For a century and a half, the depths of Lake Michigan held a secret. Storms and currents seemed destined to keep it that way.
So did the lake’s vastness, which presented a conundrum for those searching for the final resting place of the Lac La Belle, a steamship that sprung a catastrophic leak while crossing the lake in a storm in 1872.
She never made it, sinking in Wisconsin waters. Eight people died when one of the lifeboats capsized.
The passage of time raised the question: Would the ship ever be found?
The answer finally came on Feb. 13, when Paul Ehorn, a shipwreck hunter and diver, announced that he had located the Lac La Belle.
Mr. Ehorn, 80, said he would never forget getting a blip on his side-scan sonar while searching a quadrant of the lake that is roughly 80 square miles and hundreds of feet deep.
“You’re just elated,” Mr. Ehorn said in an interview. “You want to jump up and down. You’ve found another mystery.”
Mr. Ehorn said that he initially discovered the wreckage in October 2022, but that he only recently made public his find. It took time for the team of two divers whom he enlisted — John Scoles and John Janzen — to reach the shipwreck and take photos and videos, he said.
“You’re so far out in the lake,” Mr. Ehorn said. “We had 23-foot waves here a couple weeks ago out there.”
Mr. Ehorn, who first learned about the ship’s sinking as a teenager, is scheduled to present his discovery in March at the Ghost Ships Festival, a two-day event in Manitowoc, Wis., focused on shipwrecks, nautical archaeology and maritime history.
Brendon Baillod, the festival’s chairman and president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association, which organizes the event, said that finding the Lac La Belle was no small feat.
“I was really gobsmacked,” Mr. Baillod said. “I said, How the heck did you go out there and find it?”
The Lac La Belle was carrying 53 passengers and crew members when it left Milwaukee for Grand Haven, Mich., on the night of Oct. 13, 1872, according to historical records. The ship’s hold was filled with 19,000 bushels of barley, 1,200 barrels of flour, 50 barrels of pork and 25 barrels of whiskey.
The ship, which is 217 feet long, featured an elegant main salon, ornate chandeliers, cabins and men’s and women’s seating parlors, Mr. Baillod said.
The steamer encountered rough seas that night during a gale and sprang a leak about two hours into a crossing that should have lasted six to eight hours.
“It was a fast leak,” Mr. Baillod said. “They didn’t know where it was coming from.”
It was around midnight when W. Sanderson, the ship’s clerk, knew something was terribly wrong. The ship began to list fiercely, and the leak flooded the boilers.
“About 5 a.m. it became evident that the steamer would go down,” Mr. Sanderson later told The Port Huron Daily Times. The crew hurried passengers into the lifeboats, and together, they watched from afar as the great wooden ship tilted, then sank below the surface.
It was the second sinking involving the Lac La Belle, which had previously collided with another ship on the St. Clair River between Michigan and Ontario, Canada, in 1866. The steamer was raised in 1869, overhauled and returned to service.
As Mr. Ehorn recalled, almost 150 years ago to the day that the Lac La Belle sank in Lake Michigan, he put his sonar device into the lake’s calm waters. He unspooled about 600 feet of cable.
“I might have missed it,” said Mr. Ehorn, who lives in Elgin, Ill.
The wreckage sits hundreds of feet deep, requiring technical diving experience and special equipment to access, he said. One of the ship’s two propellers was missing, but the vessel still contained some of its cargo, including a pile of barley that appeared to be covered in mold, according to Mr. Ehorn.
The ship’s exact coordinates are being kept close to the vest by those who discovered the wreckage.
“We do not want people out there souvenir hunting before that wreck is properly documented,” Mr. Baillod said.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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