Researchers discover site of 1893 schooner wreck in Lake Michigan in just 50 feet of water
- by wacotrib
- Jul 26, 2024
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Marek Cacaj, Baltictech
A team of Polish divers has discovered the wreckage of an old sailing ship loaded âto the brimâ with luxury goods including porcelain items and about 100 bottles of Champagne and mineral water off the Swedish coast. They believe the precious goods could have been on the way to the royal tabl…
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The loss of his faithful pooch was tough for Clow, though. He was reported as saying that âI would rather lose any sum of money than to have the brute perish as he did.â
Making the news of the day
The loss of the Muir was covered by major Great Lakes newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press and the Plain Dealer of Cleveland.
In a roundup of âMarine Notesâ on October 4, 1893, the Tribune reported the survivors had arrived in Chicago, and âhad lost everything except what they had on.â
It also quoted Clow as saying, âI have quit sailing for the water seems to have no liking for me.â Itâs understandable that he felt the lakes had turned on him. In the previous sailing season, the Tribune wrote that Clow had run the schooner A.P. Nichols on rocks at an entrance to famed Green Bay.
Demonstrating how treacherous this line of work could be, the Free Press reported the gale that took down the Muir claimed other ships as well, resulting âin a long list of wrecks being added to the remarkably heavy marine losses of the present season.â
The Muir re-emerges
The Margaret A. Muir eventually became just another name, another footnote in the vast sea of Great Lakes shipwreck history. It might have remained that way if not for the efforts of Baillod and his team.
Baillod grew up on Michiganâs Upper Peninsula, and his fascination with a couple of wooden hulks in Lake Superior near his house sparked a lifelong interest in the maritime history of the Great Lakes.
About 30 years ago, Baillod began compiling a database of Wisconsinâs missing vessels, he said. The Muir stood out to him as one that had a good possibility of being found. He graded the ships on factors such as accurate accounts from survivors of where a ship went down.
âThe Margaret Muir was in the top 10 because I had a very good account from her captain, and I also had really good accounts from the local newspapers because her masts were breaking the surface after she sank and she was a hazard to navigation,â Baillod said. Â âShe was sort of in the way of the harbor mouth a few miles out. So I had a strong inkling that I could find her.â
In 2023, Baillod approached the WUAA about undertaking a search for the Muir. A year later, it all came together.
Baillod and his team struck gold at the very end of the very first day of looking.
It was âaround 4 oâclock. And as weâre pulling up the sonar, the darn wreck crawls across the screen, we caught her in the last 30 seconds that we could have.
âWe were very excited to find her because we had done all this research, like I had done genealogies of the captain and of the builders and the owner and I had traced her entire career,â he said. âSo it was really exciting to actually find the physical remains of the vessel itself on the bottom.â
Within weeks, thousands of high-resolution images of the site were made, the release said.
The WUAA is now working to nominate the site for the National Register of Historic Places. If itâs accepted to the register, it would join the schooner Trinidad, which the team located in deep water off Algoma in June 2023.
âThe reason we look for these wrecks is we want to share them with the communities of Wisconsin because these are some of the last tangible hooks that these communities have to their maritime history,â Baillod said.
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