Her intact wreck is a rare of example of wooden freighters that plied the Great Lakes and she is a popular scuba diving site.

Shipwreck historian Frederick Stonehouse wrote, "The Mather is a rare example of a type of freighter that has long since disappeared from the Great Lakes.

[2] The Mather had a series of mishaps and changes in ownerships after she was launched in Cleveland on 7 April 1887 for her first owners, R. John W. Moore, et al. On 20 October 1887 when she was bound from Sandusky, Ohio to Duluth, Minnesota, the tug Mystic towed her to Sault Ste.

[4] On 22 November 1891 at 2:00 am, the wooden Mather was downbound from Duluth, Minnesota for Buffalo, New York with a load of 58,000 bushels of wheat when she was rammed on the starboard side near the aft hatch by the steel package freighter Brazil in a thick, heavy fog in Whitefish Bay 8 miles (13 km) north of Point Iroquois.

The crew was picked up by the Brazil and were later transferred to the steamer Parks Foster for transport to Sault Ste.

The Brazil proceeded to Duluth with her load of coal and was found to have 3 frames and a stringer broken from the collision.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment 1992 raid on the GLSHS offices and Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum included seizure of artifacts that were illegally removed from the Samuel Mather in the 1980s.

[7] Although the Mather is not the deepest dive in the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve, she claimed the life of three scuba divers, one in 1998 and one in 1999,[8] and the third in 2012.