Even for the Thunder Bay area, a perilous swath of northern Lake Huron on the Michigan coast that has devoured many ships, Ironton’s fate seems particularly cruel.
The 191-foot (58-meter) freighter collided with a grain carrier at night in September 1894, sinking both. Captain Ironton and six sailors climbed into the lifeboat but were dragged to the bottom before they could be removed from the ship. Only two crew members survived.
The cemetery has long been devoid of shipwreck hunters.
Now, the mystery has been solved, officials with the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan, said Wednesday. The Associated Press obtained details of the discovery ahead of the announcement.
A team of historians, archaeologists and underwater technicians discovered the wreckage in 2019 and deployed remote-controlled cameras to scan and document it, Superintendent Jeff Gray said in an AP interview. The sanctuary plans to open the location in the coming months and is considering putting a mooring buoy on the site. Officials have kept the find secret to prevent divers from disturbing the site before video and photo documentation is complete.
Video footage shows the Ironton sitting upright at the bottom of the lake, hundreds of feet down — “safely preserved” by the cold, fresh water like many other Great Lakes shipwrecks, Gray said.
No human remains were visible. But the lifeboat remained attached to the larger vessel, a heartening confirmation of eyewitness accounts from 128 years ago.
“Archaeologists study things to learn about the past. But it’s not the things we study; it’s the people,” Gray said. something to do and lose people.”
The search and inspection involved several organizations, including the Ocean Exploration Trust, founded by Robert Ballard, which discovered the wrecks of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck.
“We hope this discovery helps bring an element of closure to the families of the missing in Ironton, and the communities affected,” Ballard said. “Ironton is another piece of the puzzle of Alpena’s fascinating place in American trade history,” while Thunder Bay’s sanctuary “continues to reveal a lost chapter of maritime history.”
Nearly 200 shipwrecks are believed to lie on or near the sanctuary’s boundaries, which include the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center in Alpena and about 4,300 square miles (11,137 square kilometers) northwest of Lake Huron.
Several factors made the area a “shipwreck alley” for more than two centuries, until modern navigation and weather forecasting reduced the danger, said Stephanie Gandulla, sacred resource protection coordinator.
The late 1800s was a busy period for Great Lakes trade. Thousands of schooners, or sailing ships, and hundreds of steamships transported cargo and passengers between bustling port cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland.
The sacred area is the cloverleaf of the maritime road. Cruise ships to and from Lake Huron and Lake Michigan pass through the nearby Straits of Mackinac. Others headed north to Lake Superior, taking iron ore for steel mills from mines in Minnesota and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“It’s where the up and down ships kind of cross each other,” Gray said. “Busy intersections are where most accidents happen.”
The weather is notoriously unstable – dense fog, sudden storms. Islands and coral reefs peek out.
During the night, Ironton and another schooner barge, the Moonlight, were towed north from the Lake Erie town of Ashtabula, Ohio, by steamboats — a common practice, much like a railroad engine pulling a freight car. the railway. They were bound for Marquette, a port city on Lake Superior.
The steamer broke in the heavy seas of Lake Huron around 12:30 on the morning of September 26. Ironton and Moonlight broke the tow line and drifted apart, with Ironton’s crew setting sails and firing up the engine. It veered off course and ran into the Ohio, a freighter loaded with 1,000 tons of flour, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) off Presque Isle, Michigan.
Ohio soon foundered, a crew of 16 rescued by Moonlight. Ironton remained afloat for more than an hour before going down.
The newspaper quoted William Parry as saying that he and two other Ironton sailors bobbed on the heaving lake for about 30 minutes until another steamer, the Charles Hebard, appeared. Parry struggled as Hebard lowered the lifeboat with some of the crew.
He took out two other Ironton men. But the waves overturned the ship, throwing everyone into the water. Hebard crewmen tossed the line and pulled all to safety except Ironton mate Ed Boswick, who could not muster the strength to continue.
“It’s a powerful and tragic story,” Gandulla said.
So fierce is the claim of another schooner, William Home, far west in Lake Michigan. Six of the seven crew members were killed.
Staffers with the sanctuary, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, took a sonar survey in the Ironton-Ohio collision area in 2017. They detected two images on the lake bed, one later identified as Ohio. Others are more recent shipwrecks.
It took two more years to trace Ironton a few miles. Ballard’s organization provides autonomous surface vehicles designed for ocean floor mapping. After several days of searching, they found a figure who was later confirmed to be Ironton.
A high-resolution scan in 2021 provides more details. The ship was largely intact, Gray said. The masts point to the sky, with ropes and ropes tied to the spars and across the deck. The robot’s camera also showed a lifeboat tied to the stern of the ship.
The sanctuary is awaiting federal and state permits to plant the buoys, which can be installed with weights of up to 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), on the lake floor. Divers can attach their boats to flotation devices and descend to explore the long-lost craft.
“Then we can show it to the rest of the world,” Gray said, “and try to protect it so that our grandchildren can enjoy the site the same way we do today.”