From the J.B. Penfield to the A.E. Vickery: The Life and Death of a Great Lakes Schooner
A wooden three-masted schooner born on the eve of the Civil War, rechristened in the era of industrial commerce, and lost in one dramatic night on the St. Lawrence River.
Birth at Three Mile Bay
In July 1861, as the United States was tearing itself apart in civil war, a different kind of American enterprise was taking shape on the quiet shores of Three Mile Bay, New York. There, master shipbuilder Asa Wilcox launched a sleek wooden three-masted schooner into the waters of eastern Lake Ontario. She was christened the J. B. Penfield — US Registry #13303 — and enrolled at the port of Oswego, New York. Her original owners were Duncan M. Callum and Asa Wilcox, the same man who built her.
The Penfield was a substantial vessel for her era: 136 feet long, 26 feet wide, with a 10-foot hold and a registered tonnage of 291 tons. She measured precisely 136 feet 2 inches in length, 26 feet 2 inches in beam, and drew 10 feet 8 inches of draft — a workhorse built for the demanding trade routes of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence corridor.
Almost immediately after her launch, the Penfield demonstrated her range. Under her original name, she sailed through the Welland Canal on a passage from Detroit, Michigan, to Oswego, New York — a route that would become emblematic of the commercial lake trade she was built to serve.
Years on the Lakes
For more than two decades, the vessel worked the busy trade lanes of the Great Lakes system, carrying the grain, lumber, and bulk cargo that fueled the young industrial republic. At some point the ship passed to new ownership, and on February 25, 1884 — nearly 23 years after her launching — she was officially renamed the A. E. Vickery, reflecting her sale to J. T. Vickery of Vickery & Co., a Chicago-based shipping firm.
The new name honored the Vickery family’s commercial identity, and under it the schooner continued her working life hauling grain and other commodities across the lakes and down the St. Lawrence.
Captain John Massey commanded the vessel for seven years, first becoming acquainted with her when she still went by the name J. B. Penfield. Massey was a man of the lakes in the deepest sense — born at Chippewa Bay near Ogdensburg, New York, in 1855, he came from a seafaring family of ten brothers, all but one of whom were sailors. Even at a young age he was known aboard ship as the “Old Man,” as was the custom for lake captains. He later served as master of schooners Frank Cole and Thomas Parker, and went on to command numerous Great Lakes steamers over a long career. He was said to have sailed the St. Lawrence River aboard the Vickery at least a dozen times.
The Last Voyage
On August 5, 1889, the A. E. Vickery departed Chicago with a cargo of 21,000 bushels of grain consigned to the J. B. Wiser Distillery in Prescott, Ontario — the famous distillery whose whisky would become Wiser’s. The voyage downbound through the lakes and into the St. Lawrence was routine until the schooner reached the perilous waters of the Thousand Islands.
The St. Lawrence narrows dramatically in this stretch, threading between rocky islands and shoals in channels that are crooked, swift, and treacherous even in daylight. At Fishers Landing, local river pilot Henry Webber Jr. — son of the well-known Clayton river captain Henry Webber Sr. — came aboard to take the Vickery downriver. He had been at the helm for barely fifteen minutes when, at 10:15 p.m. on the evening of August 15, 1889, the schooner struck the shoal near Rock Island Lighthouse. A stiff wind was blowing.
The point where she struck was — and remains — one of the most dangerous stretches of river in the entire corridor. The channel there is narrow and crooked, the current strong, and the shoal lurking just beneath the surface had claimed other vessels before the Vickery. In attempting a short tack to clear the shoal in front of the lighthouse, the schooner missed stays and went onto the rocks.
Captain Massey’s Fury
What followed the grounding entered the lore of the river. When Captain Massey realized what had happened, he did not take it calmly. He rushed below to his cabin, seized his revolver, and returned to the deck in a towering rage, cursing out pilot Webber and aiming the gun at him. He fired once — the bullet ricocheted into the deck — and was raising the weapon again when his brother, who served as the ship’s mate, rushed up and knocked the gun from his hand. The revolver went over the side and into the river.
Webber attempted to flee but was quickly caught. He was made to produce his pilot’s license, which he did — and then, as newspaper accounts drily noted, “he made himself scarce.”
No legal action against Captain Massey was ever recorded, despite the assault. Whether the loss of a beloved ship, commanded for seven years, was sufficient excuse in the eyes of those present, or whether the chaos of the sinking pushed the incident aside, the record is silent. Massey later said he had been ready to shoot Webber, and only the intervention of cooler heads had prevented worse.
The crew consisted of Captain Massey, his brother the mate, a cook, and four seamen — along with two women who were also aboard. As the Vickery began filling with water, the captain and crew scrambled into the yawl boat with what belongings they could save. The two women passengers were taken to the keeper’s quarters at Rock Island Lighthouse, where they were sheltered for the night before making their way to Clayton the next morning. There was no loss of life.
The vessel clung to the shoal for approximately four hours before slipping off into deep water in the early morning hours of August 16. By the time dawn broke, only her spars were visible above the surface. Some grain escaped from the hold as the ship sank; local residents reportedly rowed out to scoop it up before it became too waterlogged to salvage.
Salvage, Seizure, and Loss
The Vickery had been valued at $20,000 at the time of the sinking, with her cargo worth an additional $10,000. She was only partially insured, however, and Captain Massey abandoned her to the underwriters. She was declared a total loss.
The wreck was subsequently libeled — a maritime legal term for a claim filed against a vessel — by one Alexander Bain, seeking $902.79 in wreckage compensation. This set off an episode of comic bureaucratic theater the following spring. A U.S. Marshal was dispatched to serve official notice of seizure on the vessel. The difficulty, of course, was that the Vickery was lying in approximately 100 feet of water. Undaunted, the Marshal procured a suit of diving armor, descended to the sunken hull, and made his seizure “in true naval style” — only to discover there was no convenient place to affix the official notice. He surfaced and posted it on a nearby tree instead. The court, one imagines, accepted this.
Eventually the masts were removed because they posed a hazard to navigation. Various artifacts were salvaged or auctioned in a sheriff’s sale. The helm of the Vickery was preserved and today resides in the Antique Boat Museum at Clayton, New York. The anchor was placed on display at a local restaurant in Cape Vincent.
The Wreck Today
The A. E. Vickery — built as the J. B. Penfield — rests where she came to rest in the late summer of 1889, alongside Rock Island Shoal in the American Narrows of the St. Lawrence River, near the Rock Island Lighthouse. Her GPS position is approximately 44°16.820′ N, 76°01.183′ W.
The wreck has become one of the most popular dive sites on the entire St. Lawrence. A buoy line takes divers down through a swift surface current to the shoal head in 25 to 30 feet of water. The bow lies about 15 feet off the shoal at a depth of 65 feet. From there the wreck angles down a ledge, with the stern hanging over the drop at roughly 110 feet. The broken masts trail out into the channel and can be followed to a depth of 180 feet. The ship’s windlass remains at the bow, and the wooden rudder is largely intact. Surface currents are strong, though the current on the wreck itself is milder.
For divers with the proper certification, penetration of the wreck is possible. Local dive services are recommended for anyone planning to visit the site.
The Vickery was at one time mistakenly identified as a vessel named the Victoria, and it took historical research to properly establish her identity. Her story — a working schooner on the inland seas, renamed and resold, finally undone by a treacherous current and fifteen minutes of bad luck — is a small but vivid window into the age of sail commerce on the Great Lakes and the human drama that ran through it.
Captain John Massey went on to a long career in steam. He died in Milwaukee in 1915 at the age of sixty, survived by a wife, two sons who were themselves lake captains, four daughters, and five brothers who were also lake captains. The river pilot Henry Webber Jr. vanished from the historical record after that night. The J. B. Penfield — the A. E. Vickery — stayed where she fell.
The A. E. Vickery wreck site lies on the U.S. side of the St. Lawrence River near Rock Island Light, in the Thousand Islands region of New York. Dive charters operate from Clayton, Brockville, and other nearby communities.
