Lost Great Lakes ship discovered 128 years after sinking

Even for the Thunder Bay area, a perilous swath of northern Lake Huron off the Michigan coast that has devoured many a ship, the Ironton’s fate seems particularly cruel.

The 191-foot cargo vessel collided with a grain hauler on a blustery night in 1894, sinking both. The Ironton’s captain and six sailors clambered into a lifeboat but it was dragged to the bottom before they could detach it from the ship. Only two crewmen survived.

The gravesite long eluded shipwreck hunters.

Now, the mystery has been solved, officials with Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan, said Wednesday. The Associated Press obtained details of the discovery ahead of the announcement.

Video footage shows the Ironton sitting upright on the lake bottom, hundreds of feet down — “remarkably preserved” by the cold, fresh water like many other Great Lakes shipwrecks.

A team of historians, underwater archaeologists and technicians located the wreckage in 2019 and deployed remotely controlled cameras to scan and document it. The sanctuary plans to reveal the location in coming months and is considering placing a mooring buoy at the site. Officials have kept the find secret to prevent divers from disturbing the site before video and photo documentation is finished.

No human remains were seen. But the lifeboat remains tethered to the bigger vessel, a poignant confirmation of witness accounts from 128 years ago.

“Archaeologists study things to learn about the past. But it’s not really things that we’re studying; it’s people,” Gray said. “And that lifeboat ... really connects you to the site and reminds you of how powerful the lakes are and what it must have been like to work on them and lose people on them.”

Nearly 200 shipwrecks are believed to rest within or nearby the boundaries of the sanctuary, which includes the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center in Alpena and some 4,300 square miles of northwestern Lake Huron.

Several factors made the area a “shipwreck alley” for more than two centuries, until modern navigation and weather forecasting reduced the danger, said Stephanie Gandulla, the sanctuary’s resource protection coordinator.

The late 1800s was a busy period for Great Lakes commerce. Thousands of schooners, or sailing ships, and hundreds of steamers hauled cargo and passengers between bustling port cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland.


In this image taken from video provided by the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the bow of the Ironton is seen in Lake Huron off Michigan's east coast in a June 2021 photo. Searchers have found the long-lost Great Lakes ship that came to a tragic end. Officials with the sanctuary in Alpena, Mich,, say they've located the Ironton, a freight schooner that plunged to the bottom of Lake Huron in 1894. Five crewmen died. (Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary via AP)