Qualla: The Alvin Clark: A Schooner Raised from the Deep and Lost to the Air

The Alvin Clark: A Schooner Raised from the Deep and Lost to the Air: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For 105 years, the schooner Alvin Clark lay perfectly preserved at the bottom of Green Bay, her hull intact, her timbers sound, the cold low-oxygen water acting as a kind of accidental museum. When divers found her in 1967, she was a time capsule from the Civil War era, complete down to a sailor's stenciled name belowdecks. Then someone pulled her to the surface, and the clock started ticking. Within 25 years, the ship that had survived a century underwater would be demolished to make way for a parking lot. It is one of the Great Lakes' great ironies: the thing that nearly destroyed the Alvin Clark -- sinking to the bottom of the bay -- turned out to be the only thing keeping her alive.

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The Alvin Clark: A Schooner Raised from the Deep and Lost to the Air: Built for Lumber, Lost to a Squall

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Alvin Clark was built around 1846 or 1847, likely by shipmaker John Clark, who named the two-masted schooner after his son. Under her first owner, Clark used her to haul salt. When he sold her in 1852 to her second owner, Captain William M. Higgie of Racine, Wisconsin, she be...

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The Alvin Clark: A Schooner Raised from the Deep and Lost to the Air: The Mystery Ship Surfaces

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1967, a diver named Frank Hoffman discovered the wreck and was astonished by what he found. The ship was completely intact, her hull and timbers preserved by the frigid, oxygen-starved waters of Green Bay. A stencil made belowdecks by one of her original sailors positively ide...

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The Alvin Clark: A Schooner Raised from the Deep and Lost to the Air: Death by Open Air

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

But the very act of saving the Alvin Clark sealed her fate. Freed from the cold, low-oxygen waters that had kept her timbers sound for a century, the ship immediately began to deteriorate. The wood that had survived since the 1840s started to rot, crack, and crumble in the open a...

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The Alvin Clark: A Schooner Raised from the Deep and Lost to the Air: From Historic Landmark to Parking Lot

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1994, the Mystery Ship Seaport and the remains of the Alvin Clark were demolished. The site was cleared and paved over as a parking lot. The ship was removed from the National Register of Historic Places on June 10, 2020, a final administrative closing of the book. Today, noth...

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