Following the tale of the Lake Serpent

Earlier this year we learned that ancient ship wreckage was found east of Kelley's Island in Lake Erie.I say ancient since it is thus for Great Lakes ships. It is believed to be the remains of a schooner called the Lake Serpent, which disappeared about Sept. 14, 1829, along with all hands.The Lake Serpent had sailed from Cleveland to the Put-in-Bay area and took on a load of stone for harbor improvements in Cleveland. The ship disappeared perhaps east of Kelley's Island. Although this is called a shipwreck, the popular theory at the time was that she sprang a leak and sank. Others opined that a sudden gale caught the ship unawares and the crew was not able to control her.Two brothers, Capt. Ezra Wright and Robert Wright, co-owned the ship and were on it when it sank with two crew members and two passengers. There was no doubt that the ship had sunk when a steam boat spotted a body floating in the lake between the islands and Sandusky Bay. Then the bodies of Ezra and Robert Wright washed up near Dover in Cuyahoga County, so the loss of the Lake Serpent became a certainty.One of the two passengers was supposedly a Mr. Van Alstine from Huron County. I have tried to more accurately identify this person, but have been unable to. I'd hoped that some references to him would tell us more about the loss of the Lake Serpent. Experts from the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo hope to prove that the wreckage is that of the Lake Serpent, which supposedly had a Sea Serpent carved below the bowsprit. If that piece still exists and can be found, it will provide the needed indentificaiton. The ship was built in 1821 at Cleveland and it is hoped that its method of construction will enrich the world's knowledge of how lake ships were built 200 years ago. There were shipwrights in most every port, but each one had a distinctive technique for ship construction.An 1859 ship incident on the lake may have had a happier ending. In February of 1859, a schooner called William Price was owned by Alexander Clemons and was moored at Marblehead, at the east end of Sandusky Bay. The ice was breaking up and forced the ship out to the open water of the lake. It was presumed that the William Price would show up around Huron or Vermilion, but she was found to be trapped by the shifting ice about twelve miles off Lorain about two weeks later. Four men rowed out to the ship and found her stripped of her rigging, so three of them returned to shore and left one man (Mr. Hammond) to watch the errant schooner.Before they could return with sails, the ship broke loose again and was tossed to and fro by a west wind and by the chunks of ice in the water. After two days she ran ashore about sixteen miles east of Cleveland, allowing poor Mr. Hammond to escape to a warm dwelling.The next day the William Price was still afloat, but was full of water where she had beached. It was planned to pump her out the next day and return her to Marblehead. * * *REMEMBER: My "Just Like Old Times" books are on sale at New Directions Design, 20 W. Main St., in downtown Norwalk. These contain my earlier columns fully indexed and in permanent book form.Henry Timman, an authority on Firelands history, resides in rural Norwalk. Timman