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NOV * DEC, 1979 Page 151 SUNKEN SCHOONER MAY HOLD SECRETS by CARL A. NORBERG and WAYNE D. WEED Author's note: This article appeared in the Holland Sentinel, and it is reprinted here with our appreciation to them for permission to use it. Resting on the sandy bottom of the Kalama- zoo River in its old channel close to Lake Michigan lies the sturdy hull of the 30-ton schooner Condor, once a familiar visitor to the ports along the Michigan and Wisconsin shores. From 1871 to 1904 she carried a multitude of trade goods below decks about the size of a 40-foot truck trailer you see barrelling down the modern highways today. In those early days almost impenetrable wagon trails made transport all but hopeless. Railroads were far apart, but the free waters of Lake Michigan provided the perfect pathway for the two-masted schooner Condor. Not only did she fill her cargo space with any goods that could be obtained, but she often carried a ponderous deck load of lumber, shingles, peach baskets or the like, adding a bit more income for mama and the kids athome. Most- ly, she was a family boat, sailed by her owner and crewed by one or two of the family of neighbors. When built at the Olson-Roth shipyards at Sheboygan, Wisconsin in 1871, the Condor probably cost $2,000.00 which might have been equal to about two thousands days of common labor or sailor's pay, the going rate. Passing from one family to another, she finally found herself moored to a dock in the Kalama- zoo River at Fishtown, near the buried village of Singapore, on April 1, 1904. She was about to make her first trip of the season when an avalanche of ice floes swept down stream and beached her hull.Old age was upon her anyway, and her owner, Benson A. Ingraham of South Haven, Michigan abandoned the vessel and a deck load of cordwood which, incidentally, provided needy souls with fire wood for several seasons. It would seem that Captain Ben Randall of South Haven bought Courtesy of Saugatuck Woman's Club The dying schoner CONDOR, awash in the Kalamazoo River before she slipped below the surface in 1906.