John Burt (Schooner), aground, 26 Sep 1892

The schooners JOHN BURT and GAZELLE were wrecked early Tuesday morning on Lake Ontario. The BURT went ashore near Big Sandy Life Saving Station, which is 35 miles below Oswego, two were lost. The GAZELLE capsized near Fair Haven and one was lost.
      Port Huron Daily Times
      Wednesday, september 28, 1892
     
      . . . . .

      LOSS OF THE JOHN BURT.
      On September 26, 1892, the schooner JOHN BURT, of Detroit, was wrecked three and a half miles south of the Big Sandy Life-saving station on Lake Ontario. Two persons were drowned. The JOHN BURT was a three masted schooner, built in Detroit in 1871, of 348 gross tons. She was bound from Chicago to Oswego, and had almost reached her port of destination when her rudder head gave way in a furious gale from the northwest, and she became unmanageable and was driven past her port down the lake. She was sighted from the Big Sandy Station under a reefed foresail and two head sails drifting towards the shore, heavy rain squalls prevailing. When the weather again lighted up, Keeper Fish, of the station, again sighted her three miles from the station, and judging that she was powerless to contend with the storm, launched the lifeboat in the Creek and pulled across, landing just as the schooner came up in the wind and let go her anchors two miles to the southward, but dragging her anchors towards the shore until the cables parted and she stranded, the waves leaping completely over her, and the crew in the mizzen rigging.
      The life-savers fired a line squarely through the main rigging. The crew, however, did not seem disposed to use the line thus sent them. Two abandoned their places of refuge in the shrouds and leaped into the boisterous waves. Four surfmen, with life lines attached to their bodies, reached the struggling sailors and assisted them to land. The mizzen mast soon went by the board, followed by the main mast a moment later, precipitating the hapless crew into the lake. The life-saving men then, with lines attached, entered the water and rescued three more of the sailors.
      History of the Great Lakes
      by Mansfield