Century-old sunken ship preserved in perfect condition beneath Lake Superior
Century-old sunken ship preserved in perfect condition beneath Lake Superior
(Photo: Becky Kagan Schott/Caters News)
These stunning images reveal the remains of a more than century-old sunken ship that has been preserved beneath freezing Lake Superior. The ship looks almost exactly the same as it did the day it sunk beneath waves all those years ago.
At 60 meters long (approximately 198 feet), the Gunilda sunk after it struck some rocks and was not saved. Now, these stunning images have been captured 107 years after the sinking when a small group of divers revisited the vessel. (Caters News)
Click this link to see the amazing 10 undersea slideshow photos of this ship:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/century-old-sunken-ship-preserved-slideshow-wp-103919425.html
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Click this link to see the fantastic slideshow photos of a ship that sank in Lake Superior more than a century ago - and is in almost perfect condition:
There are two reasons why the ship is so well preserved even after 100 years. First the lakes are fresh water and does not corrode and rot the materials. Second, the water in the lake especially deep is very cold and preserves things.
The biggest shipwreck in the Great Lakes was the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Ha.
As I was enjoying your seed Gordon Lightfoot was signing quietly in the back of my mind as well Buzz.
Maybe the word "shipwreck" isn't entirely accurate, because it was a huge storm that did the E.F. in.
I always enjoyed the song, though I didn't know Gordon also did it in sign language.
LOL
There was a really good documentary on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on the Discovery Channel. You can get it on youtube.. but maybe Buzz can get it on Chinese youtube. It explains what actually happen to the ship.
As for the song, I always loved it. It came out when I was a young teen, so I had assumed it had happened a long time ago. I was shocked to find out that it had only just happened. Gordon Lightfoot did a great job of making is sound like an old sea shanty.
He changed some of the words of the song when the family of one of the crew thought that the original words were uncomplimentary about their lost loved one. Gord may not look it, but he is an exceptionally sensitive person. His song "If You Could Read My Mind" is about his wife when his marriage went south.
Cool.
Those of us who have never spent serious time near the Great Lakes don't really understand that they are in fact inland seas, with full-sized ships... and inevitably... shipwrecks.
One of the Anna Pigeon books was set in an underwater park, with shipwreck.
In some ways, they're rougher than the ocean. Since they're not as deep as the major oceans, the wave action is much rougher in a storm. On the wall in this office I have a map showing shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. It's covered with little red marks and descriptions of the ships, over 900 of them. The Great Lakes have the highest concentration of shipwrecks in the world. The first was the Griffon. She set out from Green Bay bound for Sault Ste. Marie, with a cargo of furs in 1679,and disappeared. Every now and then, some diver says that he found her, but it always turns out to be some other vessel.
The largest was the Edmund Fitzgerald. She went down about 20 miles off Whitefish Point in November of 1975, right out there......
If my compass bearings were right, she should be about 10 miles over the horizon, just to right of center in this picture and about 200 feet down. I took this shot from the beach in front of the Whitefish Point Museum in 2001. I also got this one inside the building....
This is the ship's bell from the Fitzgerald, brought up with the permission of the families of the crew, for display at the museum. As you can see, the room is kept pretty dark (a few years back, Mac helped me lighten it a bit without it going grainy; the original picture was much darker). The song by Gordon Lightfoot is played, at a very low sound level, all the time while the museum is open.
For a couple of years, Gordon Lightfoot lived only 4 houses away from mine. The only time I ever visited him was when Ramblin' Jack Elliott was staying over at my house and he wanted to spend some time with Gordon.
Having lived by Lake Superior and a number of my family worked the ore boats out of Duluth/Superior I have a great respect for Gitchi Gumi.
She is legend among the Ojibwe people. The Apostle Islands are sacred to our people.
Photo of Split Rock Lighthouse on the North Shore, near Duluth MN.
Along the North Shore the legend of John Beargrease lives on.
Awesome pics.
Don't you have a story of a horrendous creature that lives on one of the islands?
Not on these islands Spike. You might be thinking of Weendigo Island on Lake of the Woods in MN/Canada. Another inland sea. 80 miles wide by 80 miles long with 14,000 islands on it. It is the home of the ''Hunting Wind'' and the most evil of all creatures of the Ojibwe, The Weendigo.
Kav,
Did you notice that, in both your picture and mine, the lake is nice and calm and smooth. Don't know about yours but mine was taken in mid June. To all you folks out there, who have never seen the lakes, none of them, particularly Lake Superior, look at all like that in October and November.
I did notice that TTGA. Mine was taken in August I believe...
The gales of November.
Nobody depicts that fact better than Canada's famous artists, The Group of Seven (plus Tom Thompson)
Tom Thompson: The West Wind
Fredric Varley, Group of Seven
Sketch of the Lovely North
I lived all of my life until I moved to China next to Lake Ontario. When I was a kid I used to swim in Lake Ontario at Burlington Beach, where my grandmother had a cottage and I spent my summers there.
Port Dahlousie on the old Welland Canal is a wonderful place to go spend time ont he lake, though dependent on alot of facvtors, the waters can be 'off limits' due to bacteria.
I had my boat in the Oak Orchard River (Orleans County, N.Y.) and would go onto Lake Ontario. It can be pretty daunting, even on what appears to be a calm and sunny day.
Most people do not realize how much coastline Michigan has. We have almost as much as California. I have spent a lot of time on Lake Michigan and traveled to Lake Superior a few times....Pictured Rocks, Marquette, and Sault St. Marie, Soo Locks, Mackinaw Island. Northern and Upper Michigan is absolutely stunning.
Yep. We have the longest fresh water coastline in the world. Only State that has one that is longer is Florida, and that's not fresh water. Alaska comes close but had to settle for the title of largest population of mosquitoes. They just barely beat us on that one.
I have a bunch more pictures from that 2001 trip. If it's OK with Buzz, I'll post some of them here.
No problem, please post.
Buzz,
When I checked the pictures I had of three different trips up there (1981, 1990 and 2001), I found that I had over 32 of them concerning 7 different locations. That many would almost certainly derail your excellent article. So, what I will do is put a couple of nice ones here, one in the Thursday/Friday article on the Photography Group and use the rest to write another article. Perhaps I'll call it "A Scenic Tour of Northern Michigan" or something like that. I'm thinking that, since Bob has already put up some very nice pictures from Northern Arizona and that you have done much the same for the area of China where you live, those articles might inspire the folks here on NT to put up similar articles showing scenic photos of the areas where they live. We'll see whether it works. Even if it doesn't inspire others, they're fun articles to write.
Here are a couple of shots of the Pictured Rocks area taken while on a boat tour out of Munising, Michigan in 1990.
The young man in this picture is now 34 years old and the dad of the four kids shown in my avatar. The older one already had a lot of white in his hair but, as my son just told me, at least then, he still had hair.
This shot shows the erosion which produced the structure of this part of the Southern shoreline of Lake Superior.
This picture shows the formation that, for obvious reasons, is called The Flower Vase.
This one is known as the Colored Caves.
Last is a picture of the Tahquamenon Falls, the Niagara of Northern Michigan, near the town of Newberry. The brown color of the water comes from the fact that the river flows through a Cedar swamp upstream of the falls. The tree bark leaches Tannic Acid into the water.
Interesting - things I've never seen before. Thanks, TTGA, for posting them. I look forward to your proposed article.
Amazing series of photos Buzz...
The story of another shipwreck on Lake Superior.
SS Bannockburn, a.k.a. “The Flying Dutchman of Lake Superior”
Wikipedia
SS Bannockburn was a Canadian steel-hulled freighter that disappeared on November 21st, 1902. Its loss is one of the biggest mysteries on Lake Superior, with no trace of the missing vessel ever to have been discovered. Since her disappearance, many sailors claimed to have seen her running without lights during stormy weather.
The ship was lost in the middle of the lake, and all 21 people on board lost their lives. The Bannockburn, which was 245 feet (75 meters) long, and 40 feet (12.2 meters) wide, was on her way from Port Arthur to the Soo with a load of wheat, but disappeared without a trace sometime after 11:00 PM on November 21st.
She had been launched 9 years prior her disappearance, in 1893, and had quite an unusual profile for a freighter. On her voyages hauling grains for the Montreal Transportation Company, captains from other ships could recognize the Bannockburn before they could even read her nameplate. The ship had become a common sight on the Great Lakes.
What’s interesting about the Bannockburn is the fact that she had 2 major incidents before she sank. In April 1897, the ship ran aground on the rocks near Snake Island light. Even though no lives were lost, she was badly damaged. Several months later, in October 1897, on her way to Kingston carrying grain, she struck the wall of the Welland Canal and took 9 feet of water.
On November 20th 1902, one day before her final voyage, the ship ran aground shortly after leaving Fort William, and turned back to port. Having suffered no apparent damage, the Bannockburn recommenced her journey on November 21st 1902.
The ship was later spotted by the famous Captain James McMaugh of the Algonquin, who estimated that the Bannockburn was 80 miles off Keweenaw Point and 40 miles off Isle Royale. Later that night, as a strong winter storm began on Lake Superior, the Bannockburn was spotted at about 11:00 PM by the passenger steamer Huronic, never to be seen again. On November 30th 1902, the ship was declared lost.
However, this doesn’t mean that the Bannockburn wasn’t allegedly sighted afterwards. Easily identifiable by her profile, it’s hard to mistake it for another ship. While some of the sightings are clearly just stories, others are not that easy to dismiss, and have been reported in regional newspapers.
One such story was that of the ore freighter Walter A. Hutchison, shortly after World War 2. When the crew saw the Bannockburn just a hundred yards away coming straight at them, the captain tried to put some distance between the Walter A. Hutchison and the Bannockburn, and steered to the northeast. The Bannockburn went past Walter A. Hutchison safely, only to run aground and disappear. If the captain of the Walter A. Hutchison hadn’t changed course, the ship could have easily be destroyed by the rocks.
Interesting. I love reading articles & books about the Great Lakes. They are so mysterious and awesome.
So it was another ship lost due to the "gales of November"........or was it......................
That is so amazing to see. Kind of spooky though.
Live in Rochester NY near Lake Ontario. All the lakes have their dark side. I love to read about the lakes & the things that have gone on in and near them.
I live just west of you, less than an hour or so....Enoch lives closer to you........I'm actually heading to Spencerport on Saturday.
I used to live closer to Enoch than I do now. I was in West Henrietta a mile from Scottsville, now I am in Chili Center.
Since I live within spitting distance of Lake Superior and while in the Coast Guard sailed on all the Great Lakes I can attest to how quickly and crappy the weather can get. I've sailed on the Atlantic up around Georges Banks in the winter where we had 20 foot seas and 4 foot waves. That's pretty bad, but no quite like the pounding you get with 4 foot waves constantly hitting you on Lake Superior in November. Both are bad, just in different ways.
From less than two weeks ago
Great photo EG....She is the devil in November.
My wife and I were talking about the big shipwreck map for Lake Superior earlier today. Very neat article.