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 The Wreck of the Lucinda Van Valkenburg
The namesake family arrived early in Niagara County’s history. Daniel Van Valkenburgh (1827-1903) came in 1830 and engaged in a series of businesses that brought him to the forefront of area industry. Living most of his adult life in Lockport, Van Valkenburg operated a sawmill and built ships that conducted a lumber trade throughout the Great Lakes. Daniel’s wife, Lucinda, was also of early pioneer stock. It would seem that the name Van Valkenburg was not a good omen when it came to maritime disasters. Actually several vessels bearing the family name were built and sunk over several decades in the 19th century. The schooner Lucinda Van Valkenburg, built in 1866 in Tonawanda, left Chicago for Buffalo with a cargo of 30,000 bushels of grain. The ship was driven from her course in heavy winds and went aground with a cargo of grain on Lake Huron in a big storm in October of 1871. Undeterred by the disaster, the family christened another schooner the Lucinda Van Valkenburg. This vessel met her watery demise loaded with coal on Thunder Bay in June of 1887. News reports of the time noted she was “bound up with a full cargo of coal and was running with a free sheet; wind southeast and heavy. She sunk in a very short time after the crew had got into the yawl boat and was afterward picked up by the Lehigh.”
Douglas Farley, Director |
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Gordon Lightfoot elevated “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” to national prominence with his song of the same name. Sad to say, no balladeer was on hand when the Van Valkenburg met a similar fate on the Great Lakes.