Shipwreck · Lake Superior · Fire
USS Essex
An enterprise-class gunboat built in 1874, wrecked on Lake Superior. The record: “Burned to the waterline.” The wreck is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The vessel
On the record
- Type
- Enterprise-class gunboat
- Builder
- Donald McKay; Kitter Naval Yard
- Launched
- 1874
- Length
- 185 ft (56 m)
- Beam
- 35 ft (11 m)
- Fate
- Burned to the waterline
- Wreck site
- Minnesota Point, Duluth, Minnesota
- National Register
- Listed 14 April 1994 · ref. 94000342
- Lake
- Lake Superior
- Coordinates
- 46.7128° N, 92.0286° W
On the bottom nearby
Nearest Superior wrecks
- Thomas Wilson5.2 mi · lost 1902
- Mayflower6.3 mi · lost 1891
- SS Onoko15 mi · lost 1915
- SS Robert Wallace17 mi · lost 1902
- Niagara (1904)20 mi · lost 1904
- SS Benjamin Noble23 mi · lost 1914
Straight-line distance between published positions.
By boat
Closest launches
- Loons Foot Landing0.9 mi
- Barkers Island Marina1.4 mi
- Brighton Beach8.8 mi
- McQuade Safe Harbor13 mi
On the horizon
Nearest lights
On shore
Worth the stop
- North Shore Scenic Drive — Highway 6127 mi · drive
Source
Vessel facts on this page come from the infobox of the English Wikipedia article USS Essex (1874), retrieved 2026-10-11. We print the fields as recorded and add nothing; a missing field means the record is silent. Tonnage and dimensions were often measured more than one way in their day, so they can differ between sources.
Chart shoreline generalized from Natural Earth (public domain). Not for navigation. Something wrong or missing? Write to contact@greatamericanlakes.com.