National Guardsmen searching for survivors in the wreckage of the Sea Wing, 1890. The men at left are standing in the Sea Wing’s attached barge, Jim Grant. The Lake City steamer Ethel Howard is in the background.
The July 13, 1890, capsizing of the steamer Sea Wing on Lake Pepin and the deaths of ninety-eight of its passengers horrified Minnesota and the nation. The accident ranks among the most deadly on America’s inland waterways.