Searchers have discovered the wreckage of a luxury ship that sank in high winds on Lake Michigan in the late 19th century, completing a search that began nearly 60 years ago.
Wreck World, an organization dedicated to locating shipwrecks around the world, announced Friday that a team led by Illinois wreck hunter Paul Ehorn discovered the Lac La Belle in October 2022 about 20 miles (32 kilometers) offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Ehorn said in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Sunday that the news was delayed because his team wanted to include a three-dimensional video model of the ship, but bad weather and other commitments kept his dive team from returning to the wreck until last summer.
Ehorn, 80, has been searching for shipwrecks since he was 15 years old. He said he had been trying to locate the Lac La Belle since 1965. He said he narrowed the search using tips from fellow 2022 wreck hunter and author Ross Richardson and found the boat using sidescan sonar after just two hours on the lake.
“It’s a game, like solving a puzzle. Sometimes you don’t have a lot of pieces to put the puzzle together, but this one worked and we found it right away,” he said. The discovery made him “very happy”.
Ehorn declined to discuss the clues that led to the discovery. Richardson said in a brief phone interview Sunday that he learned that a commercial fisherman had caught “somewhere along the line” what Richardson said was unique to steamboats from the 1800s. He declined to elaborate further on how competitive the search for the wreck would be, saying the information could alert searchers to another approach to research.
According to Shipwreck World, the Lac La Belle was built in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1864. The 217-foot (66-meter) ship sailed between Cleveland and Lake Superior but sank in the St. Clair River after a collision in 1866. The ship was salvaged and restored in 1869.
On the evening of October 13, 1872, the ship left Milwaukee in high winds for Grand Haven, Michigan, carrying 53 passengers and crew as well as a cargo of barley, pork, flour, and whiskey. About two hours into the voyage, the boat began to take on water uncontrollably. The captain turned the Lac La Belle back toward Milwaukee, but huge waves crashed into her and burned her boilers. The storm drove the ship south. At around 5 a.m., the captain ordered the lifeboat to be lowered, and the ship sank stern first.
One of the lifeboats capsized on the way to shore, killing eight people. Other lifeboats landed along the Wisconsin coast between Racine and Kenosha.
The wreck’s exterior is covered in quagga mussels and the upper cabin is missing, but the hull appears intact and the oak interior is still in good condition, Ehorn said.
According to the Wisconsin Water Library at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there are 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes region, most of which remain undiscovered. Wreck hunters have been scouring the lakes with greater urgency in recent years amid concerns that invasive quagga mussels are slowly destroying wrecks.
The Lac La Belle is the 15th shipwreck discovered by Ehorn. “It’s another thing that needs to be ticked,” he said. “Now it’s on to the next one. It’s getting harder and harder. The easier ones have been found.”
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