Cargo ship that sank in 1894 found in Lake Huron
The Ironton, a ship that sank in Lake Huron in 1894, has finally been found after eluding searchers for more than a century.
The 191-foot cargo ship made its final voyage after it collided with another freighter off the coast of northeastern Michigan on a windy night in September 1894.
The other ship, the Ohio, quickly sank, and its crew were saved by the Moonlight, a nearby towing barge.
The Ironton started sinking about an hour after the collision. The captain and six crewmen got onto a lifeboat, but it was dragged underwater before they could detach it from the ship. Only two sailors survived.
The location of the ship’s watery grave had gone undiscovered since that fateful night until now.
Officials with Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary said Wednesday they’d found the wreck, according to Associated Press.
Superintendent Jeff Gray said a group of historians, underwater archaeologists and technicians found the wreckage in 2019 and began taking video and photos to document the site, which has been kept secret, so divers do not disturb the wreckage before the sanctuary finishes its work.
Eventually, they hope to place a mooring buoy on the surface to mark the location.
Gray said the boat lies hundreds of feet beneath the surface but well preserved by the cold water, similar to other Great Lakes shipwreck sites.
While no human remains have been observed, the lifeboat remains tethered to the Ironton.
“Archaeologists study things to learn about the past. But it’s not really things that we’re studying; it’s people,” Gray said. “And that lifeboat … really connects you to the site and reminds you of how powerful the lakes are and what it must have been like to work on them and lose people on them.”
The sanctuary area is believed to be home to more than 200 shipwrecks over about 4,300 square miles.
The Thunder Bay Sanctuary “continues to reveal lost chapters of maritime history,” said Robert Ballard, who discovered the locations of the Titanic and the Nazi battleship Bismarck.
Before modern forecasting techniques became commonplace, the Great Lakes shipping lanes were no stranger to wrecks.
On the night the Ironton sank, the same storm caused the William Home and six of its seven crewmen to be lost in Lake Michigan.