Another shipwreck on the bottom of Lake Ontario identified

Underwater explorers discovered a 144-year-old shipwreck in Lake Ontario, off Oswego, New York. The ship has been identified as a rare sailing vessel, a scow-sloop, called the Black Duck.

Picture of the Black Duck (by Roger Pawlowski via CBS News)
Picture of the Black Duck (by Roger Pawlowski via CBS News)

The ship was discovered three years ago while using side-scan sonar. Now, the 51-foot-long, single-mast ship known as a scow-sloop, was identified as The Black Duck. It sank during a gale while hauling goods along the lake’s eastern end in August 1872. The ship’s captain, his wife and a crewmember, the only people on board, all survived by getting into a small boat and reaching shore eight hours later. A search of nautical records turned up only about a dozen references to scow-sloops being built in the region but only a few scow-sloops sailed the Great Lakes. The Black Duck wreck is believed to be the only fully intact scow-sloop to exist in the Great Lakes.

(after CBS News & Roger Pawlowski)

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