TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Ships like the two-masted schooner, the Madeline, now docked in Traverse City, used to dominate Lake Michigan.
Dominate is not the right word, because you can never dominate the Great Lakes.
Vessels just like the Madeline and much larger have all been consumed by the waters of the Great Lakes for all of human history. And — with the combination of violent storms and the sheer magnitude of the lakes — many of the ships will never be found.
But thanks to a little bit of luck — something honestly in short supply around here — a piece of Lake Michigan history that might have remained lost forever has been found.
And if you don’t have luck on your side while out on the big lakes, it can be a disaster.
It's something former Coast Guard helicopter pilot Matthew Keiper knows all about.
He's seen the worst of the worst on all types of water from Kodiak, Alaska, to the Caribbean, and tells me if you let your guard down on the Great Lakes, it can be as dangerous as any place he's been.
"People do underestimate the lakes. The weather is dynamic. The water for most of the year is very cold. So if you do end up in water, you don't have a lot of time."
He has seen people hit with some bad luck on the water, but it would be good luck while out on a training mission that led Matthew to make a discovery hidden for more than 150 years not too far from the shores of the very remote High Island in northern Lake Michigan.
"We were practicing an approach to the water simulating low-visibility situation. So we made that approach to a hover over the water near High Island. And when I looked down, I saw the remnants of an old wooden ship."
He didn’t know which ship it was but he saw enough to make a note of the location — and he did it just in time too. Because when he would return to the area on the next training flight, the wreckage would be gone.
This was the case for about a year and a half. So it’s a good thing Matthew saw it when he did.
According to author, shipwreck hunter and President of the Maritime Heritage Alliance Ross Richardson, shifting sands would hide the wreck from view.
"These ships, sometimes just a few planks are sticking up. Sometimes the whole thing's exposed. It just ... you just got to get lucky."
Matthew would also get lucky when he told a buddy about the find, and that buddy just so happened to be Richardson's neighbor.
"We started sharing information back and forth," Richardson told me. "And of course, he's busy being a pilot and saving people, so he doesn't have time to know about all this obscure shipwreck history. But that's right up my alley."
Ross would piece together photographs and other research to compile a short list of what the ship could be. But he wouldn't really know until he saw it for himself.
"The front end of the vessel is buried into small stones and rocks, which is very unusual bottom for Lake Michigan," said Richardson. "I haven't seen anything like it. But then I haven't been out to the Beaver Island archipelago. You see a different geology out there. So it's buried, the forward mass step is buried and you can just see the top of it there. And then that's it, about six feet of water and then a shelf drops off down into the sand," he said pointing out the defining features. "And then you see the keel of the vessel in the interior, planking and things like that, the ribs around and then you're able to say, 'Okay, this is the keel right here. Here are the ribs. Here's the dimensions.' So again, it's been down by ice for many years out there and wave action and everything have beaten the wreck down."
So at first glance, it was not much more than what Matthew saw from the air, but as luck would again have it, there was a dead giveaway once Ross got underwater.
"The two mass steps, so they're square boxes that are on the keel, and they have square notches in them. So these masks around, but they're square notches carved in the bottom, so when they put them in there, they lock in place, so when the wind won't turn them, so this had to mask steps, and I knew the Live Yankee was a two-masted schooner," Ross told me. "And the length checked out; the position of the mask steps checked out. And then the historical location and being such a remote place, there were not many vessels that wreck there. So it led to, you know, 99.9% identification that this was the Live Yankee."
The Live Yankee was a 125-foot two-masted schooner built in 1854 out of Milanand was running grain, freight and passengers between Buffalo, Chicago and Milwaukee. For 15 years she made this voyage, until it ran into bad luck and rocks during a snowstorm on Nov. 5, 1869. The crew abandoned the ship and scrambled to the shore of High Island, where they finally ran into some good luck and were taken in by a group of Native Americans. On dry land they were warmed in the indigenous wigwams. This act of kindness would save all of the crew but one, Joesph Furnio. A Milwaukee resident, he would die from exposure and be buried on High Island. The surviving crew were eventually rescued, but the Live Yankee would remain in the shallow waters. Even though it came to its final resting place in only about 12 feet of water and 1,000 feet from shore, unforgiving storms would batter the ship until there was almost nothing left.
Lost.
That was until Matthew was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time — just 150 years too late.
"The maneuver that we were practicing is an approach to hover over the water in order to get to a distress call, get to someone in need," said Matthew. "And we made that approach to that point."
That approach was not to rescue the crew but rescue the Live Yankee's memory as a piece of Great Lakes maritime history.
"Very rarely do you get a wreck like this that jumps in your lap," laughed Ross. "I mean, this one was handed to us. Usually, we gotta go out there and spend hundreds of hours to find a shipwreck. But each shipwreck is important. Again, it's the story. We're storytellers. We love a good story. And this is a good story."
And if you would like to take part in this story yourself, Ross has shared his GPS location of the wreckage at 45°44.152’ N 85°42.081’W.
Please remember to be careful when exploring any waters in the Great Lakes because, as I think this story has shown, the big water doesn't care why you are there and will sink all vessels the same. Also — it's illegal to remove, alter or destroy shipwrecks, so take nothing but pictures and do so safely.
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