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The
Forest 's last voyage began in the fall of 1891 in
Chicago. She sailed up the coast of Wisconsin, bound for Nahma,
Mich., where she was to take on a cargo of lumber slabs. On
October 28, near the Door County Peninsula, she found herself
running before a high sea and a south-southwest gale.
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The
lighthouse at Pilot Island guided innumerable ships through
Death's Door --and
sheltered many crews of ships that wrecked in the hazardous
passage, including the Forest, the Nichols,
and the Gilmore. |
At approximately
9:40 p.m., she ran aground on the reef extending to the southwest
of Pilot Island in the infamous Death's
Door passage. The next day the crew of four and Capt.
George Petersen landed on the island and took refuge at the
lighthouse. Keeper Martin Knudsen hosted them for six days.
During their stay, the Forest lay with her
stern
wedged
into the rocks, and the wind and waves reduced her to a total
loss. The
cabin
blew ashore, where keeper Knudsen's enterprising children
used it as a playhouse.
The
Forest was dismantled on November 2-3, and her outfit
was placed into storage on Pilot Island. The scow was uninsured.
The Forest's last enrollment was surrendered at Chicago
on November 16, 1891. The cause of surrender: "vessel lost."
The
battered Forest lay alone among the rocks of Pilot
Island until the following autumn, when several storms drove
the schooner J.E. Gilmore and the schooner A.P.
Nichols ashore at the very same point.
continued
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