The Schooner Fleetwing Shipwreck (And What’s Left of It Underwater)

September 26, 1888. A three-masted schooner carrying lumber slips out of Garrett Bay on the west tip of the Door County peninsula, headed for Chicago. The captain misreads the channel between the peninsula and Plum Island in the dark. The Fleetwing piles into the reef at full sail and sinks in eight feet of water. Everyone aboard makes it off. The cargo of cherry-stained pine is salvaged over the next month. The hull is left where it lies.

It’s still there, 138 years later, in the same eight feet of water. We’re the only kayak operation that paddles to it.

What you can actually see

The wreck sits in Garrett Bay, off Door Bluff Headlands, on the Green Bay side of Death’s Door (the strait between the peninsula and Washington Island). Three things are visible from the surface on a calm day:

• The full keel and ribs of the ship, laid out like a giant fishbone in white limestone gravel
• Sections of the hull planking, still coppered in places where the original 1888 sheathing held
• The mast steps, the iron fittings where the three masts once stood

The water is shallow enough that you don’t need a snorkel to see the structure. Drop your face to the kayak hull and look down. On a flat-water morning the visibility is 15 feet plus, and the wreck reads like a blueprint someone drew on the bottom of the bay.

How a 138-year-old ship lasts in 8 feet of water

Cold, fresh water and zebra mussels. That’s the short answer.

Lake Michigan stays cold even in August (50s on the bottom, 60s on the surface in good summers), which slows the bacterial decay that destroys wooden wrecks in saltwater within decades. The Fleetwing’s pine planks have rotted partially, but the keel and ribs are oak, and oak in cold fresh water can last a millennium under the right conditions.

Zebra mussels are the surprise plot twist. They’ve been a Great Lakes invasive headache since the 1980s, but they encrust the wreck timbers and act as a kind of armor. The mussels die off and leave their shells behind, calcifying the wood. The wreck is partly a wooden ship, partly a shell midden built on top of itself.

None of that is great for the long-term archaeology, but it’s the reason the wreck is still legible from a kayak in 2026.

What the cargo manifest says (and what the divers found)

The official manifest listed lumber. Period reporting at the time confirmed crews salvaged sawn pine boards from the deck cargo over the weeks after the sinking.

What divers in the 1980s and 1990s found in the hull below deck was different. Sections of cherry-tinted hardwood, brass fittings, and personal effects that suggested either a cabin crew with relatively nice quarters or a side cargo that wasn’t on the manifest. Door County in the 1880s was a logging economy with a side of cherry-orchard agriculture, and the boats moving between Sturgeon Bay, Egg Harbor, and Chicago carried a mix of goods that didn’t always make it onto the official paperwork.

Most of what was loose has been removed by divers, by the State Historical Society, or by the lake itself. The structure is what’s left.

How to actually paddle to it

The wreck is part of our Door Bluff 1/2 Day Kayak and Hike Tour. The trip launches from Garrett Bay, paddles along the Door Bluff cliff line, beaches the boats, and walks the path to the pictographs and the wreck overlook. It’s a 4-hour half-day, beginner-paced, with one hike segment.

The other tour that views the same Death’s Door waters is the Death’s Door Bluff Tour, which paddles the bluff line itself. The Fleetwing wreck visit is on the half-day kayak-and-hike trip, not the bluff-only tour, so pick the right one if the wreck is what you’re after.

Conditions matter. We only run the wreck-visit trip when the wind is right, which means a calm Green Bay morning. South or west winds shut it down. We watch the forecast every morning at 6 AM and call guests if we have to move them.

Visibility is best in late June through early September. Spring runoff cuts visibility in May. October trips are possible but the water is cold and the days are short.

The pictographs are part of the same trip

A few hundred yards from the wreck overlook, on the Door Bluff Headlands trail, are Native American rock paintings dated by the State of Wisconsin to somewhere between 800 and 1,400 years old. Red ochre figures, weather-faded but visible, on a sheltered limestone face.

The pictographs predate the Fleetwing by roughly a thousand years. The contrast is the part of the trip that surprises guests. You stand in one spot and see two layers of human history on the same cliff: a Potawatomi or Ho-Chunk hunter who painted ochre figures here in the year 800, and a Chicago-bound schooner crew that sank a ship 50 yards offshore in 1888.

The wreck is not, on its own, the rarest shipwreck in Lake Michigan. There are many. The wreck plus the pictographs plus the bluff is what makes this corner of Door County a real history paddle, not just a sightseeing one.

Other Door County shipwrecks worth knowing

Death’s Door earned its name. The strait has claimed dozens of ships in 200 years, including the Fleetwing, the Joys (1898), the Lady Ellen (1880), and the Australasia (1896). Most are deeper than 8 feet and require dive gear. The Fleetwing is the rare wreck a kayaker can read from the surface.

If you’re a wreck-curious paddler, also worth knowing: the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology program publishes maps and historical context for state-listed wrecks at Wisconsin Historical Society. The Fleetwing is on the list.

What we tell guests at the launch

Most people booking the trip have heard about the wreck and want to see it. Some have heard about the pictographs. The combination is what they don’t expect.

The trip is suitable for first-timers. We’ve had 8-year-olds in tandem with a parent and 80-year-olds in singles, both finishing the same morning. The paddle distance is short. The hike is gentle. The history does most of the work.

Spots are limited because we cap the group small for the bluff-side launch. Same-day bookings are sometimes possible mid-week, but weekends fill out a few days ahead. Book the Door Bluff Kayak and Hike Tour when you find a calm morning that fits your trip.

And bring a hat. The bluff is exposed.

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