SS Soo City

Dwight Boyer, Ships and Men of the Great Lakes, Dodd, Mead & Co, 1977

Built by the F.W. Wheeler Co. at West Bay City, Michigan in 1888, the 171 foot SS Soo City had a good career as a passenger steamer on various routes in Lakes Michigan and Huron and even did a season running in Lake Superior between Duluth and Fort Arthur.
 In 1908 the boat was sold to Felix Jackson of Velasco, Texas who intended to use it to carry passengers and freight between New Orleans and various places along the Texas coast. A captain with ocean papers was found, a crew gathered and in November they set off down the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, to make the long voyage down through the Atlantic and Caribbean. After leaving Quebec City, the ship disappeared. Life preservers with the ship's name and other debris washed ashore at Cape Ray, Nfld. mixed with others marked SS Stanley. Had there been a collision with both ships sinking? Nothing else was found, no bodies were ever recovered. There had been a fierce two day storm in the Gulf of St. Lawrence which was considered to be the likely cause of the sinking, but the source of the Stanley life preservers remains another mystery. The only ship named the Stanley, an icebreaker, was in port at Charlottetown at the time.