"The steamer Charlevoix stopped at Watt's Pier on Sunday last for potatoes."

So read a brief item in the Enterprise's edition of April 28, 1898.

The ship, whose history is interwoven with Leelanau's, was actually the City of Charlevoix, and that was her second of three different names.

Kansas was the last of three names for the
ship stricken by three fires.

The ship, which was built of wood in 1870, would have already been considered old 110 years ago, but still had 26 years of life left at the time.

Launched at Cleveland, Ohio, as the Champlain, she was originally a running mate of the Lawrence, a similar vessel. “We understand W.S. Johnson of Suttons Bay has sold his fast horse to parties in Milwaukee,” the Enterprise reported in its edition of June 11, 1885. “It was shipped on the Champlain on Sunday last.”

The ship operated on the Chicago to Ogdensburg (New York) route for the Northern Transportation Company, and later, the Northern Michigan Line.

One of the owners of the latter line was David Henry Day of Glen Haven – a man who was to leave a larger than life imprint on Leelanau County.

“Although Day was prominent in Glen Haven’s maritime history, he fell far short of becoming a shipping tycoon himself,” George Weeks wrote in Sleeping Bear, Yesterday and Today. “The Lawrence and Champlain underwent a number of ownership changes in the 1880s, and the extent of his ownership in them has not been clearly established.”

Nothing is more feared aboard a ship than fire and, on June 16, 1887, the Champlain burned between Norwood and Charlevoix in Lake Michigan, leaving only the hull intact. Twenty-two lives were lost in the tragedy.

There were “15 passengers and crewmen who were never identified,” Larry Wakefield wrote in Rail and Sail. “All were buried in a cemetery in Charlevoix with simple headstones bearing only numbers.”

Nearly 40 survivors escaped the conflagration by jumping into the lake and swimming to nearby Fisherman’s Island. The ship’s crew had thrown anything that would float into the water, so there were a number of objects to grab for buoyancy.

One young woman swam to safety with a baby, whose clothing she clamped in her teeth. The baby’s mother, a friend of the rescuer, was one of those lost.

When the Champlain was unavailable for use following the fire, the steamer Vernon was pressed into service – and one tragedy was followed by another.

“Following the burning of the Champlain on June 16, the line’s other boat, the Lawrence, found it impossible to keep up with the volume of freight received for shipment,” area marine historian Steve Harold said. “Within a month an almost new steamer, the Vernon, was chartered from the Booth Packing Company.”

But the boat foundered in Lake Michigan when a “severe storm” sprang up on Oct. 28, 1887.

One survivor was picked up by another ship, but about 30 were lost when the heavily laden vessel went down.

The Vernon had taken on pig iron at St. Ignace, according to Harold and then “at other ports, including both Good Harbor and Glen Haven, apples, potatoes, wooden bowls and barrel staves.”

A contemporary account reported that the Vernon had loaded produce, invoicing “about 2,000 bushels of potatoes and a quantity of apples” at Suttons Bay and Northport.

It was further reported that “Messrs. Kehl Bros. And Copp of Northport are heavy losers by the Disaster.”

Meanwhile, the Champlain was totally rebuilt, being lengthened 30 feet (to 165 feet) in the process. Following the rebuild, it was renamed City of Charlevoix.

A second fire, apparently much less serious than the first, struck the ship in 1894. Again, the ship was rebuilt, including yet another lengthening – to 185 feet.

“She continued in the Northern Michigan Line after its merger with the Seymour Line in 1896,” it was reported in Great Lakes Ships We Remember. “When the new steel liners Illinois of 1899, Missouri of 1904 and Manitou, purchased in 1906, joined the fleet… City of Charlevoix was renamed Kansas.”

Eclipsed by the newer ships, the Kansas was relegated to primarily freight service. The usefulness of the boat was even less after her owners, more or less concurrent with a reorganization, acquired the steel steamer Puritan in 1918.

After a few years of limited activity, the Kansas was laid up at Manistee.

There, on Oct. 27, 1924, it was struck by a third fire.

This time, there was no rebuild for the 54-year-old wooden ship.

There would be no more stops at Watts Pier – or anywhere else, for that matter.