Build Date
1873
Boat Builder
Septimus Meiklejohn
Length
60.6 Feet
Beam
17.3 Feet
Building Lake Erie
Septimus Meiiklejohn built Lake Erie in Omaha in 1873. She started life as a fore-and-aft schooner rigged deck scow owned by the builder himself Septimus Meiklejohn, Geoge Spencer and William Henry. Lake Erie made history as the first registered scow built in NZ starting a trend that would take over the waterways of NZ in the following years.
Although new to NZ the scow design was based on American vessels. As such Septimus Meiklejohn took advice from the American Captain Geoge Spencer when he was building Lake Erie. She was built with pivoting lee boards, but later scows would switch to centerboards and she had a square stern and bluff bow. She is said to have been very slow with Davey Darroch recalling a story where the boats builder and owners were feeling pretty good about themselves as they sailed up the Firth of Thames at night. They realised they were catching a light ahead of them and thought they were making a speedy journey but come morning they saw what they had caught up to – a cutter towing a large boiler.
Weight
27.09 GT -NT
Draught
3.4 Feet
Official No.
66560
Lake Erie’s Short Tradinf Life
Lake Erie was initially used in the timber and firewood trade as such her bulwarks were adapted by partially cutting them away for loading and unloading logs. She could carry 80 tons of cargo and her first load was kauri pit props for the Thames Goldfields. Being able to land in shallow waters Lake Erie was much quicker and more efficient than the previous trade vessels which needed a wharf or they would unload from off shore. She could travel right up to the mills and unload direct to them.
Despite Lake Erie’s seeming success transporting thousands of feet of timber to Auckland from Orewa in 1879 she would only survive six years of work. On the 5th June 1879 Lake Erie sprung a leak under the master Henry Harly who ran her ashore. The weather was less than ideal and she would end up wrecked at Andersons Cove. Luckily all her crew survived.
References
To research Lake Erie we used the book A History of New Zealand Scows and their Trades by David Langdon.
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