Detroit Post (Detroit, MI), Wed., May 27, 1885

Special to the Detroit Post.

ST. PAUL, MINN., May 26 - Eighteen months ago the steamer Manistee went down in a gale on Lake Superior, and all on board perished. Last Sunday afternoon a party of trout fishers, while angling up Fish Creek, which runs into the lake at Ashland, Wis., some distance from its mouth, found a sealed bottle containing a piece of paper on which was written: "On board the Manistee - Terrible storm tonight, may not live to see morning. Yours to the world.

JOHN MCKAY"

McKay was captain of the Manistee at the time of the disaster. The people of Ashland with whom he was in the habit of doing business, carefully compared the handwriting on the slip of paper found in the bottle with receipts and other documents of the late captain, and pronounce the handwriting on the slip to be his without question. The slip of paper has been sent to the widow of the late Capt. McKay for further identification. None of the bodies of those on board were ever recovered, but stray pieces of the wreck were found soon after the disaster, which made it certain that the vessel had gone to pieces while out in mid lake.

[Circumstances attending the loss of the propeller Manistee are still fresh in the minds of navigators. She ran in connection with the Union Steamboat line, carrying freight and passengers between Duluth and Marquette. On the day preceding the disaster she lay at Bayfield. A storm was raging outside, and the propeller India was obliged to run in for shelter at the same place. Capt. John McKay of the Manistee, who was a venturesome navigator, immediately let go his lines and started out into the storm. Nothing was ever heard from her up to the time that the bottle was picked up as narrated above. It is supposed that she sank near the Apostle Islands.]