Sinking of the Schooner Persian
The Great Lakes in the mid-nineteenth century were a highway for grain. Schooners by the hundreds carried wheat from Chicago eastward through the lakes and canals to ports like Oswego, New York. The traffic was heavy and the sailing could be dangerous, especially where the lakes narrowed. The schooner Persian, built in 1855 at Oswego, was a working vessel of this trade: 128 feet long, 345 tons, unremarkable except to the men who sailed her.
On the night of September 16, 1868, the Persian was rounding Presque Isle on Lake Huron, loaded with wheat and bound for home. The weather was clear and the Persian had the right of way, but the schooner E.B. Allen, attempting to pass, struck her starboard quarter. The Allen’s captain sailed on, believing the Persian would make it to shore. She did not. All ten souls aboard were lost. The wreck lay undiscovered at 168 feet until sport divers found it in 1991, in what is now the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
The ballad The Persian's Crew preserves the names that the lake did not. It singles out first mate Daniel Sullivan of Oswego, “a man both bold and brave,” and mourns his friends who will wait in vain for his return.
