ONLINE: Wreck of the Car Ferry Milwaukee

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At 3:00 pm on October 22, 1929, two days before Black Thursday set off the U.S. stock market crash and the Great Depression, the railroad car ferry Milwaukee pulled away from the Grand Trunk slip in Milwaukee, lowered her sea gate, and set out on her afternoon run across Lake Michigan with her hold full of freight cars. Although a tremendous storm was raging on the Lake and other vessels had cancelled their trips because of the gale, her Master, Capt. Robert “Bad Weather” McKay, kept to the railroad’s schedule. The ship never made Grand Haven, Michigan. Days later, bodies of some of her crewmen and lifeboats were picked from the water and a note in a message case was found on a Michigan beach. The car ferry Milwaukee rests in 125 feet of water. She has long been a favorite dive site in the Milwaukee area and featured in television shows and documentaries. The Wisconsin Historical Society completed the first comprehensive archaeological survey of the Milwaukee, which resulted in the nomination of the shipwreck to the National Register of Historic Places