Chapter 5
Lost Outboard Recovered after Seventy Years
In the summer of 1932, resort owner and northwoods fishing guide Harry Jones lost his prized Caille (pronounced “cail”) outboard motor. This Caille Liberty model outboard, with the long shaft that Jones liked so much because it enabled great access to shallow bays and creeks, sank to the bottom of Pickerel Lake near Eagle River in Vilas County.
Daughters Shirley Sleight and Dorothy Uthe, both now living in the small town of Mercer in Iron County, were just young children at the time, but they remember the incident as if it happened yesterday.
“We dove into the lake for three days looking for the motor,” Uthe recalled. “But it was never found.”1
Jones had allowed one of the “sports” at his Pickerel Lake resort to use the outboard, something he rarely did, according to his daughters. Somehow the boat rocked or flipped and the motor, not adequately clamped to the boat's transom, slipped off and sank into the lake.
The story of the lost Caille outboard would have ended there, back in the summer of 1932, if there hadn't been a stroke of luck that sent the old outboard on a remarkable odyssey.
After resting more than half a century on the bottom of Pickerel Lake, the outboard was snagged by a fisherman in the late 1990s and brought to the surface. Not recognizing the value of the find, the fisherman brought the outboard to the local dump. From there, the dump custodian, who liked to take home and tinker with potentially useful items, retrieved the Caille and brought it home.
In a unique coincidence, Dorothy Uthe, a friend of the dump custodian, stopped by to visit one day and happened to see the old outboard. Uthe immediately recognized the old Caille as the one she and her sister had so diligently searched for many years before.
The outboard now has come full circle. It has been returned to the family that originally owned it. In amazingly good condition, it is now located at the Mercer Railroad Depot Museum in downtown Mercer, on display for anglers and other visitors to enjoy.
The Detroit-based Caille Perfection Motor Company, founded in 1910, built inboard marine engines, early factory racing outboards, and outboards for fishing boats.2 The Liberty model's long, direct-drive shaft for fishing boats became a trademark, and the company's advertising slogan for the Liberty was, “Drives your boat where e'er'twill float.” A Liberty sold for about seventy-five to eighty-five dollars.
The production of Caille outboards was discontinued in 1935.3