Maria Annette (Schooner), gale damage, 15 Nov 1886

From Out Of The Storm - About two o'clock two schooners were sighted coming down the lake and their approach to the harbor was watched with interest. At times their hulls would be buried out of sight only to be lifted the next moment on the crest of an on coming wave and again plunged down until it would seem as if they could rise no more. They proved to be the schooners BALTIC and MARIA ANNETTE. The former's mainsail was split in two and the latter¦s was not set. They entered the jaws of the piers side by side, but it was soon apparent that the BALTIC was in trouble. She had just got her nose inside of the pier she broached to and sagged up against the breakwater. Her head gear was snapped off but a line from the tug Redford was quickly made fast and what threatened to have been a serious accident was avoided. She was towed up the river where it was learned that her steering gear had given out just as she entered the pier. Had it occurred a minute sooner she would have been dashed to pieces against the east breakwater.
In company with the MARIA ANNETTE she had left South Bay Point at 6 A.M. Shortly afterwards a heavy sea struck the boat which was suspended from the davits and knocked it up on the rail, pulling out one of the davits and dropping it into the lake, where it towed for about ten miles. Twice it was carried by the waves up against the stern of the vessel and stove in a plank through which considerable water was shipped. The rope finally parted and the boat was lost about ten miles off this port. The mainsail was split in two when about fifteen miles up the lake and the squaresail was set. The captain said he never in his experience had seen such a heavy sea on the lake.
The MARIA ANNETTE also sustained considerable damage. A heavy sea which came over the stern and washed the man away from the wheel, tore the scuttle off the cabin; filling it with water. The wheelsman was only saved from being washed overboard by catching hold of one of the iron bars on the cabin window. About ten miles above here the fore sheet parted and the fore boom swung around, struck the starboard rigging and snapped in two.
The B.W. FOLGER, Capt. Dandy, with 8,000 bushels of barley, which left Consecon Friday afternoon, arrived shortly after the BALTIC. he said that after getting well out in the lake he was caught in the snow storm Friday night and ran back, reaching Presque Isle at 10 o¦clock Saturday morning covered with snow and ice and remaining there until 7 A.M. yesterday when he started for here. He says that in his experience of twenty-eight years he never remembers a sea as heavy as that which was running yesterday. He reached here without breaking a rope.
      Oswego Palladium
      Monday, November 15, 1886