Sub in Trail Creek in 1845?
By Elwin Greening
"MICHIGAN CITY HAS HAD a long and interesting history of boats of all kinds, from early Indian canoes, through schooners, excursion boats and, more recently, pleasure craft. But did you know that long before many of these plied the waters of Trail Creek, that there were also submarines there? That's right!" And that is how an article in the Old Lighthouse Museum News of June, 1980, began ... "Lodner Darvontis Phillips, the debonair son of Cyril Phillips, who had a shoe factory on the Vreeland Hotel site, launched his first submarine, 'the first one ever on the Great Lakes,' in Trail Creek at the foot of the Old Lighthouse. It was not highly successful and eventually sank, but six years later he launched one and took his wife and family for an all-day excursion on the bottom of Lake Michigan! ... For several months your curator (of the Old Lighthouse Museum) has been researching this story, literally 'around the world,' with such success that later this summer (1980) we hope to have for sale at the Museum a booklet telling the story of the submarine and its inventor, an early resident of Michigan City. Plans also call for a sign to be erected on the grounds and a display inside the building. We are building a scale model of the submarine from drawings for the display
THE TITLE of the article in the 1980 copy of the Old Lighthouse Museum News was "LODNER PHILLIPS' 1845 SUBMARINE" ... "Some years ago," the article continued, "a visitor came to the Museum doing research on the Phillips family and we helped her the best we could. In return she gave us some Zerox copies of a 1941 (LaPorte) Herald Argus (newspaper) with a story on Lodner Phillips. This was filed and not thought of until this summer when we visited the Manitowoc Maritime Museum. Flipping through their publication, ANCHOR NEWS, we found an article 'Lodner Phillips - The Lake's First Sub Builder.' This jogged the memory and the search was on! It seems that when Bay Shipbuilding Corp. launched their first sub in June, 1941, it was billed as 'first submarine to be built on the Great Lakes.' Somebody in Washington, D.C., said, 'No,' citing sources, their research led to an article in the company's publication, 'KEEL BLOCK,' on which 'ANCHOR NEWS' based its story and resulted in the Herald-Argus story. But these left many questions unanswered and so letter after letter was sent to U.S. Navy Archives Div., G.S.A.; Library of Congress; Chicago Public Library; Division of Naval History, Smithsonian; Submarine Library, New London, CN; U.S. Naval College, Royal Navy Submarine Museum, England; Old Military Records Branch, National Archives, and others, including our own Public Library Reference Dept." ...
ALL OF THE ABOVE ANSWERED, this 1980 article indicated, with either information or suggestions for further research ... Meanwhile, the local large file "gives positive documentation of the submarine launching here, some letters by Phillips to the Navy department, excerpts from a book describing his submarine in French and an excerpt from an 1897 English magazine courtesy of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum stating, 'There is no charge, but if any of this museum's staff gets to Michigan, we expect a cup of coffee on the house.' We have not been able to find the original drawings, perhaps forever lost. But we have found out that he (Phillips) was quite an inventive person and an important part of our past. We would like to be advised of any living relatives of L.D. Phillips." ... And how do folks who are staffing the museum currently - or those who staffed the museum previously - feel about Phillips' role with his submarines? ... There is no question about what was said to have happened ... Virginia Bushong, 103 El Portal Drive, Michiana Shores, who is currently on the staff, points out that the scale model of Phillip's submarine still is on display ... And Mrs. William (Pat) Harris, 504 Greenwood Ave., who is the author of a book on Lodner Phillips and his submarines, tells us that one of his submarines sank in Lake Erie and that the other did the same in the Chicago area ... Copies of her book, by the way, titled "Great Lakes' First Submarine" and carrying the sub-title, "L.D. Phillips, Fool Killer." is on sale at the museum ... Its cost is $8.35
