Qualla: Sweepstakes (Schooner)

Sweepstakes (Schooner): Introduction

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Taylor from Stirling, ON, Canada, CC BY 2.0. The water in Big Tub Harbour is so clear that the first thing most visitors notice is that there is a ship beneath them. Six metres down, the two-masted schooner Sweepstakes lies on the bottom with her hull still intact, her centerboard still seated in its box, her windlass still mounted at the bow. Built in 1867 at Burlington, Ontario, by shipwright Melancthon Simpson, she spent eighteen years hauling cargo across the Great Lakes before a collision off Cove Island ended her working life. The tugboat Jessie towed her damaged hull into the sheltered harbour at Tobermory, where she settled to the bottom in September 1885. She has been there ever since -- not lost and forgotten, but watched over, visited, and slowly becoming one of the most famous shipwrecks in Canada.

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Image: Robert Taylor from Stirling, ON, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Sweepstakes (Schooner): A Working Life on Freshwater Seas

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lord of the Wings© from Toronto, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Great Lakes in the 1860s and 1870s were highways. Lumber, coal, grain, and stone moved by schooner because the railways had not yet reached every harbour, and wind was still cheaper than steam. Sweepstakes was a typical working vessel of her era -- a two-masted wooden schoone...

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Image: Lord of the Wings© from Toronto, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sweepstakes (Schooner): The Glass-Bottom Museum

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lord of the Wings© from Toronto, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. What makes Sweepstakes extraordinary is not the drama of her sinking but the clarity of her afterlife. Big Tub Harbour sits at the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula, where Lake Huron's cold, limestone-filtered water produces visibility that can exceed twenty metres on calm days...

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Image: Lord of the Wings© from Toronto, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Sweepstakes (Schooner): Fathom Five's Underwater Archive

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Wilson, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sweepstakes is the marquee attraction of Fathom Five National Marine Park, but she is far from alone. The waters around Tobermory hold more than twenty known shipwrecks, a concentration that reflects both the dangerous geography of the Bruce Peninsula's rocky tip and the sheer vo...

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Image: Dr Wilson | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sweepstakes (Schooner): Tobermory's Quiet Fame

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lord of the Wings© from Toronto, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. Tobermory itself is a village of a few hundred permanent residents at the end of Highway 6, the road that runs the length of the Bruce Peninsula. In winter it is quiet, windswept, and largely shut down. In summer it transforms into a staging ground for divers, hikers headed to th...

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