Photos reveal the remains of a steamer that sank in Lake Michigan 154 years ago
Shipwreck experts revealed Sunday that they have found the remains of a boat that sank in Lake Michigan more than 150 years ago.
Illinois shipwreck hunter Paul Ehorn, 80, completed a 60-year mission when his team with Shipwreck World found a shipwreck confirmed to be the Lac la Belle, which disappeared in Lake Michigan on Oct. 13, 1872.
Ehorn, who dreamed of finding the ship when he was 20, said his team first found the wreckage in October 2022 about 20 miles offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The team, however, waited to announce its discovery until it was able to create a three-dimensional video model of the ship, with the team able to complete the work after visiting the wreck site last summer.
While the exterior of the ship is covered in quagga mussels and the upper rooms are gone, Ehorn said the ship looks intact and the oak interior remains in good condition.
Ehorn declined to discuss all the clues that led to the discovery of the ship, but revealed that the biggest tip came in 2022 when he spoke with fellow hunter and author Ross Richardson.
After finding a clue, Ehorn and his team surfaced off the coast of Wisconsin and were able to locate the vessel after just two hours of sonar searching.
“It’s kind of a game, like solving a puzzle. Sometimes you don’t have a lot of pieces to put together a puzzle, but this one worked and we got it right then,” he told the Associated Press.
Richardson said he learned about an object found “somewhere” by a commercial fisherman, an expert describing the object as something found directly on steamships from the 1800s.
Like Ehron, Richardson declined to share more details about the findings.
The Lac La Belle was a luxury liner built in 1864, in Cleveland, Ohio, with a 217-foot main beam, according to Shipwreck World.
The boat sailed between Cleveland and Lake Superior, but sank in St. Clair River in 1866 after a wreck.
Raised after three years and refitted, the ship was en route to Grand Haven, Michigan, on the night of a severe storm.
About two hours into the journey, the ship – which was carrying 53 passengers and a cargo of barley, pork, flour and whiskey – sprung a leak.
The captain tried to return the Lac La Belle to Milwaukee, but huge waves hit the boat, turning off its boilers.
At around 05:00 the next day, the captain ordered the lifeboats to be lowered as the ship went down stern first, one of the lifeboats capsized killing eight people on its way to shore.
America’s Great Lakes are home to about 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks, many of which have yet to be discovered, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Water Library.
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