Flashback: Wyandotte schooner was fixture on Coast for 30 years

On Jan. 26, 1904, the federal deputy collector of customs, J.A. Tucei, measured a new schooner for registration.

The 21-ton schooner measured 54.6 feet in length, 18.2 feet in breadth, and 3.6 feet in the hold.

It was named Wyandotte. Here the schooner is pictured circa 1909 unloading a catch of oysters.

Biloxi boat-builder Casmir Harvey built the vessel for Biloxi seafood-industry pioneer William Gorenflo. Gorenflo's interest in Native American history is reflected by the names he gave his schooners. The Wyandotte tribe, originally spelled Wyandot, resided on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. Descendants later moved into Oklahoma and Michigan.

The Wyandot and Huron were one and the same tribe. Huron is the French name for Wyandot. Other schooners Gorenflo named for Native American tribes between 1901 and 1905 were the Algonquin, Sioux, Arapaho, Huron and Tuscarora.

Gorenflo sold the Wyandotte to the Dunbar Dukate Packing Co. in Violet, La., about 1910. The Wyandotte was never motorized; sails remained her only mode of propulsion throughout her 34 years of oystering and shrimping. When no longer useful, the old schooner was abandoned somewhere in a lake or river in 1938.

Murella H. Powell, a local historian, writes the weekly Flashback column. Do you have a local photograph to submit to Flashback? It can be of any subject or event in the Coast's distant or recent past. Please send a description with your name, address and daytime phone number to Flashback, the Sun Herald, P.O. Box 4567, Biloxi MS 39535; or call 896-2424; or email living@sunherald.com.

This story was originally published March 5, 2016 at 7:22 PM with the headline "Flashback: Wyandotte schooner was fixture on Coast for 30 years ."