A piece of Great Lakes history resurfaces: A shipwreck team announced the discovery of the Lac La Belle, a luxury steamer that sank in Lake Michigan more than 150 years ago.
Shipwreck hunter Paul Ehron and his team found the steamer after searching for it for more than 60 years.
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The history
The 217-foot passenger steamer operated between Cleveland and Lake Superior in the mid to late 1800s.
In October 1872, the steamer, carrying 53 passengers, set out from Milwaukee and sprang a leak. The captain tried to turn back, but rough weather and heavy waves overtook the vessel.
The Lac La Belle sank.
All passengers fled the sinking ship in lifeboats. All but one lifeboat survived. Eight people on the lifeboat that capsized died.
The discovery
Since 15-years-old, Ehron has searched for the shipwreck. His big break came almost 60 years later, when he finally found the steamer at 80.
In 2022, Ehron received a tip from a commercial fisherman after the fisherman snagged something on Lake Michigan’s floor that didn’t belong.
Ehron and his team followed the lead and discovered the shipwreck about 20 miles offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin. He told the Associated Press that his team found it after searching the area for just two hours.
“It’s kind of a game, like solve the puzzle. Sometimes you don’t have many pieces to put the puzzle together but this one worked out and we found it right away,” Ehron told AP.
The upper cabin is gone, but the hull remains largely intact, with much of the interior preserved.
The discovery was kept quiet until a dive team could create a 3D model of the site, which was completed last summer.
Here’s the stunning part: the University of Wisconsin Water Library estimates there may be between 6,000 and 10,000 undiscovered shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.
