Michigan Marvels: The ghosts of the Davidson Shipyard

Bay City — If you take a stroll through Bay City’s Veterans Memorial Park along the shores of the Saginaw River, you might see the ghosts of ships from more than a hundred years ago.

You could even be standing right on top of one of them.  A shipyard that once laboriously produced wooden ships stood on the site of the park.

“The shipyard literally sits under us,” said Don Comtois, a historian with the Saginaw River Marine Historical Society.  

Before the hulking shapes of the ships were lost to history, there was Capt. James Davidson, who started the Davidson Shipyard in 1873. By 1900, he was building some of the largest wooden ships ever made, according to a 1995 report by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin’s State Underwater Archeology Program.

Davidson, who was born in Buffalo in 1841, spent his 20s learning about the shipping business while working on cargo ships that moved between New York and England. By 1870, he began to build ships at sites including Toledo and Saginaw, before settling on a site in West Bay City (before the city was absorbed by Bay City in 1905).

Almost a thousand men worked on the ships in the heyday of the early 1890s, said Comtois.

The ships were built by hand. There was no automation except in the saw mills, and builders could turn out eight to 10 ships in a season. 

“It would take approximately 28 acres of oak trees to build one of those big wooden boats,” said Comtois. 

Even after other shipyards began to build steel hulled ships, Davidson kept building wooden ones. 

“He had a love for it, I think. Like a guy who collects only ’57 Chevys. Why does he do that? He has a love for it and he has a passion. I think Captain Davidson had that passion for the wooden ships. There were still people buying them, so he kept on building them.”

In its 30 years, the yard built dozens of wooden ships, with names like Oceania, Montezuma, and Wahnapitae. The last one launched in 1903. 

Davidson died in 1929 and the yard was abandoned. Several ships, like the Sacramento, sat, rotting for decades. 

“When they covered this yard over, the Sacramento was covered over,” said Comtois.

“She sat here in this yard and over the years she gradually burned to the water’s edge in the slip where she was launched,” said Comtois. “She sat there and over the years, it just fell apart. In 1976 she was completely taken apart.”

Visitors to Veterans Memorial Park can see a piece of the Sacramento on display. The rudder from the 300-foot ship sits in the middle of the park, not far from the volleyball courts where the hull is buried.

“We’re literally standing on history,” said Comtois.

Many other vessels built by Davidson sitting abandoned in the river eventually burned to the waterline. When the water is low on the Saginaw River, you can see the hulls of several big wooden freighters. One of the easiest to spot is the Shenandoah, with her two boilers peeking out of the top of the water.  Built in 1894, the 320-foot wood steamer eventually was abandoned in 1924 after a life of hauling various cargo on the Great Lakes. 

“What we see here is history that will never happen again,” said Comtois.

dguralnick@detroitnews.com

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