The shipwreck of Lake Michigan known as F.J. King has haunted the minds
of shipwreck hunters for decades. This wooden three-master
44 meters long sank in 1886 during a storm, loaded with
iron ore. Several generations of divers and historians
had tried to find it, in vain. In June 2025, a team of
twenty volunteers from the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association
located it in just two hours, thanks to a
method as simple as it was effective.
The Lake Michigan shipwreck resisted searches for over
fifty years
The
Lake Michigan shipwreck, nicknamed the ghost ship, owed its reputation to its elusiveness. Since the 1970s, numerous
expeditions had failed to find it. Local fishermen
claimed to bring up pieces of the shipwreck in their nets. A
diving club had even offered a reward of $1,000
for its discovery. Yet, shipwreck hunters always returned
empty-handed. According to an article published by Popular Mechanics, the problem
came from the source used by all previous researchers.
All relied on the report of Captain William Griffin,
written on the night of
the shipwreck. However, Griffin gave his position in total darkness,
at two in the morning, in violent winds and
three meter waves. His description was likely inaccurate.
Brendon Baillod, maritime historian and president of the WUAA, came
to the conclusion that they needed to look elsewhere.
The Lake Michigan shipwreck resurfaces thanks to notes from a
19th-century lighthouse keeper
Baillod combed through hundreds of archival documents on the
shipwreck. He notably found the testimony of William
Sanderson, keeper of the Cana Island lighthouse. A few days after the
shipwreck, Sanderson reported seeing the masts of the F.J. King
above water, closer to shore than indicated by Griffin. Based on an analysis relayed by the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology
Association, Baillod chose to trust the lighthouse keeper
rather than the captain. He plotted a search grid of
two square miles around the point indicated by Sanderson.
On June 28, 2025, the team deployed a side-scan sonar,
an instrument that maps the seabed with
sound waves. On the second pass, a 44-meter object
appeared on the screen. Remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs,
were sent to confirm the identification. The hull of the F.J. King
was there, remarkably intact, less than a kilometer from
the point described by Sanderson.
The Lake Michigan shipwreck now enters
the historical heritage of Wisconsin
The discovery surprised the team itself. Baillod admitted
considering the search as an educational exercise to
learn how to use sonar, with no real hope of success. However,
it is the fifth
significant shipwreck his team has located in three years in
the Great Lakes. In March 2026, the F.J. King was
registered on the historical register of the state of Wisconsin.
The Great Lakes host around 6,000 commercial shipwrecks
that have been documented. In Lake Michigan alone, over 200 remain
to be discovered. Therefore, the method used by Baillod, combining
historical archives with modern sonar and
ROV technologies, could inspire other teams. It proves that a document
forgotten in a local 19th-century newspaper is sometimes more valuable than
decades of fruitless research.
