The remains of the early self-unloading barge EMBA are located 5 miles east of Milwaukee’s North Point in Lake Michigan. Built as the schooner barge A.C. Tuxbury at the F.W. Wheeler shipyard in West Bay City, Michigan, in 1890, the vessel was towed as a consort to the steamer W.H. Sawyer for thirty-three years of her career. Renamed EMBA (for the Employes’ Mutual Benefit Association) and converted to a self-unloader in 1923, she served the Milwaukee Electric Company for nine years transporting coal between Milwaukee’s lakefront docks and power plants upstream on the Milwaukee River. In 1932, the EMBA was unceremoniously towed onto Lake Michigan and scuttled. Today, the vessel remains upright and intact in 170 feet of water with only minor damage to her bow and much of her unloading machinery extant. As a result, the EMBA’s hull is an important site to study construction techniques used by one of the Great Lakes most important shipyards, as well a superb site to study the development and adaptation of self-unloading technology on the Great Lakes.

State and federal laws protect this shipwreck. Divers may not remove artifacts or structure when visiting this shipwreck site. Removing, defacing, displacing or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime. More information on Wisconsin's historic shipwrecks may be found by visiting Wisconsin's Great Lakes Shipwrecks website.