Searchers discover shipwreck of schooner that sank in Lake Michigan almost 140 years ago

MADISON Wis AP After decades of scouring the bottom of Lake Michigan searchers have definitively exposed the wreckage of a cargo schooner that sank during a ferocious storm almost years ago off the Wisconsin coastline The Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association communicated Monday that a squad led by researcher Brandon Baillod revealed the wreck of the F J King Baillod noted in an email to The Associated Press that the wreckage was discovered on June According to the announcement Baillod s association located the ship off Bailey s Harbor a town of about people on Wisconsin s Door Peninsula an outcropping of land jutting into Lake Michigan that gives the state its distinctive mitten-thumb shape The F J King was a -foot meters three-masted cargo schooner built in in Toledo Ohio to transfer grain and iron ore According to the historical society and archaeology association s announcement the ship ran into a gale off the Door Peninsula on Sept while moving iron ore from Escanaba Michigan to Chicago Waves estimated at to feet to meters ruptured her seams and after several hours of pumping Captain William Griffin ordered his men into the ship s yawl boat The schooner eventually sank bow-first around a m with the ship s stern deckhouse blowing away in the storm sending Griffin s papers feet into the air A passing schooner picked up the crew and took them to Bailey s Harbor Searchers have been trying to find the F J King since the s but conflicting accounts of the ship s location when it sank stymied their efforts Griffin communicated that the ship went down about miles kilometers off Bailey s Harbor but a lighthouse keeper shared seeing a schooner s masts emerging the surface closer to shore Shipwreck hunters scoured the area but came up empty Over the years F J King developed a reputation among shipwreck hunters as a ghost ship Baillod inferred that Griffin may not have known where he was in the darkness as the ship went down He drew a -square-mile square-kilometer grid around the location the lighthouse keeper gave and proceeded to search it Side-scan radar uncovered an object measuring about feet meters long less than half a mile kilometers from the lighthouse keeper s location It turned out to be the F J King A meager of us had to pinch each other Baillod explained in the announcement After all the previous searches we couldn t believe we had really detected it and so rapidly He reported the hull appears to be intact surprising searchers who expected to find it in pieces due to the weight of the iron ore the schooner was carrying The Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association has now discovered five wrecks in the last three years Earlier in the group exposed the steamer L W Crane in the Fox River at Oshkosh Wisconsin as well as tugboat John Evenson and schooner Margaret A Muir off Algoma Wisconsin Baillod discovered the schooner Trinidad off Algoma in Source