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DETROIT – A diver and marine history enthusiast discovered two schooners colliding and sinking into the cold depths of northern Lake Michigan more than 140 years ago.
Bernie Hellstrom, of Boyne City, Michigan, said he was looking for shipwrecks about 10 years ago when a sounder on his boat surveyed a major obstacle located about 200 feet down the lake , near Beaver Island.
"I have made hundreds of trips to Beaver Island and every time I go out, the sounder is on," he told the Associated Press on Friday. "But if you see something that is not normal, you go back. Many are just schools of fish. It was 400 feet of boat. There is nothing so big that is missing.
He returned to the area in June with a custom camera system and discovered the Peshtigo and St. Andrews about 10 feet apart, their masts stacked. The hull of one of the ships has a huge gash.
It was believed that the ships sank in 1878 further east in Mackinac Sound in Lake Huron. But only one ship could be found and it was thought to be St. Andrews.
"They've never found the second boat," said Hellstrom, 63.
Hellstrom brought technical divers to record a video of the wrecks. Brendon Baillod, a naval historian based in Madison, Wisconsin, was recruited to help solve the mystery.
Baillod said he had consulted old news articles and learned that Peshtigo and St. Andrews were hit and sank between the Beaver and Fox Islands, northwest of Charlevoix, Michigan.
The Peshtigo was 161 feet long and was carrying coal. St. Andrews was 143 feet long and was carrying charcoal. The collision was attributed to the confusion in the traffic lights, he said.
Two members of the Peshtigo crew were lost. The survivors of both ships were rescued by another schooner passing, according to Baillod.
Michigan maritime archaeologist Wayne Lusardi calls the discovery of the real resting place of the Peshtigo and St. Andrews a "fantastic discovery".
"You can say that any new discovery is important because it allows you to really take a first look at something that has been lost and missing for so long," Lusardi said.
He added that the Peshtigo and St. Andrews "had been wrongly identified as two ships in the strait for decades".
"Now, this begs the question: what are these wrecks?", He said.
According to Cathy Green, General Manager of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, about 6,000 shipwrecks lie at the bottom of the Great Lakes.
"If you think about it, cities like Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee would never have been able to develop without the water highway," Green said. "When vestiges of this history are discovered, historians and archaeologists have a lot to do."
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