The wooden schooner L.W. Perry was built at the Fitzgerald & Leighton Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company in Port Huron, Michigan in 1870. In 1874 the vessel was valued at $16,000 and rated A1 by the Board Of Lake Underwriters. The official registry number was 15654. The Perry was built for the lumber trade, but also carried coal, ore and grain

March 1872: Aground with a load of lumber on Kelly's Island, Lake Erie.

May 1874: Ashore at Point Au Barque with a loss of $1,800 in grain and damage of $500 to the hull.

December 1882: Ashore seven miles north of Sheboygan and was not released until May of 1883 by the wrecking tug Leviathan.
The schooner L.W. Perry was abandoned at Milwaukee in 1897 after a collision with the schooner H.C.Winslow in the fall of 1896 off Port Washington. The vessel was raised and left in a wrecked condition in one of the slips of the Kinnickinnic River; river pirates looted her cabin and engine soon after. The old schooner was abandoned in the Kinnickinnic River and possibly moved again off the harbor.