as a total wreck after leaking on Lake Michigan in September 1910.
Become Captain of Record
The Vessel and Her Loss
Challenge was a wooden two-masted schooner built at Manitowoc in 1852 by William Wallace Bates and his father Stephen Bates. The vessel helped establish Bates’s Great Lakes clipper-schooner designs. A 1901 stranding was followed by recovery in 1907. The institutional final-voyage account dates the final casualty to September 5, 1910: caught in pound nets after failing to make port in fog, she leaked and was beached to save those aboard. The quoted account describes a total wreck, but its precise beach location is inconsistent with the institutional location fields.
Vessel
- 1852
- US registry no. 4349
- William Wallace Bates and Stephen Bates
- Manitowoc, Wisconsin
- Wood
- 87.5 ft
- 22.7 ft
- 87.07 gross tons
- Sail
- Not established
Loss
- September 5, 1910
- Grounding
- Lake Michigan beach; exact locality unresolved in the reviewed account
- Lake Michigan
- Not established
- Not established
- Not established
- Not established
- O’Brien
The Wreck Today
- Not established
- Not established
- Not established
- Not established
- Not established
Position
- Not established
- Position not established
- Not established
Evidence
Overall confidence: Documented (78/100)
Exact wreck position, present depth and surviving condition are not established in the reviewed sources.
Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Sea Grant — Wisconsin Shipwrecks
Construction, builders, registry, dimensions, two-masted rig, clipper-schooner design significance, 1901 stranding and 1907 recovery; September 1910 leaking, beaching as total wreck, escape and salvage. Location conflict retained; inventory coordinates not adopted.
