Madison, Wis. – Twenty years before the Titanic changed maritime history, another ship promoted when the next great technology feat sailed in the great lakes.
The western reserve was one of the first steel load ships to cross the lakes. Built to break the speed records, the 300 feet freighter (91.4 meters) called “The Inland Greyhound” by newspapers it was supposed to be one of the safest ships afloat. The owner Peter Minch was so proud of her that he brought his wife and young children on board for a summer joy in August 1892.
Then he hit the tragedy. When the ship entered the Bay of Fish Whitefish of the upper lake between Michigan and Canada on August 30, a storm emerged. Without load on board, the ship was light and floated at the top of the water. The storm hit him until he broke in half. Twenty -seven people perished that night, including the MINCH family. The only survivor was Wheelsman Harry W. Stewart, who swam a mile (1.6 kilometers) to prop up after his lifeboat overturned.
For almost 132 years, the lake hid the remains. In July, the explorers of the historic society of the shipwrecks of Great Lakes identified the western reserve of the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The company announced the discovery on Saturday at the Annual Ghost Ships Festival in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Executive director Bruce Lynn described the discovery one of the most important findings of society.
“There are a number of concurrent stories that make it important,” Lynn said in a telephone interview with Associated Press. “Most of the ships were still made of wood. It was a technologically advanced ship. They were a kind of famous family at that time. You have this new ship, considered one of the safest in the lake, the new technology, a great and large ship. (The discovery) is another way to keep this story alive. “
Darryl Etel, director of marine operations of society, and his brother, Dan Etel, spent more than two years looking for the western reserve.
Lynn said this winter that the brothers described a search grid. On July 22 they went to David Boyd, the company’s research vessel. However, heavy ship traffic that day forced them to alter their course and search in an area adjacent to their original grid, Lynn said.
The brothers towed a lateral scanning sopa matrix behind their ship. The side sound scan to star and port, providing a more expansive image of the background than the traditional probe mounted under a ship. About 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Whitefish Point on the upper peninsula, picked up a line with a shadow behind 600 feet of water. They marked the resolution and saw a broken ship in two with the arch resting on the stern. Each section had 150 feet (45.2 meters) long, suggesting that they had found the western reserve.
Eight days later, the brothers returned to the site along with Lynn. They implemented a submersible drone equipped with high intensity lighting and a high resolution camera. The drone returned clear images of a port light that coincides with the starboard light of the western reserve, which had taken to land in Canada after the ship fell. That light was the only artifact recovered from the ship.
“That was the confirmation day,” Lynn said. “It’s quite exciting.”
Darryl Etel said the discovery gave him chills, and not in good sense. “Knowing how the western 300 feet reserve was trapped in a storm so far from the shore made an uncomfortable feeling on the back of my neck,” he said in a press release from society. “A chisque can arise unexpectedly … anywhere and at any time.”
The Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that fell on a storm in November 1975 that was immortalized in the song by Gordon Lightfoot, “The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, He sank into the white fish point at 100 miles from the Western reserve. There were no survivors.
