The true story of Captain Claw on Chamber's Island (except the last sentence)

Capt. Claw was the first settler to take up land on the island and was in many ways its most notable and interesting personality. He was a burly, good natured, well informed man of immense energy, and due to his adventures, Chambers Island, his home for a while, had more publicity than any other town in Door County. His first notable exploit was the building of the Sarah Claw, a schooner with a 120-foot keel, measuring 285 tons. This was at the time the largest vessel that had been built in Door County. Up to this time Captain Claw had been engaged in building small sailboats in company with Nathaniel Brooks. He now conceived the idea of building a large freighter. His partner had moved away and the dull times made it impossible to hire men to assist him. But the captain and his wife went to work undaunted. They went out into the woods and felled the trees. Then they rolled the logs up on high trestles and sawed them into boards and planks with a whip saw - Mrs. Claw being perched high up on the log while the captain stood beneath pushing the saw above his head. Then they laid the keel, fashioned the rigs, bent the planking, stepped the masts and sewed and stitched the sails. It was slow work - it took three years - but the two did it all alone. Built her entire from stem to stern and from keel to truck. Iron was expensive so the captain got along almost entirely without irons, pinning her together with wooden trammels.

Finally the great day came in 1862 when she lay all caulked and painted, every rope, hatchway and cupboard in order. Then the honest captain took a bottle of water out of the rain barrel and christened her the Sarah Claw in honor of his excellent helpmeet.

The Sarah Claw went into commission at once and sailed the Great Lakes in quest of fame and fortune. In the first of these aspirations, at least, her owner was successful. In the Spring of 1863 Captain Claw had taken a load of wheat to Buffalo. On his return trip he was overtaken by a furious gale when off Point Belle on Lake Erie. As the boat was running very light it was a mere plaything of the storm. The Captain saw himself drifting helplessly toward the booming shore and expected every moment to be dashed to pieces on the beach. To his amazement, however, just as the crash was to come, a bigger sea than the others came along and tossed the schooner clear over the beach into a marsh beyond. There she lay on her side in the slimy ooze, her rigging entangled in the brush, safe to be sure from the roaring storm but apparently doomed never again to ride the waves. This at least was the opinion of the insurance company whose agent, after visiting her, reported her a total wreck.

Captain Claw stood on the bowsprit ruefully inspecting the plight of his beloved schooner. In retrospect he saw the sturdy oaks and tail waving pines of Chamber's Island. With his mind's eye he saw himself and his wife toiling with dauntless energy and herculean labor to shape those monarchs of the forest into the vessel that lay in the marsh before him. That vessel was to be a monument to all his wife's virtues - to her fortitude in the wilderness, to her endurance in toil, to her youthful grace and her abiding love. Now the vessel lay half submerged in the slime of the swamp, her white decks smeared with black muck. Was this to be the end of her? Was she to lay thus, a hive of hedgehogs and water snakes, soon to be covered with green moss and trailing creepers? No, never! In honor of his wife and bairns at home who thought their father was sailing the great waves, he would make his vessel sail again. Let her meet her doom, if need be, in the roaring floods which was her element, but he would never suffer his vessel to sink out of sight in the mud of a nameless swamp!

There was a shallow bayou or slough in the swamp where the vessel had been tossed. The captain found that after it had meandered through the swamp for some distance the slough communicated with Lake Erie about a half mile away. At that point, however, it was obstructed by a bar whose dimensions utterly precluded its being crossed by either steam or sail vessel. The captain decided, however, that if he could get his vessel to that point he could cut a canal through the bar and thus slip out into the lake.

To appreciate the difficulty of this task the reader must bear in mind that the projected canal was not only a full half mile distant, but that the draught of the vessel exceeded by twelve inches the depth of the slough! However the captain was dauntless. With the help of his crew of six men and some extra men from the interior he got his vessel rounded into the slough. Thereupon he proceeded to heave the vessel for the entire distance by means of her anchors! Some days he accomplished six feet, some ten, some sixty, and on some unlucky days it was found after tugging hard from sun to sun he had gained only a dozen inches.

After this had continued for about a month, Captain Claw had the satisfaction of seeing the bows of his beloved schooner in close contact with the bar. The digging of the canal, although large, proved a light task contrasted with the difficulties over which he had already triumphed. He cut a wide channel three feet deep, then planted his anchors, rove his purchases and waited for an Easterly wind to raise the water. The wind came and the schooner glided smoothly and triumphantly out. Owing to the soft, sandy nature of the bottom though which he had worked no injury had been sustained except a broken centerboard.

In 1868 Captain Claw launched another vessel. the Lewis Day, named after a prominent Green Bay citizen. This vessel was 155 feet long and was at that time one of the largest vessels on the Great Lakes. Captain Claw was not finicky about the material in his vessels. It is said that almost anything that grew out of the ground would go into them but once put in the captain made it stay.

After a few years more of storm and stress the captain gave up seafaring and went South where he to while away his declining years carved a farm out of a Missouri forest. He had a large family but none of them are now in Door County.

Before he left the island he hid his personal fortune for you to find!