Mooring of the Monkey Wrench

Just off Amherst Island on the east side is a ships’ graveyard containing at least nine scuttled hulks. In 1925 The Donnelly Wrecking Company had the contract to remove some rotting hulls from Kingston’s inner harbor below the Lasalle Causeway. Three of the derelicts had belonged to the Canada Steamship Lines, but were abandoned when they were no longer fit for service. They were the Mapleglen, Maplegreen and Maplegorge, and the local paper mentions them being taken out and sunk starting in June. 

To date only one of these ships has been tentatively identified and it is the Mapleglen, originally built in 1887 as the Wyoming in Buffalo, New York, for M.M. Drake. With a length of 250 feet, 41 feet beam, and a depth of hold of  14.6 feet she was a typical wooden steamer of the 1880’s, carrying cargoes of grain, coal, and ore throughout the Great Lakes. Many of the others, similar in size and condition, have been given names like the Titanic, Lusitania, Queen Mary, Empress of Ireland, Monkey Wrench and the Glendora, in order to be able to tell them apart. Also in the graveyard is the iron-hulled paddle wheeler Cornwall, removed from Portsmouth harbor and sunk circa 1930.

During the summer of 2003 GLUE members relocated the Empress and Monkey Wrench with the assistance of side scan sonar and some old loran numbers. When the wrecks were found it was decided to place  a mooring was on the monkey wrench in conjunction with POW mooring director Jim Brandeau. Thanks to all the were involved.