Searchers find missing ship in Lake Michigan, over 150 years after it sunk | Wisconsin
Searchers recently discovered the wreck of one of Lake Michigan’s “most wanted lost ships,” which sank to the lake bottom 150 years ago.
A shipwreck hunter and scuba diver named Paul Ehorn made the discovery after searching for the Lac La Belle passenger ferry for nearly 60 years. Shipwreck World is a group working to locate shipwrecks around the world. It was announced on Friday The team led by Ehorn said they found the wreck about 20 miles (32 km) offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Ehorn’s discovery of Lac La Belle took place in October 2022. The announcement was delayed because his team wanted to include a three-dimensional video model of the ship, but bad weather and other commitments prevented the dive team from returning to the wreck until last summer. said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Ehorn, 80, has been searching for shipwrecks since he was 15. He said he has been trying to locate Lac La Belle since 1965. He said he used a tip he received from wreck hunter and author Ross Richardson in 2022 to narrow down the search net, finding the ship using side-scan sonar after just two hours on the lake.
“It’s a game like solving a puzzle. Sometimes you don’t have a lot of pieces to put the puzzle together, but this worked and we found it right away,” he said. This finding left him “extremely elated.”
Ehorn declined to discuss the tip that led to the discovery.
Richardson said in a brief phone interview Sunday that he learned that a commercial fisherman “at a certain location” had snagged what Richardson called a piece specific to steamboats from the 1800s. He declined to provide further details about how shipwreck hunting became competitive and how the information might alert searchers to another way to investigate.
According to Shipwreck World, the luxury passenger steamer Lac La Belle set sail from Milwaukee for Grand Haven, Michigan, on an October night in 1872 with 53 passengers and crew, plus a cargo of 19,000 bushels of barley, 1,200 barrels of flour, 50 barrels of pork and 25 barrels of whiskey.
About two hours into the journey, the ship began leaking uncontrollably. The captain turned the ship back to Milwaukee, but giant waves crashed into the ship, extinguishing the ship’s boilers. The storm dragged the ship south. At around 5 a.m., the captain ordered the lifeboats to be lowered and the ship landed stern first.
One of the lifeboats capsized on its way to shore, killing eight people. Other lifeboats docked off the coast of Wisconsin.
Lac La Belle was built in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1864, according to an account in Shipwreck World. The massive 217-foot (66-meter) steamer ran between Cleveland and Lake Superior but sank in the St. Clair River after a collision in 1866. The ship was removed and refurbished in 1869.
The ship’s exterior is covered in barnacles and the upper cabins are gone, but the hull appears intact and the oak interiors are still in good condition, according to Ehorn.
Discover is home to between 6,000 and 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, most of which remain undiscovered. reported. Shipwreck hunters have been searching the lakes more urgently in recent years. invasive quagga mussels We are slowly destroying the debris.
According to the Associated Press, Lac La Belle is the 15th shipwreck identified by Ehorn.
“There was one more that needed a checkmark,” Ehron said. “Now it’s time for the next one. It’s getting harder and harder. Easier ones have been found.”
Ehorn will present his discovery in person at the 2026 Ghost Ships Festival in Wisconsin in March, along with video and more images of the wreck.
