Woodworker Patrick McKee has a new display that is prominently located in the Painted Bird that represents the history of the Manitou Passage.
On Christmas Day in 1978, the famous “Lark” schooner washed up on Van’s Beach that was 100-feet long by 16 feet wide.
“Giving you all the ribs and planking and everything from that entire boat,” McKee said. “It’s a funny thing because a lot of times the wood that you got from someone who was a diver, and then they said they took it off this ship. You just had to take their word for it because a lot of people didn’t go get permits and do it the right way,” McKee said.
But McKee wanted to do it the right way and immediately headed to Lansing to try an secure necessary permits because he wanted to craft items with his woodworking skills. It didn’t matter if it was profit, he just wanted to make art.
They went to all of the departments and talked to the head of the DNR. Then he gave Fred Roth, former Leland Township supervisor, a call to see what could be done.
They agree that the township could use whatever they wanted of the items he made.
Shipwrecks rarely make it back to shore. Of the roughly 6,000 vessels believed lost across the Great Lakes, with about 1,500 of those resting somewhere in Lake Michigan, most stay where they sank. The Lark didn’t.
Built in 1855, the 138-foot, twomasted schooner went down in a November 1872 storm and stayed missing for more than a century, until sections of the hull washed up on the Leland shoreline on Christmas Day, 1978.
McKee recognized what had landed on the beach and made sure he got a piece of it, eventually claiming somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the wood that came ashore. After more than a hundred years underwater, the material wasn’t usable right away. McKee had to wait roughly a year and a half before it had dried out enough to work.
Over the 45 years since, he’s turned sections of that wood into grandfather clocks and a small cross, almost always with a charitable purpose attached.
McKee built the clock and ran the auction himself, with proceeds going to Maggie and Nathaniel Gooden, parents of a baby born premature in 2019. Their daughter, Clarabelle, remains hospitalized at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids back in 2019.
Anastasia and Tony Biddix of Suttons Bay landed the winning bid, paying $2,056 for the piece.
One clock went up for auction in March 2022 to support relief efforts in Ukraine; another followed in October 2022, with bidding proceeds directed to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. McKee has run similar auctions on behalf of local hospitals and food pantries as well.
His latest piece took a different path: a large cross built from the same Lark timber now stands inside Cross of Christ Lutheran Church in 2023. Tree to ship to sanctuary, the wood’s full journey adds up to 168 years.
