Michigan’s shipwrecks tell stories

In 1678, the French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle, commissioned the first European-style ship built in the Great Lakes.

The 45-ton vessel known as “Le Griffon” was built with local timber and equipped with chains, an anchor and parts salvaged from a smaller ship that ran aground. Le Griffon was launched on August 7, 1679, and sailed through Lake Erie and Lake Huron, past Fort Michilimackinac and on to present Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Loaded with furs and a crew of six, Le Griffon set sail to return, but never did. It disappeared into the cold, fresh inland seas of the new frontier.

In 1975, the mighty steel ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald broke apart in a Lake Superior gale, killing its entire 29-member crew and generating headlines for months to come. The exact circumstances of the sinking still aren’t clear.

The two shipwrecks — one never found, the other located in 530 feet of water on the Canadian side of the lake — bookend 300 years of the perilous history of navigating Michigan’s coasts.

Some are wood, others steel. Some are in waters shallow enough and close enough to shore that visitors can snorkel over the remains or peer at them from kayaks. Others lie hundreds of feet down, below depth even for experienced divers. Some ships went down in flames or storms; others were intentionally sunk.

Even today, with an arsenal of sophisticated search tools available, no one knows where most of them lie.

“There are about 1,500 shipwrecks that are reported to have been lost in Michigan waters based on historic sources,” said Wayne Lusardi, maritime archaeologist for the state of Michigan. “Less than 400 have been found, so there are still over 1,000 that are out there somewhere.” There also are some in Lake St. Clair, the St. Clair River and the Detroit River.

{ Note: Find more information about these ships and more by clicking on the chapters section in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen }

Expand beyond those waters designated as Michigan’s into all five Great Lakes, and estimates reach 6,000 wrecks.

Lusardi also said about 500 airplanes have gone down, including small planes, World War II training planes and three commercial airliners.

The shipwrecks are a boon for recreational divers, drawing visitors from around the country and the world. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula hosts 75,000 visitors each season. Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, a 4,300-square-mile preserve in northern Lake Huron, is the only freshwater marine sanctuary in the United States. Designated in 2000, it is helping turn Alpena into a tourist destination. Visitors can dive wrecks, snorkel over them or take a glass-bottom boat ride to see them.

What spurs them to come?

Dramatic stories of those who survived, those who perished and those who simply were swallowed up in storms or after shipboard disasters.

“There’s a connection between where humanity fits in with nature. The human race wants to be in control,” said Sean Ley, a longtime diver who is development director with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Society. “People can’t believe that Mother Nature still has the upper hand, which she very much does.”

Why so many wrecks?

The Great Lakes offer a treasure trove to shipwreck hunters partly because their cold, fresh waters slow decay of wood and metal. While some saltwater mollusks eat wood, there are no organisms in the Great Lakes that do so. That means even a few wooden dugout canoes used by Native Americans have been found, Lusardi said.

It also means that many of the ships that have gone down are well-preserved. Zebra mussels and quagga mussels, both invasive

species, may cling to wrecks in the southern Great Lakes, but they don’t thrive in Lake Superior. There, Ley said, wrecks are covered only by a thin layer of algae.

Water was the easiest means of transporting items on the heavily wooded and often swampy frontier, and commercial traffic was heavy along Great Lakes coastlines. But storms, rocks, ice and accidents all have gouged, stranded and sunk ships through the centuries.

Lusardi estimates that 60 to 70 percent of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes are due to the hazards of navigating over an irregular lake bottom.

“Boats are hitting rocks, they’re hitting reefs, they’re getting lost on the beaches,” Lusardi said. In fact, shifting sands from year to year can reveal previously undiscovered wrecks.

The Great Lakes’ legendary November storms took down a few ships, including the Edmund Fitzgerald. One vast, violent storm in November 1913 sank 13 ships including the Regina, which carried a load of sewer pipes, Scotch and champagne.

Sometimes, ships collided. One notable instance: the Pewabic and the Meteor. Both were loaded with passengers and cargo when the Meteor broad-sided the Pewabic in Lake Huron in 1865.

“Sometimes it’s fog, but the Pewabic and the Meteor saw each other,” Lusardi said.

Some Great Lakes wrecks were sunk intentionally. Lusardi said lumber mill owners sank wooden ships when they were going out of business after Michigan’s best timber was harvested. Other ships have been sunk intentionally to help stabilize shoreline erosion.

The thrill of the shipwreck hunt

Valerie van Heest describes the first shipwreck she dived to as less like a ship and more like “wet wood.”

But the stories behind the piles of wet wood drew her to explore more.

“There are fascinating stories of heroism and unexpected death and triumph of discovery,” van Heest said.

Today, van Heest, author of “Lost & Found: Legendary Lake Michigan Shipwrecks,” is a leader of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association, which raises about $8,000 a year in public donations to fund shipwreck-hunting expeditions in Lake Michigan.

Sometimes, the group will hunt on the water for days and find nothing. This year it scored big, pinpointing the mostly-intact wreck of the John V. Moran. The 214-foot steamship that ran between Milwaukee and Muskegon went down in February 1899 after ice damaged its hull.

The hunt for a ship, she said, begins with plenty of research. She looks first for primary sources: accounts from survivors, inquest documents, Coast Guard logbooks describing searches or rescues.

In the case of the Moran, none of those were available. Instead, researchers turned to newspaper accounts and witness accounts.

“On top of all that, it’s being knowledgeable in the ways of sailing, the methods that captains would use to avoid storm or collision,” she said.

Searchers used those sources to define an area where the ship was most likely to have gone down.

The Moran’s location was pinpointed by side-scan sonar. The sonar device is lowered into the water and towed slowly across the search area. Sound waves detect objects that are in waters too deep or dark to see.

“It’s like mowing the lawn back and forth, very slowly and methodically covering the bottom and keeping track of where we’ve been,” van Heest said. Images from passes with the device are put together to form a map.

When searchers discovered an object that was the approximate size and shape of the Moran earlier this summer in 365 feet of water, they recruited Michigan State Police to help. They used a remotely operated underwater vehicle equipped with a camera to collect striking images of the Moran.

“What was immediately apparent and shocking is how incredibly preserved the ship was,” van Heest said. “It looked just like it was sitting at the dock waiting to sail away.”

The association has scheduled dives for August and September to examine the wreck further. Only a handful of divers in the Midwest are qualified to dive that deep in cold waters.

“We will be able to penetrate the pilot house, the engine room, the below-deck crew’s quarters, all of the things that normally we find sheared off in a quick sinking,” she said. “We will be able to document the interior of the ship.” No photos exist of the Moran’s interior before it sank; few exist of other vessels from the period.

The shipwrecks serve as time capsules, providing information about ship construction, raw materials being shipped and more.

“Our lakefront economies were built on our ability to transport raw materials and finished goods,” she said. “Our lakefront communities have a direct connection to the water, and the water connects us to the world.”

Shipwrecks also remind us that the lakes are dangerous and must command respect, van Heest said.

“The Moran ran year-round,” she said. “The Lake Express doesn’t run year-round, because we’ve learned to respect what the lake and the winter storms can deliver.”

Here are some places where you can learn more about Great Lakes history and shipwrecks:

•Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, 500 W. Fletcher St., Alpena. The headquarters of the 4,300-square-mile marine sanctuary includes an interactive museum with exhibits about and models of ships that lie within the preserve. A walk-in ship exhibit helps visitors understand what life was like on a Great Lakes sailing ship (hint: not easy). It’s open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily through August; then hours shorten. Learn more at http://thunderbay.noaa.gov/.

•Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, 18335 N. Whitefish Point Road, Paradise. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily through Oct. 31. The museum complex includes the museum, crew quarters and a historic U.S. Weather Bureau building. Admission is $13 for adults, $9 for ages 5-17 and free for 4 and younger. Learn more online at www.shipwreckmuseum.com.

•Michigan Maritime Museum, 260 Dyckman Ave., South Haven. It offers permanent and changing exhibits on Michigan maritime history, a center for the teaching of boat building and related maritime skills, and a regionally renowned research library. It’s home to the Friends Good Will, a replica of a topsail sloop that was involved in the War of 1812 and other historic vessels. Museum admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $5 for kids; you also can separately book on-water trips on the Friends Good Will, the river boat Lindy Lou or an historic yacht. Learn more at www.michiganmaritimemuseum.org.

•Dossin Great Lakes Museum, within Belle Isle State Park in Detroit. Open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through the summer. Learn more at http://detroithistorical.org.

•Alpena: Take a two-hour cruise in a boat with glass viewing ports to wrecks in the Thunder Ban National Marine Sanctuary. Learn more at www.alpenashipwrecktours.com

•Munising: A two-hour ride in a boat with glass viewing ports includes three shipwreck sites, a historic lighthouse, and views of Grand Island and Munising Bay. Learn more at shipwrecktours.com

Built in 1679, Le Griffon, the first European-style ship built on the Great Lakes, went down returning from its maiden voyage.

Loaded with furs and carrying a crew of six from what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin, through lakes Michigan and Huron, its location has been a source of speculation for centuries. Two Muskegon divers announced last year they might have found it in Lake Michigan in 2011.

That’s unproven and unlikely, said Wayne Lusardi, maritime archaeologist for the state of Michigan.

“I’ve been on 17 Griffon discoveries in the past 12 years and only two of them have been shipwrecks,” he said. “The rest of them have been telephone poles and fragments of people’s barns.”

Shipwreck hunter Valerie van Heest also was skeptical.

“What we do know is that in the early 1800s there was wreckage found on the shores of Manitoulin Island in Canadian waters in the northern end of Lake Huron, and right now that is the best prospect for having been the Griffon,” she said.

Among the evidence she cites: The wreckage had metalwork and lead caulking applied in a technique the French used at the time. The timbers were an appropriate size, and tokens found near the wreckage predate the 1679 disappearance.

Lusardi said it is quite possible Le Griffon will never be found, or that it already was found but mistaken for something else.

“Its location is anybody’s guess right now,” he said.

The night of Aug. 9, 1865, was fairly clear with calm water. So it is still a mystery why the Pewabic and the Meteor collided in Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay, killing as many as 100 people.

Both ships regularly plied the same routes. Pewabic survivors said they could see the light of the Meteor for miles.

The Detroit-bound Pewabic had 175 passengers and crew and a load that included 242 tons of copper, iron ore, 202 half-barrels of fish and 27 rolls of leather. The Meteor was carrying lime toward Lake Superior.

The Meteor rammed the Pewabic broadside, cutting a 12- to 15-foot wide hole into the ship, which sank fast. Some survivors jumped to the deck of the Meteor; others got into lifeboats.

A story in the Detroit Advertiser describing the wreck credited Ada Brush of Detroit with saving a fellow passenger whose husband already had drowned: “Miss Brush saw Mrs. Wright, struggling in the water some distance from her, and with great presence of mind she swam to her rescue, pushed a floating spar up to her, and thus saved her from the terrible fate of her beloved husband.”

The Meteor caught fire two days after the accident and was intentionally sunk.

The 249-foot Regina was a steel steamer built in 1907 in Scotland and operated on the Great Lakes by the Canadian Steamship Line Inc.

The night of Nov. 9, 1913, the Regina, carrying a load that included sewer pipes, Scotch and champagne, anchored in Lake Huron between Port Sanilac and Lexington to ride out the Great Storm of 1913 which sank more than a dozen ships.

Top-heavy due to the sewer pipes, the Regina capsized and sank with no survivors. The ship remained missing until 1986, when divers discovered it upside-down in about 80 feet of water.

The Charles S. Price sank nearby during the same storm, and many believed the two ships had collided. The ship’s hulls don’t show signs of collision. Adding to the confusion: Some of the Price’s crewmen were wearing life belts from the Regina.

The Regina now lies within the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, but at the time of its discovery it was not protected. A salvage permit was granted. Divers never found the ship’s safe, but thousands of artifacts, including drinkable Dewar’s Scotch and champagne, were recovered.

In the early hours of June 24, 1950, Northwest Flight 2501, a DC4 with 58 people on board, disappeared during a storm over Lake Michigan en route from New York to Seattle with a planned stop in Minneapolis.

The plane is one of only three commercial airliners to go down in the Great Lakes, and the only one not recovered. Valerie van Heest has been looking for it for the past 11 years, methodically covering 600 square miles of Lake Michigan bottomlands. She has even written a book about its disappearance.

“We found 10 shipwrecks, but no airplane,” she said.

Flight 2501’s pilot failed to report to controllers in Milwaukee that the plane was passing. Police, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard searchers scouring the lake surface for any sign of the plane eventually found an oil slick and an airplane logbook, then small pieces of debris including some human remains. Among those killed were 8-year-old Oliver Schaefer, whose pants washed ashore near South Haven, and Frank G. Schwartz of New York, whose wallet was found. He was traveling to St. Paul, Minnesota to witness his daughter’s wedding.

If large pieces of the plane remain, it will likely be the four large engines.

It’s possible that the plane disintegrated when it struck the water, van Heest said. It’s also possible that larger pieces sank into muck and are no longer visible.

“The third possibility is that we have haven’t looked in the right place yet,” she said.

Everything about the Edmund Fitzgerald was impressive. It carried 25,000 tons of iron ore at a time. It was driven by a 19-1/2-foot propeller, and it was 729 feet long, the maximum size that would fit through the St. Lawrence Seaway.

So were the 45-knots-per-hour winds and 30-foot waves of the Lake Superior storm that sank it on Nov. 10, 1975, leaving the ship in pieces under 530 feet of water and killing its entire crew of 29.

It has inspired song (Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 hit ballad) and speculation. Nearly 40 years after it went down, the cause of the wreck remains unknown.

“Even today, we don’t know exactly what happened because it was so sudden,” said Sean Ley, development director for the Great Lake Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. The museum has the original bell from the Fitzgerald and holds a memorial ceremony each November. “This is the modern day, and it’s not supposed to happen.”

The most widely accepted theory: the ship hit a rock near Caribou Island shoals and started taking on water, then was hit by huge waves. The captain of the nearby Arthur M. Anderson reported two waves that crashed over his ship, putting him in fear it couldn’t recover.

Divers have visited the Fitzgerald, but could only stay down a few minutes at a time in such deep water. The Canadian government no longer grants diving permits at the request of crew members’ families.

Contact Kathleen Lavey at (517) 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @KathleenLavey