Mystery Waters of Northern Michigan

Uncovering the cultural legacy of lost craft in the Great Lakes

Sunken ships and lost aircraft draw international curiosity, especially in places like Drake’s Passage and the Bermuda Triangle. But the dark, frigid waters of the Great Lakes also hold their share of haunting maritime mysteries.

Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” brought attention to the treacherous waters of Lake Superior. But thousands of other craft, and their mysteries, remain.

“It’s not that one story is more important than the other. All these people who went down on these vessels deserved to be remembered,” says Corey Adkins, communications/content director at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society.

The organization operates the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. At the museum, visitors can see the 200-pound bronze bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald and other famous relics lost to the lakes.

Estimates for the number of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes reach as high as 6,000. Besides the Edmund Fitzgerald, freighters such as the Western Reserve and the Arlington have cemented Lake Superior’s reputation as a ship graveyard. Yet, lost ships and aircraft are scattered across the bottom of all five Great Lakes, and researchers are keen to find them.

Meticulous Work and Mussel Damage

Research teams often spend days combing the lake floor, working with narrow windows of good weather. “It’s incredibly tedious and boring until you find a wreck,” says Adkins.

Once a wreck is found, the researchers sometimes spend years collecting data on the site before announcing their finds to the public. “We’ll put the ROV down, study it, and make sure we have the full story. We don’t just, you know, blurt it out on Facebook.”

With all the technology we now have, it is getting easier to find wrecks. But that being said, the vast size, depth, and unpredictable surface conditions on the lakes still make locating lost ships and aircraft incredibly difficult.

To find the wrecks, researchers use modern sonar mapping technology and Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). John R. Lutchko, Director of the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute at Northwestern Michigan College, says most discoveries happen with the help of side-scan sonars towed from boats or ROVs. “You're getting a really high resolution detail of the bottom up to 100 meters out on either side.”

To prepare for real-world expeditions in the Great Lakes and beyond, students at the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute train on shipwrecks and unmarked objects in the Grand Traverse Bay.

“We actually have an array of cages out in the bay of various sizes, and we use those to practice,” says Lutchko. Researchers must be experts at setting resolution, depth, and sonar frequency, as well as piloting underwater vehicles. “Is it a plane that’s broken up on impact, where you’re just looking for a debris field, or is it a 300-foot-long freighter that sank 100 years ago? It’s all about what you’re looking for.”

Although Lake Superior is the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes, its cold and invasive-mussel-free waters help preserve wrecks, making them easier to identify. “The wrecks in Superior are relatively free of zebra and quagga mussels, where the other four [lakes] are just covered in them,” says Adkins.

“That’s becoming an additional challenge to people who are trying to identify them, because we've lost the ability to see nameplates and other identifying features,” adds Lutchko. Besides hiding identifiable features, the long-term effects of the mussels are unknown. “It’s kind of sad because we don’t see shipwrecks anymore; we see the outline of shipwrecks coated in quagga mussels.”

Mysteries Remain

Despite advances in sonar and underwater robotics, many lost craft go undiscovered in the Great Lakes. “They estimate that there are still thousands out there that have not yet been discovered,” says Lutchko.

And yet, the mysteries of the past beckon. The wrecks, as Lutchko points out, are important from a research standpoint and for the culture of the region. “You’re talking about people who have lost their lives on these wrecks. They’re culturally significant to the history of the Great Lakes and the history of the region. So I think it’s very important.”

And when it comes to mysteries, we have our own Bermuda Triangle of sorts. Between the Manitou Islands, Fox Island, and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore lies the Manitou Passage. The underwater preserve contains multiple diving sites, such as the Francisco Morazan, which visitors to South Manitou can view from shore. The passage also hides famous wrecks such as the Carl D. Bradley, a 638-foot-long steamer that sank in bad weather in 1958.

Many of the Great Lakes’ most sought-after mystery ships and lost planes are thought to have met their fate in and around the passage, such as the Aero L-39 Albatross that was lost in 1998 on its approach to the Cherry Capital Airport. Of these wrecks, few are as legendary as the W.H. Gilcher. “The Gilcher is the largest shipwreck in Lake Michigan yet to be found,” says Ric Mixter, author and Great Lakes shipwreck researcher.

The Gilcher was a 300-foot-long steel-hulled steamer that sank off the Western Coast of Michigan on October 28, 1892. “They found debris on North Manitou Island that was marked the Gilcher, so it’s got to be somewhere in that vicinity of where it went down,” says Mixter, who says the SS W.H. Gilcher would be the next big discovery to make international headlines.

Wreck hunters and researchers are also actively pursuing the French-built Le Griffon, which was lost in Lake Michigan in 1679. “There’s a lot of nonsense about the Griffon that gets on the air and goes into newspapers, but the truth is, it’s out there,” says Mixter.

(Per a Sept. 2024 Detroit Free Press article, Charlevoix residents Steve and Kathie Libert believe to have found Le Griffon, called “the holy grail” of shipwrecks, in the U.P. nearly two decades ago, and have been working to prove it ever since. It’s a long read, but a fascinating one: freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/09/22/griffon-shipwreck-great-lakes-lake-michigan-steve-kathie-libert/74956091007.)

In his book, Bottled Goodbyes: Final Farewells from Maritime and Aviation Disasters, Mixter investigates the messages in bottles left by sailors during the tragic accidents.

“In the 1913 storm, we found a message in a bottle in Manistee, and the guy that wrote the letter sadly came ashore near there as well,” says Mixter, who believes the message was from a sailor who lost his life during the tragic sinking of the lumber barge The Plymouth. According to Mixter, the message read something like, “‘been in the storm for 40 hours. Goodbye, dear ones. I might see you in heaven.’ And at the very bottom of the letter, he said, ‘The shipping company or the logging company owes me 35 bucks…’”

Whether a wreck or a message in a bottle, each piece of history tells the story of ambition, tragedy, or resilience on the mighty Great Lakes. “For me, it’s all about telling the stories that didn’t have Gordon Lightfoot to sing a song about them,” says Mixter.

Mixter says preserving the memories of the ships and the people lost in the lakes is just as exciting as the discovery itself. “My job is to make sure we don’t forget about the Carl Bradley, which most people had, or the Cedarville, or the Griffon.”

When asked about which discovery excites them the most, Adkins, Lutchko, and Mixter all agree, “the next one.”

Photo of the stern of the Edmund Fitzgerald, courtesy of GLSHS.

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