Town of Holland, Sheboygan County, WI. – The Wisconsin Historical Society announces the listing of the Advance Shipwreck (near the Town of Holland, Marinette County) on the State Register of Historic Places.
Built in Milwaukee in 1853, Advance operated in the Great Lakes lumber and grain trades throughout its career. In September of 1885, the vessel capsized southeast of Sheboygan. The captain, four crewmembers and two passengers made it to the vessel’s yawl, but it sank within 200 feet of shore when the small boat overturned in the crashing surf, leaving only one survivor.
Today, the vessel sits upright and broken on the lake bottom with most of its hull components extant with artifacts located within the hull, including the vessel’s centerboard, windlass, bowsprit and jibboom. The Advance shipwreck provides historians and archaeologists the chance to study early schooner construction.
The State Register is Wisconsin’s official list of state properties determined to be significant to Wisconsin’s heritage. The State Historic Preservation Office at the Wisconsin Historical Society administers both the State Register and National Register in Wisconsin.
State and federal laws protect this shipwreck. Divers may not remove artifacts or structure when visiting this site. Removing, defacing, displacing, or destroying artifacts or sites is a crime. More information on Wisconsin’s historic shipwrecks may be found by visiting Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Shipwrecks website: https://www.wisconsinshipwrecks.org/Home#anchor3.
To learn more about the State and National Register programs in Wisconsin, visit: www.wisconsinhistory.org.
