After searching more than 2,500 miles of the bottom of Lake Superior, the Atlanta—a 172-foot schooner-ship that sank in a terrible storm—has been found preserved in the icy waters just as it had been when it was more than 130 years old. past.
Even the gold letters of the ship’s nameplate are still visible.
“It’s really ornate and still beautiful,” said Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. “It’s rare that we find a shipwreck that clearly states what it is and the Atlanta nameplate really stands out.”
The discovery, announced by the society this week, solves another mystery of what happened to hundreds of ships swallowed by the lake and offers historians a glimpse into the past.
The shipwreck lies 200 feet below the surface of Lake Superior, about 55 miles from Deer Park in Luce County on the Upper Peninsula.
At that depth, beyond what a human diver and sunlight can reach, the water is low to the mid-thirties, a temperature that preserves shipwrecks.
It gives you an idea of what it was like to travel in dangerous conditions on the Great Lakes, for the Coast Guard, modern technology to forecast the weather, communicate with others and navigate.
And society spokesman Corey Adkins said the discovery could also yield descendants of the crew who have not survived a rest.
“A lot of people out there think the Edmund Fitzgerald is the only shipwreck on the lakes,” he said. “While that’s a major shipwreck on the lake — 29 men died — five people lost their lives on the Atlanta.”
More: Mariners’ Church in Detroit holds annual service for shipwreck Edmund Fitzgerald
More: 3 shipwrecks discovered in Lake Superior near Grand Marais after more than 100 years
“Their stories,” he added, “don’t deserve, for lack of a better term, to be washed away.”
There are more than 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, which the society estimates have claimed the lives of 30,000 seamen. Of those, there are about 550 wrecks — most of which are undiscovered — in Lake Superior.
The society also has a shipwreck museum at Whitefish Point.
To find the shipwreck, more than 2,500 miles of Lake Superior was mapped last summer by the Marine Sonic Technology Society using side-scan sonar, a sonar system for detecting and imaging objects on the seafloor.
Multiple sonar sensors — called a transducer array — send and receive acoustic pulses that help map the lake bottom and detect objects.
In this case, it detected the Atlanta.
Records show that the ship sank on May 4, 1891.
Home port was Port Huron, and was tied up with a cargo of coal in tow from the steamer Wilhelm when both ships were caught in a northwesterly storm. The tow rope snapped in the storm. The crew went to the lifeboat.
They pulled at the oars for hours and finally arrived at the Crisp Point Life-Saving Station site. But as he tried to land, the boat tipped over — twice — and only two men made it safely to the beach.
The survivors said all three masts broke during the storm, and video from a remote-controlled vehicle confirmed that.
All three masts broke off flush with the deck and the hull began to split.
“It was tough for them,” Adkins said. “If anyone sees this, reads this, and you are one of the family members – a great-grandchild of the crew – please contact us.”
Please contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Shipwreck Great Lake, the Atlanta, Found in Lake Superior
