Qualla: PS Waubuno

PS Waubuno: Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark Ebden, CC BY-SA 4.0. Her name meant sorcerer. In Algonquin, Waubuno translates to black magician, and the paddle steamer that bore the name seemed determined to live up to it. Built in 1865 at Port Robinson, Ontario, the side-wheel steamer spent fourteen years hauling passengers and freight between Collingwood and Parry Sound on Georgian Bay. By November 1879, she was leaking at the dock, her engines were failing, her false sides - installed the year she was built just to make her seaworthy - had never been replaced. Her owners at the Georgian Bay Transportation Company had already planned her retirement. But there was one more trip to make, one last load of freight worth ten thousand dollars, and winter was closing in. The Waubuno sailed into a snowstorm on November 22, 1879, and took every soul aboard with her.

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Image: Mark Ebden | CC BY-SA 4.0

PS Waubuno: A Ship Already Dying

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark Ebden, CC BY-SA 4.0. The signs were impossible to miss. Two days after the Waubuno sank, a newspaper report noted she was "by many considered quite unfit for the route, especially at this season of the year." A December account was more damning: the boat had been leaking so badly at the dock the Sund...

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Image: Mark Ebden | CC BY-SA 4.0

PS Waubuno: Into the Gale

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MAS pilot, CC BY-SA 4.0. The lighthouse keeper on Christian Island - thirty-five kilometers north of Collingwood and sixty kilometers south of Parry Sound - was the last person to see the Waubuno afloat. He noted the ship was faring well on her regular course. Then the winds came. What happened next has ...

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Image: MAS pilot | CC BY-SA 4.0

PS Waubuno: What the Divers Found

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark Ebden, CC BY-SA 4.0. The mystery deepened in more recent times when divers discovered the Waubuno's anchors and windlass on the bottom near Haystack Rock, with her engine lying inshore of them. The evidence told a story the newspapers could only guess at: the Waubuno had tried to come to anchor when ...

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Image: Mark Ebden | CC BY-SA 4.0

PS Waubuno: Marine Hearses from Collingwood

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Marshall from Parry Sound, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Citizens demanded a government inquiry into the sinking. They were thwarted. The local Collingwood Messenger newspaper fought to prevent any investigation - a stance that enraged the Northern Advance journal, which complained the Messenger's editor had never once visited the wrec...

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Image: Jim Marshall from Parry Sound, Canada | CC BY 2.0

PS Waubuno: The Sorcerer's Remains

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Marshall from Parry Sound, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Pieces of the Waubuno have surfaced over the decades - wreckage carried by currents, artifacts pulled from the lake bed by divers. A hull believed to be hers rests today in just fifteen feet of water near Wreck Island, an easily accessible dive site where the bones of the sorcere...

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Image: Jim Marshall from Parry Sound, Canada | CC BY 2.0