Loss of the City of Green Bay

DESCRIPTION: "Since you ask Caruso for it, Friends and brothers, lend an ear." A schooner is wrecks almost within reach of shore. The sailors cry for help, and try to man the lifeboats, but they are too far away to reach in the storm
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1952 (Walton collection, from a scrapbook owned by Charles C. Allers)
KEYWORDS: ship wreck disaster
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Walton/Grimm-Windjammers-SongsOfTheGreatLakesSailors, p. 127, "Loss of the City of Green Bay" (1 text)
Roud #19883
NOTES [145 words]: Although the text is entitled "Loss of the City of Green Bay," there is no indication whatsoever in the song of what ship is meant, except that she was sailing down from Escanaba and that "Caruso" was asked about the wreck.
Walton/Grimm-Windjammers-SongsOfTheGreatLakesSailors says that the City of Green Bay was lost October 3, 1887 near South Haven on Lake Michigan, with the loss of six of seven men aboard. Bruce D. Berman Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks, Mariner's Press, 1972, p. 239, gives the date as October 4 (i.e. the same night but after midnight) though the cause of the wreck is unknown.
We should note that there was a later City of Green Bay, this one a steamer built in 1880, which burned in 1909. But the song seems to refer to a sailing ship going aground. The only real question is whether the ship was indeed the City of Green Bay. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.0
File: WGM127

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