Located 6.0 miles southeast of Milwaukee’s Breakwater Lighthouse, near Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, the remains of the self-unloading barge Transfer lie in 120 feet of water on the bottom of Lake Michigan. The vessel remains broken on the lakebed, although all construction components of the vessel remain on site. Transfer was launched as the schooner barge William McGregor at the Linn & Craig Shipyard in Gibraltar, Michigan in 1872, and built for the Northwestern Transportation Company of Detroit, Michigan. The schooner barge was towed primarily by the steamer R.J. Hackett as a consort and carried coal between ports on Lakes Erie and Superior. In 1911, William McGregor was purchased by the Milwaukee-Western Fuel Company and renamed Transfer. It was used to transport coal between the company’s coal yards and coal receiving plants, and under service to this company was converted into a self-unloading schooner barge. In 1915, Transfer was purchased by The Milwaukee Electric Railway and Light Company (TMER&L Co.) and used to transport coal from the company’s coal yards in Milwaukee’s harbor to various powerhouses along the Milwaukee River. In 1923, the aging Transfer was replaced by the newly converted self-unloading schooner barge E.M.B.A. Transfer was towed 6.0 miles off Milwaukee and sunk.

Today, the vessel sits upright and broken on the lake bottom with all of its hull components extant and artifacts located within its hull As one of only three known and two remaining converted self-unloading barges in Wisconsin waters, Transfer provides historians and archaeologists the rare chance to study the construction of the vessel, its conversion to a self-unloading barge, and the mechanics of the self-unloading equipment used on board.

Wisconsin Shipwrecks