(This article by Gary MacDonald originally appeared in GAM on Yachting June 2004.)

The steam propeller ship Myles was the largest ship on the Great Lakes when she went down the launch ways in Hamilton in 1883. Built for the newly enlarged Welland Canal, she was 175 feet long – even longer than the famous schooner Bluenose. Laden with 42,000 bushels of wheat from Duluth, Myles drew fourteen feet of water as her stovepipe stack belched smoke through the Lower Gap and approached Kingston’s busy waterfront.

The granite hummock a mile off today’s Kingston Yacht Club rose to within ten feet of the surface in November 1886. It was as yet unmarked.

The Myles had gained an early reputation as an unlucky ship, even by the standards of her day. In her first season, she sunk a barge at Oswego. Just a year before, moments off the dock in Duluth, her high-pressure steam cylinder exploded, killing both her engineers.

Her captain, Thomas Green, who had taken command only that spring was now at the wheel as Myles approached the busy waterfront. Her crew calmly readied dock lines and prepared to come alongside.

She struck the rock with the violence of a locomotive. The brutal force of the impact heeled her dramatically to port. Startled onlookers expected her to capsize before their eyes. Below, her oak planking had been crushed and pulverized for 25 feet back from the stem along her starboard side – even her frames were wrenched. In passing, her huge cast iron propeller caught a section of plank and flung it high in the air. 

As Myles settled back on an even keel, a stunned Captain Green immediately received word that water was rising below. Unless he acted quickly, Myles would soon sink.

Gripping the wheel, he called for steam and resumed his original course.  For the next tense minutes, a rapidly settling Myles closed the mile distance to an open slip at the Kingston Foundry, near the present Marine Museum of the Great Lakes.  With every passing second her forward way forced more lake water through the gaping hole. At last, neatly in the slip, she struck the mud, heeled sharply and settled to the harbour bottom with her upper deck partially awash.

Steam pumps were soon working frantically to remove enough wheat to stop her from bursting as the cargo swelled. But the next day a November gale rose and the pounding waves damaged her badly. Much of her lighter superstructure was swept away. Then a schooner collided with her and knocked her smoke stack down. It was thought that Myles was a total loss. Yet her owners worked tirelessly through the winter and into the spring to refloat the uninsured hull. Incredibly, when Myles cleared Kingston for the dry dock at Port Dalhousie in June 1887, she left under her own steam.

That same summer, the fledgling Dominion government placed a new buoy in Kingston harbour to mark what has ever since been known as the familiar Myles Shoal.