PS Waubuno

[4] Her main purpose was to run passengers and freight from the Northern Railway's railhead at Collingwood to places further north, including Parry Sound and Thunder Bay.

[7] As of October 1879, the Georgian Bay Transportation Company planned to replace the Waubuno with a boat with "more modern engines and boiler" in time for the spring 1880 season.

[7] The ship set off during a break in the weather at 4 a.m. on Saturday November 22 with 24 crew and passengers[11] and a "heavy load" / "heavily laden"[12] with $10,000 of freight.

[18] Somewhat in contradiction with guesses made about what happened to her... in more recent times divers have discovered her anchors and windlass on the bottom off Haystack Rock, and her engine inshore of them.

Then her windlass was torn from her deck, letting the vessel come downwind onto the reefs where after striking her machinery fell through her bottom and her destruction proceeded.

[4] A report from April 1, 1880 described the discovered wreck as located "in a direct line between the 'Indian Docks' and the 'Haystacks' about two miles north of the latter.... As she lies now she shows no signs of having come in contact with the rocks, but the starboard side, from the stern to within about twenty-five or thirty feet of her bow, is burst outwardly, though not completely detached, while on her port side not the slightest sign of any injury is visible.

They brought back with them pieces of cordwood "covered with blood, and the leader of the expedition concludes from that fact that the boiler of the Waubuno had burst".

[22] Later in June another expedition set out and "inspected the wreck and from every appearance of the hull, the impression formed on a former occasion was strengthened namely that the boiler of the steamer had blown up.

It claimed that there were no "indications of her having blown up", and although "the whole deck was completely gone, and some portions of the side being worn away", they emphasized that parts of the boat had "an exceedingly fresh appearance — almost as much so as the day she was launched".

[24] The Northern Advance journal complained that "the Messenger man has never yet visited the scene of the wreck and examined the hull while we have done so six or eight different times.

[25] When the same company's ship Simcoe was lost in November 1880 and similar safety concerns were raised, a local newspaper reported that "Collingwood is getting an unenviable notoriety for sending to sea marine hearses....

Competent judges assert that the Simcoe was equally unsafe...."[26] Legal cases regarding the Waubuno's owners continued in vain in the 1880s.