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| Shipwreck hunters Ken Merryman and Jerry Eliason found the Pere Marquette 18 |
A ship branded the “Titanic of the Great Lakes” has been found in its watery resting place - 110 years after it mysteriously sank.
The Pere Marquette 18 spent the summer giving pleasure cruises in Chicago and was called the “world’s largest pleasure boat” and the “safest ship afloat”.
But the vessel sunk with the loss of dozens of lives en-route from Michigan to Wisconsin as it returned to its regular route in September 1910.
There were multiple witnesses to the sinking – including another ship, the Pere Marquette 17, which came to the rescue – but the cause of the calamity remains a mystery.
And the vessel itself was never located until shipwreck hunters Ken Merryman and Jerry Eliason found the Pere Marquette 18.
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| The vessel sunk in September 1910 |
They claim it is the largest undiscovered shipwreck in Lake Michigan.
“It’s more or less a Titanic of the Great Lakes,” said Mr Eliason.
“I first became aware of the Pere Marquette 18 in the early 1970s when I started collecting and reading books about the most famous Great Lakes shipping disasters.
“I couldn’t imagine that almost 50 years later I would be searching for its wreck in more or less the middle of Lake Michigan at a depth approaching 500 feet.”
The duo were able to find the wreck after getting their hands on a report from the United States Life-Saving Service, the predecessor to the Coast Guard.
Jerry said: “Officially the position of the Pere Marquette 18 is listed as ‘20 miles off Sheboygan’.
“But according to the Lifesaving Service report, it was 30 miles south-east of Sheboygan.”
Ken and Jerry made a bet, with each taking a guess at exactly where they thought the ship would be.
Then they set off for the search area, in the middle of the lake, between the Wisconsin towns of Sheboygan and Port Washington.
Scanning the lake bottom, they would soon discover just how good their guesses were.
“We hit a bright spot,” said Ken. “It didn’t look like a shipwreck, but a lot of times it doesn’t. It was a bright spot on a relatively featureless bottom.”
They returned to the spot with a camera and lowered it into the depths – equivalent to dangling a camera off the Washington Monument to film something on the ground.
It was the Pere Marquette 18 – and it was closer to Ken’s guessed location.
Ken said: “It was the closest we’ve ever gotten with just research.”
Underwater footage shows that the wreck is “javelined” into the lake bed stern-first, with its bow rising nearly 100ft above the bottom.
The decks have all collapsed, the pilot house has broken off and landed on the rear of the ship, and the vessel’s double wheel rests jutting out of the sand.
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| The Pere Marquette 18 spent the summer giving pleasure cruises in Chicago |
The ship was transporting railroad cars when it went down and one of these is also visible.
Unfortunately, the mystery as to what caused the sinking persists.
“What the initial leak was, I don’t know that we’ll ever know for sure,” said Ken.
One theory is that the ship was roughly handled during its spell as a party boat, when it had taken up to three thousand people at a time on pleasure cruises.
Mr Eliason said: “It was rumored the Pere Marquette 18 had suffered many hard dockings during her time in Chicago.
“She rode much higher in the water loaded with passengers than with rail cars.
“Some later speculated that these hard dockings loosened hull plate seams above the waterline which became a problem when heavily loaded because they were now below the waterline.
“One paper claims that upon getting his boat back, Captain Peter Kilty told his wife ‘they wrecked my boat’ and he didn’t want to sail until unspecified repairs were made.
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| It was called the “world’s largest pleasure boat” |
“It was also reported in one paper that Captain Kilty was threatened with the loss of his job if he didn’t head her for Milwaukee. Fake news or real remains a question.”
At least some water had come through an open porthole.
“It was suggested at the time that two stowaways were responsible for the open porthole that led to the cascade of events culminating in one of Lake Michigan’s worst maritime disasters,” said Jerry.
Whatever the case, the crew discovered at 3am, a little more than three hours after leaving port, that water in the lowest rear compartment was seven feet deep.
The pumps were started, the ship was slowed and many of the railroad cars were pushed overboard to lighten the load, but the water continued to rise.
Radio operator, Stephen Sczepanek, sent out a distress call using the newly-invented wireless radio: “No.18 is sinking midlake. For God’s sake send help”.
He would go down with the ship and his name is listed on a memorial to maritime radio operators in New York’s Battery Park, immediately below his counterpart from the Titanic, Jack Phillips.
A sister ship, the Pere Marquette 17, reached the vessel shortly before she vanished beneath the waves.
But the crew were unsure which side to approach from and, while they were making up their minds, the Pere Marquette 18 suddenly went down stern first.
Between 28 and 30 people were lost with the ship, depending on whether there were indeed stowaways, and Captain Kilty was among them.
Another 33 were saved by the sister ship, which lost two of its own crew during the rescue.
For Marge Christensen, the great-granddaughter of Captain Kilty, the discovery of the wreck brings “a sense of closure”.
Christensen, from Scottville, Michigan, said: “Grandma didn’t talk much about her time growing up but I do remember her saying how sad she was when her father left for that crossing.
“He told her not to be sad because after this run he would be home for a while.
“Although I never knew my great-grandfather personally, the discovery of the ship does bring a sense of closure for the lives lost and brings the story full circle.”
