The Lexington was a grand wooden schooner with two masts that was built sometime between 1835 and 1836. It would sail for a decade before it met its untimely demise on the waters of Lake Erie on a cold November day.
It seemed that the ship would withstand the tests and trials of time, particularly after it survived a collision in 1957 and ran aground several times in 1958. However, by November 1958, the ship’s luck had run out.
The SS Samuel Mather wreck is one of the most recent shipwrecks in Lake Superior, having occurred in November 1981 about 20 miles off the coast of Whitefish Bay. Known as the Graveyard of the Great Lakes, the conditions in this part of Lake Superior are known to be treacherous.