James Smithwick was a very experienced seaman who had abundant confidence in himself, and faith in the ship he skippered. Captain of “Algonquin,” his was the largest vessel in the five-ship fleet of the company. But, it was the smaller of the two American-owned ships plying the southern shore of Lake Superior in the early to mid-1840s.

“Algonquin” was a sturdy ship, designed for the battering waves of Lake Superior. Built in 1839 in Black River (now Lorain), Ohio, about 20 miles west of Cleveland, for the Mendenhall & Converse Northern Lake Company, it was a two-masted gaff schooner with a length of 54 feet, and 70 gross tons.

Being designed and built four years before the western Upper Peninsula was ceded by the Ojibway to the government, the ship was not designed with passengers in mind, but rather for hauling barrels.

Mendenhall and Converse Northern Lake Company was a commercial fishing enterprise, organized to compete with the American Fur Company, history records, but that is not accurate. While the American Fur Company was indeed engaged in commercial fishing, it was with the intent of feeding its own employees, while Mendenhall and Converse were trying to establish a fish market among farmers and settlers along the Ohio River Valley.

Both companies had established fisheries along Lake Superior, from Sault Ste. Marie to La Pointe, and on Isle Royale. Smithwick’s job was to drop off supplies to the various fisheries under Mendenall’s company, and pick up barrels of fish and take them to Sault Ste. Marie for transport to the Lower Lakes.

In the spring of 1842, the company president, Cyrus Mendenhall, was aboard “Algonquin,” directing operations himself. Among the tasks he wanted to attend personally was establishing a new fishery on the northeast shore of Keweenaw Point, near the outlet of a small creek in a large, narrow bay.

On the morning of May 24, according to a letter written by Mendenhall years later, he and Smithwick left Isle Royale at 6 a.m. with a partial load of barreled fish. From there, they would make a direct crossing from the island to the mainland, and once there, locate the entrance to the bay.

Mendenhall wrote that the day began well, and as they sailed into open water, a wind carried them swiftly along. But as they went, the wind continued to increase, as they reached sight of the Keweenaw Peninsula. Smithwick then slowly tacked along, parallel to the shore, but keeping a far enough distance to avoid the countless reefs and rocks along the shore. The necessary distance from shore made it difficult to clearly see land through the storm, which had caused waves “half-mast high,” as Mendenhall described them.

Eventually, they saw what they both believed was the entrance they sought, but Smithwick had not seen it before, let alone entered it. He wasn’t sure. That was okay, Mendenhall said, he had a chart of the entrance made by one of Douglass Houghton’s assistants in 1840, and for all they knew, it might be accurate.

Smithwick studied the chart, changed his course, and guided “Algonquin” between two rocky formations. “Algonquin”, at the moment, became the first merchant ship to enter the calm waters of the bay of Copper Harbor. Smithwick dropped anchor at 1:30 p.m.

That fall, Smithwick and “Algonquin” were again back in the bay, picking up the team who had established the fishery near the mouth of what was later named Fanny Hooe Creek. They reported that the fishing was not very good there. Also, they did not believe the soil there would permit the growing of vegetables. That was 1842, the fall the government negotiated the treaty with the Ojibway. Moving with amazing speed, Congress ratified the treaty in February.

The following spring, in 1843, “Algonquin” once again returned to Copper Harbor, this time bringing U.S. Mineral Agent General Walter Cunningham, with a load of building materials for constructing a mineral land agency office, which would soon become called, simply, “the government house.”

Also on that trip was Mendenhall, who had obtained permit leases in both the Ontonagon district and on Isle Royale, and wanted to see them. Col. Charles Gratiot, who had left a party of Cornish miners at Eagle Harbor under the charge of his nephew, Lt. Joseph Hempstead, was also a passenger, as was Cunningham, who included the details of the trip in his report to the War Dept., which eventually became Senate Document No. 250 in 1844. There were others aboard who would also become influential in the development of the Lake Superior copper district.

Captain James Smithwick and “Algonquin” seem to have somehow missed receiving the recognition deserved for their contribution to the opening of the Lake Superior mining district.

Smithwick and his ship were partners in a strange marriage of sorts between man and ship. They were the first to enter Copper Harbor, the first to bring miners into the district, and the first to bring copper out, when Julius Eldred managed to remove the Ontonagon Boulder from its resting place and get it to the mouth of the Ontonagon River, where it was loaded aboard “Algonquin.”

In 1844, the other American ship plying Lake Superior, the brig John Jacob Astor, was wrecked on the rocks in Copper Harbor, leaving “Algonquin” the remaining merchant vessel on the Lake. The following spring, more ships would be hauled over onto the Lake at the Sault, but “Algonquin” claims the honor of being the pioneer ship in opening both the copper and iron districts.