The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

miles north of Milwaukee, and offered re- latively good refuge from the storms at sea, assuming that the mariner could safely navi- gate his way through the extended piers. It had been a major coal port since the late 1800's, owing to the Reiss dock facilities there. Hundreds of thousands of tons of coal were received there annually, much of which was carried on Reiss flag vessels. The harbor, however, was occasionally tricky to enter because of the persistant sand bar that appeared regularly at the harbor mouth. Water levels were very low in 1934 and no doubt Captain Hoff was aware that the sand bar could cause his vessel difficulty in the stormy weather. No doubt also there was the remembrance of another Reiss vessel that had come to grief at the harbor entrance just eight years earlier. In a similar storm early on Saturday morning December 4, 1926, the coal laden J.L. Reiss was also heading into the home port for a late season delivery. On that occasion, this 480-foot vessel was under command of Captain R.O. Frankforter, and was just beginning to enter SEP + OCT, 1986 Page 117 the Sheboygan piers with 8000 tons of cargo when a strong blast of wind caught the stern and slammed it into the south pier. The impact ripped a large gash in the vessel. The Reiss' boiler room quickly flooded, and the vessel became helplessly grounded, blocking the en- trance. Another fleetmate, the Otto M. Reiss (i) was only a few hours behind the J.L. Reiss and was also bound for Sheboygan. Because the J.L. effectively blocked the entrance, the Otto had to be rerouted to ancther Reiss coal dock at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, about 30 miles to the north. The J.L. Reiss remained on the bottom for several days, but eventually was raised to sail again for many years. She eventually found the bottom again in 1972 when, as the Sidney E. Smith, Jr. (ii), she was involved in a spectacular collision near the Blue Water Bridge at Port Huron, Michigan. That time she blocked the river for many weeks until the last pieces of her hull could be removed. At about 6:30 p.m., as the William A. Reiss squared away for the final approach to Sheboy- gan, the heavy seas and strong wind caught At the company docks in Manitowoc, WI. after the ship was towed for full in- spection. The damage was extensive and repairs considered too costly, so she was eventually sold for scrap. Author's Collection