Captain Autterson decided to return, and anchored in Thunder Bay until 10:15 a.m. when Chester A. Congdon headed back to open water.

[1] Despite the success of Merchant, wooden vessels remained preferable to iron ones until the 1880s, due to their inexpensiveness, and the abundance of timber.

[2][3][4] In the early 1880s, shipyards around the Great Lakes began to construct iron ships on a relatively large scale,[4][5] and in 1884 the first steel freighters were built there.

[16][17][a] She set the record for the fastest completion of a ship between its launching and maiden voyage at a Great Lakes shipyard.

[21] Built with an arched frame system designed to create an unobstructed cargo hold, Salt Lake City was equipped with 32 telescoping hatch covers.

[13] Salt Lake City was fitted with side-ballast tanks located between the hull plating and the cargo hold beneath the deck arches.

[13] On February 2, 1912, Salt Lake City was sold to the G. A. Tomlinson managed Continental Steamship Company of Duluth, Minnesota.

[24] In April 1912, Chester A. Congdon was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when she broke away from the tugs towing her and struck the freighter Charles Weston, damaging two of her own hull plates in the process.

[33] While waiting for fog to lift on Lake Michigan on August 10 that same year, Chester A. Congdon drifted onto a shoal roughly 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Cana Island.

[13] She damaged 90 hull plates and around 50 frames, arriving in Superior, Wisconsin, on August 20 for repairs that took ten days to complete.

[35] As Chester A. Congdon was travelling on the Detroit River in October 1915, her bilge scraped along the bottom near Grosse Pointe, Michigan, due to low water levels.

[13][36] On November 5, 1918, Chester A. Congdon arrived in Fort William, Ontario, where she loaded 380,000 bushels of wheat at the Ogilvie & Pacific grain elevators.

[27][37][b] At 2:28 a.m. (EST) the next day, she left Fort William for Port McNicoll, Ontario, under the command of Captain Charles J.

At 4:00 a.m., Captain Autterson decided to head back into Thunder Bay for 7–8 miles (11.3–12.9 km), and anchor until the storm subsided.

[27][37][38] Captain Autterson set a course for Passage Island at 10:40 a.m., with the intention of running for 2.5 hours at a speed of 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph), and anchoring if the fog remained.

[27][37][38] At 13:08 p.m., Chester A. Congdon ran aground on the southern reef of Canoe Rocks, on the northeast point of Isle Royale, her officers not having heard the fog signal from Passage Island.

[32][37][38] The lifeboats were lowered, one of which headed to Passage Island (roughly 7 miles (11.3 km) away) to request assistance from the lighthouse keeper.

[32][40] By the time the salvage crew returned to Chester A. Congdon's wreck, it had broken in two between the 6th and 7th hatches, and the stern had sunk.

[42] On November 29, it was announced that businessman James Playfair of Midland, Ontario, had purchased her wreck for $10,000 (equivalent to $134,510 in 2023), with the intention of raising it in early 1919.