The vessel
Show on the chart- Type
- Wooden propeller steam tug, originally a passenger steamer
- Also known as
- Built as the passenger steamer Louise, renamed 1931. Also recorded as Hunter Wills.
- Built
- 1878 at Sandusky, Ohio, by J. Monk
- Size
- 89 x 19 x 8
- Gross tonnage
- 84
- Net tonnage
- 44
- Date lost
- 22 October 1931
- Cause of loss
- Fire. Destroyed by fire in the harbour at Erie, Pennsylvania.
- Lives lost
- 0
- Registry
- Official number 140288.
Position 42.12872, -80.11625 (approximate, from the a hand placed pin on the Regional Science Consortium map, not a published or surveyed position)
What it was
She started life in 1878 at Sandusky, Ohio as the passenger steamer Louise, built by J. Monk, a small wooden propeller of 89 feet and 84 gross tons. By the end of her long career she had been reduced to a steam tug, and she was renamed Hunter Willis only in 1931, the last year of her life.
How it was lost
On 22 October 1931 she was destroyed by fire in the harbour at Erie. Nobody was killed. What is left of her lies in shallow water on the Erie bayfront and is dived from shore, though little of the hull survives and the site sits in a busy boat channel.
Diving it
A shallow shore dive, dived by the PASST group on 23 December 2015. The site is usually busy with boat traffic and a dive flag and float is strongly recommended. No sourced depth or visibility figure was found.
The wreck today
Little remains. PASST divers who visited the site in December 2015 report that not much of this wreck survives.