For those lucky enough to travel to Lake Michigan for summer vacations, one exotic dream conjured while scanning the waters may be that over 1,500 ships have sunk to the bottom – and are still there. Many of these date to the 1800s when schooners and side-wheelers carrying wood and ore plied the waters. Storms and gales so frequent in the Great Lakes were the reason many of the ships vanished.
Valerie Van Heest knows that well. For eight years, she was president of the Underwater Archeological Society of Chicago. She and her husband eventually moved a hundred or so miles north to the waterfront city of Holland, Michigan. From there, the two (and their crew) have searched for and found 19 shipwrecks in southwest Lake Michigan....
I heard her speak last week about some of the wrecks they’ve found. She admitted most are far from “treasure ships” as we know them. Yet, to her they are. It’s admittedly not the treasure most of us dream of. When they find a ship, their fortune is finding the vessel amazingly in-tact due to the cold, fresh water of the Great Lakes. Any dinner plates or personal items found are merely frosting.
She was asked a question regarding any truth behind the enthralling tale of a ship in the mid-1860s carrying a boxcar filled with gold. It was said to have originated in the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War. Legend had it that either the ship sank with the boxcar or that the boxcar of gold had been pushed overboard to keep it from the hands of the Union.
Her answer was a vociferous and emphatic, “NO!!” She was resolute the tale was just that…a tale. No gold. She knew of the person who first promoted the story and convinced the History Channel to produce a 16-part TV series about a search for it. In the end, again, no gold. She underscored that Great Lakes shipping was most often lumber, ore, sand/gravel and the like.
Even so, we’ll always want to dream. It happened again recently in deep waters between Spain and Morocco. While searching for the 300-year-old British warship HMS Sussex, explorers ran across a Corsair sailing ship from 1760 believed to have been sailed by Barbary pirates of Africa – the same group that boasted Blackbeard being among them.
The ship, equipped for a crew of 20, contained cannons, guns, and muskets. Scattered among the debris was also pots, pans, glassware and pottery from Algiers confirming the origin and age of the wreck. Probably disguised as a trading vessel, it’s surmised the ship was on its way to capture or raid settlements on the Spanish coast when it sank.
For historians, the artifacts just found are treasure-enough. In fairness, to bring up and hold a goblet from the deep that rested on the bottom for over three centuries and was handled by and the property of 17th-century pirates, merely the experience would be invaluable.
There can also be the unexpected flip side. In 1988, some 160 miles off the cost of South Carolina, treasure hunter Tommy Thompson found a needle in a haystack when he discovered the long-lost SS Central America, known as the “Ship of Gold.” Laden with 30,000 pounds of gold being shipped from the gold fields of California to New York, in 1857, the ship sank in a hurricane taking the gold and 425 of the passengers to the bottom.
With substantial investor money, Thompson scanned a huge portion of the sea floor in what many called a futile attempt. Nevertheless, on one lucky pass of the side-scanning sonar, they found it. Underwater cameras showed a literal sea of gold on the ocean bottom. Thompson devised a new and unique way to recover the gold coins and bars still stacked where they had rested on the ship. They actually created boxes which were lowered and then filled with liquid latex. Those were then hauled to the surface.
In the end, millions in gold was recovered. As has often been said, “no good deed goes
unpunished.” After the millions in expenses were paid, questions arose as to exactly what was recovered and what might not have been divulged. Lawsuits aplenty were filed. Thompson himself was accused. He then refused to cooperate with the court and has kept quiet. Consequently, since 2015, Thompson has sat in prison, perhaps ironically in Michigan. It’s doubtful he has a view to see the waters of Lake Michigan. That would be particularly cruel.
For more collecting information and advice, log on to: http://prexford.com/.