Great Lake's Shipwrecks

TWIN PORTS - Jerry Eliason, a shipwreck expert says, “It’s the mystery… where the ships go missing without any trace.” 

Countless hours of watching video, poring over documents, searching through data, and of course

old-fashioned brainstorming are just a few steps of research need to make underwater discoveries

Of missing ships that went down decades ago.

Searching the depths of the unknown, it wasn’t about the money, but simply loving the challenge

of finding shipwrecks never found before and preserving small pieces of history

“The big reason is history you know there’s a lot of history behind it, when you start removing the history behind it, it becomes less historical. We like to think we’re trying to preserve that value of that historical shipwreck a lot of them have mariners that have lost their lives on it and we respect that” said Phil Kerber.

Years of diving and research have helped find hundreds of wrecks under the chilly waters of the Great Lakes, but what caused these mysterious shipwrecks; Many forgotten for decades.

 “That’s generally what happens you know the get off course in a storm”, said Kerber.

Bad weather conditions, poor communication, and lack of navigation are just some of the causes for shipwrecks. Events like the storm of 1913 also known as the White Hurricane, the worst natural disaster in recorded Great Lakes history also caused tragic shipwrecks.

When the storm finally ended 12 ships had capsized leaving no survivors, 250 lives were lost.

Kerber said, “A lot of times it surprises them because Lake Superior is a surprising great lake”.

Built in 1906 the 525 foot Henry B. Smith was considered to be one of the best steamers on the Great Lakes, but the ship was taken under the wailing waters of Lake Superior during that 1913 storm.

 “I thought she was sea worthy… I thought she was sound… But you just never know… you just never know said Dennis Hale.”

Dennis Hale, the lone survivor of the Daniel J. Morrell sinking in 1966 watched the steel deck ship tear apart like paper on Lake Heron. He said it made the sound of a dying prehistoric creature.

Hale said it was like, “Watching it tear in half was totally unbelievable, just totally unbelievable.”

All 28 of his crew members died and Dennis spent a day and a half of baring freezing weather in a raft, making his story of survival nothing short of amazing.

In Lake Superior along around 350 ships have been swallowed by the waters, but compared to the Great Lakes Superior is considered a desert to shipwrecks. More than 6000 ships are believed to have sunk through the years in all the Great Lakes combined. All the shipwrecks have taken 30,000 lives; some estimates put those numbers many times higher!