A Shipwreck Was Discovered In Lake Michigan After Spending Over 100 Years Submerged
An angler from Wisconsin was fishing in foggy conditions recently when he discovered the wreck of an abandoned tugboat. The shipwreck had been submerged underwater in Lake Michigan for over 100 years.
According to the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society, it was Christopher Thuss who found the wreckage of the J.C. Ames.
He was fishing in Lake Michigan off the city of Manitowoc. That day was foggy, yet he noticed the wreckage in nine feet of water.
The J.C. Ames was built in 1881 by the Rand and Burger shipbuilding company in Manitowoc to help move lumber.
The tugboat had a 670-horsepower engine, which made it one of the largest and most powerful on the Great Lakes.
Aside from moving lumber, the tugboat also transported railway cars. Eventually, it fell into disrepair and was deliberately sunk in 1923 since it was no longer useful. The ship had spent decades buried in the sand at the bottom of the lake before winter storms revealed it.
Researchers can tell the ship was only recently exposed due to the lack of quagga mussels attached to it. Historians are racing against time to locate shipwrecks and downed planes in the Great Lakes before quagga mussels damage them beyond recognition.
Quagga is a species of freshwater mussel and has an average lifespan of three to five years. Over the last 30 years, they have become the dominant invasive species in the lower lakes.
The mussels attach themselves to wooden shipwrecks and sunken aircraft in thick layers. With so many of them attached, they can end up crushing the wreckage.
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“These kinds of discoveries are always so exciting because they allow a piece of lost history to resurface. It sat there for over a hundred years and then came back on our radar completely by chance,” said Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist at the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.
“We are grateful that Chris Thuss noticed the wreck and reported it so we can share this story with the Wisconsin communities that this history belongs to.”
Other shipwrecks have been uncovered recently in the Great Lakes, such as the wreck of the John Evenson this past September.
The John Evenson was a towing tugboat lost in June 1895 while it was helping a freighter. It had been entering the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Lake Michigan.
In March 2024, the wreck of the steamship Milwaukee was found 360 feet deep in Lake Michigan. It sank in 1886 after colliding with another vessel.
The discovery was made just a few months after a man and his daughter encountered the remains of a ship in Lake Michigan that sank in 1871, 15 years before the Milwaukee.
Then, in June 2024, the schooner Margaret A. Muir was found. Since the late 1600s, an estimated 6,000 ships have gone down in the Great Lakes.
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