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the Wreck of the Silver Spray at Morgan Shoals

4900 block of S. Lake Shore Drive

 

www.hydeparkhistory.org/shipwrecks-off-hyde-park

But the shipwreck closest home, and truly a Hyde Park event in its day, was the death of the Silver Spray only 200 yards off 49th Street. There, on Morgan Shoal, on the north edge of what was called Chicago Beach, she met her end on July 15, 1914. Her pathetic remains are still visible from the shore today.

 

The Silver Spray. actually the fifth boat of that name on the Great Lakes, was built in Ludington in 1894 and had at first been gaily christened Bloomer Girl. She was a pleasure craft, as the Tribune called her, the kind which people rode from the Chicago River to the Columbian Expo in 1893, or which later they boarded at Navy Pier for a Sunday ride upon the lake. Pictures of such craft suggest that she probably fit Mark Twain's adjectives for another boat, "long and sharp and trim and pretty."

 

www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140721/hyde-park/ferry-that-sun...

The 109-foot-long ferry crashed in the shallow water of Morgan Shoal on July 15, 1914, on its way south to Hyde Park to pick up 200 University of Chicago students for a voyage to the steel mills in Gary, Ind.

 

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Uploaded on February 10, 2025
Taken on February 9, 2025