The Great Lakes hold much history and mystery in their depths, including an estimated 6,000 shipwrecks.
Sara Heines is excited to dive down and see firsthand what lies beneath.
The Brandon High School senior, 17, has been a competitive swimmer since she was 5 and became certified to scuba dive about four years ago after some encouragement from her father, Rick.
‘He wanted a dive buddy and was pushing me to go dive a shipwreck,? said Sara. ‘I really wanted to? I’m a history nut and I love shipwrecks. You’re seeing this 100-year-old thing that most people will never see.?
Her first such sight was ‘Sport,? a tugboat that sank in Lake Huron on Dec. 13, 1920 during a storm. The seasick fire tender had fallen asleep and when the fire went out, the boat lost steam and the pump quit. The crew of six escaped in a lifeboat as Sport took on water and eventually came to rest about 44 feet beneath the lake’s surface, near Lexington.
More than 90 years later, Sport was Sara’s inaugural shipwreck dive. As she began her descent, she was looking at her feet and the rope. Rick, diving next to her, tapped her on the shoulder and she looked up to see the wrecked tugboat.
‘It was fascinating? this ship is just sitting there right in front of you,? she recalled. ‘It still had the ship’s wheel. It was very light, you usually don’t need a flashlight until you get really deep. I stuck my head in the cargohold, there were little fish, gobies, and equipment laying around. There was a plaque you could read and it was kind of like a mini underwater museum.?
When she returned to the surface, she immediately told her dad she wanted to do more. That same day, they did, traveling about a mile away from ‘Sport? and diving about 25 feet down to what is left of the ‘Eliza Strong,? a 205-foot wooden steamer that caught fire on Oct. 26, 1904. Five years later, the Corps of Engineers used explosives to further destroy the ship that was a navigational hazard. What remains resembled a bunch of wood pilings to Sara, but she enjoyed it as a part of history.
Both Sport and the Eliza Strong are located in the Sanilac Shores Underwater Preserve, which is an area covering the western shore of Lake Huron from Lexington to just north of Forestville.
According to michiganpreserves.org, the Sanilac Shores Underwater Preserve is popular with recreational divers due to a large number of shipwrecks, at least 16 of which are located 120 feet down or less, meeting ill-fates often due to the lack of safe harbors when storms struck. Collisions also account for a number of the wrecks found in this area.
‘It’s rare to find a wreck completely intact, especially in Lake Huron because the currents and the weather breaks them up,? said Sara. ‘The Sport was pretty much intact… These ships would be in the middle of a storm and the channel is out there and they rush to beat the storm and don’t make it in time and end up sinking by all these ports.?
A little further north from Sport and the Eliza Strong is the final resting place of ‘Regina,? a 250 foot-long steel freighter that sank in a storm Nov. 9, 1913. None of her crew survived. The upside down wreck was located in 1986 in about 80 feet of water and is a popular site for divers. Sara and Rick dove on the wreck in 2013.
‘The biggest challenge for me was getting over that I was going down 73 feet,? said Sara. ‘I kind of have a fear of heights, but just to think, ‘I am 73 feet down right now.? That one was really pretty. You go down and the first thing you see is a propeller that is twice the size of me and I swam through it… The ship was on its back, it flipped when it sunk…I wasn’t able to go inside, but I poked my head through an opening.?
In order to be able to swim inside of a wreck, or to do deeper dives, Sara will need a higher level diver certification. Her deepest dive has been 91 feet, but her average dives are about 45 feet, such as for the ‘Keuka,? a barge that was used as a party boat during Prohibition in the 1920s and was scuttled in Lake Charlevoix.
Of course, the majority of shipwrecks, result not from intentional sinking by owners who are under FBI surveillance for illegal activities, but from collisions, or storms that can be even more horrific than those affecting the oceans.
Sean Ley has a great deal of knowledge about the treachery of the lakes as development officer for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which owns and operates the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point in the Upper Peninsula.
‘We have seen military ship captains come through for tours and their impression is that the Great Lakes would be like ponds compared to the Atlantic Ocean and then they got out there in a storm and realize? no, they are wrong,? said Ley, who has been employed by the museum for 20 years and was on the board for another 10 years prior to his hiring. ‘The lakes are more unpredictable than the ocean, which waves in big, rolling seas. With the lakes, the winds are just as severe and the waves blow toward one shore and bounce back, creating a jumbled-up sea. Each has its own difficulty, but you won’t find a sailor anywhere that has sailed the Great Lakes that would say they aren’t treacherous.?
The most famous wreck in the Great Lakes is that of the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald,? which sank in a storm on Nov. 10, 1975 in Lake Superior, taking down with it all 29 crewmembers. The wreck was located four days later with sonar about 530 feet deep near Whitefish Bay. Two scuba divers dove on the wreck in 1995, but the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald has since been deemed a heritage site and it is illegal to dive there.
‘You have to respect graveyards,? notes Ley. ‘There is no diving at the request and lobbying of surviving family members.?
The wreckage of the ‘Empress of Ireland,? a passenger ship which sank May 29, 1915 in poor visibility on the St. Lawrence River is also off-limits to divers. Although 1,200 people were lost, that disaster is not as well-known as it was overshadowed by the start of World War I.
While a great deal is known about the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald? tragedy, there are countless wrecks about which historians know nothing. Ley said of the 6,000 wrecks estimated to be in the Great Lakes, only 10 percent have been found. Even when they are located, their ship logs are gone. If there were no survivors, the story of what happened will remain as much a mystery as the majority of what lies beneath the surface of the lakes and oceans.
‘Finding wreck sites gives us the ability to see ships and artifacts exactly as they were, without interference by humans,? said Ley.
Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes and holds many shipwrecks, but Lake Michigan and Lake Huron each have more, said Ley, and Lake Ontario and Lake Erie have their share, as well.
Ley has been diving since 1970 and has seen many advances in technology in that time, making it easier and faster to access wrecks at 200 feet and below, which are better preserved as they aren’t touched by ice or human interaction. However, invasive species in all the lakes, primarily zebra mussels and quagga mussels, have taken some of the fun out of diving as they affix themselves to wrecks. They are less prelavent in Lake Superior because of the extreme cold temperature and that is where Ley likes to research deep wrecks. The GLSHS uses machinery including side scan sonar and remotely operated vehicles, which can dive to depths of over 1,000 feet, to explore.
Laws including the Michigan Salvage Act ban removal of any items from shipwrecks, including construction materials or cargo. Ley has seen artifacts on shipwrecks including clothing, hats, shoes, dishes, writing implements, even jewelry.
Ley estimates he has dived on perhaps 300 different shipwrecks, some of them multiple times, most in Lake Michigan, with Lake Superior a close second. His deepest dive was 240 feet in Whitefish Bay to ‘Comet,? a ship that went down in 1875 after colliding with the steamer ‘Manitoba,? which did not sink. Ten people perished in the wreck and 20 were saved.
A human remains act preserves the sanctity of shipwrecks as graveyards, making it illegal for divers to photograph or draw human remains.
‘Yes, there are human remains on Great Lakes shipwrecks,? said Ley. ‘If anything organic is left in the ship where there is little water movement and it is very cold, it can be preserved very well for a very long period of time. You don’t dive wrecks to see organic material. It is frightening…If it were saltwater, there are more creatures and very small creatures that abound, but fresh water is different.? While sharks aren’t a concern in the Great Lakes, Ley does recall a terrifying experience in the 1980s, while he was diving on a wreck called the ‘Northwest,? located about 70 feet deep in the Straits of Mackinac. The dive was tricky because of poor visibility and while the wreck was interesting, Ley was not feeling well, so he returned to the ascent line to wait for his buddies before returning to the surface. As he waited, he noticed the water getting darker as something approached him.
‘Out of the blue came this living creature, with big whiskers and a big mouth and teeth and it had spots and seemed to go on forever,? said Ley. ‘It was 12 feet or bigger? like the size of a shark. It scared me half to death and I was breathing fast and then my dive buddies showed up. I couldn’t be hysterical, because my buddies were there, but I described it to them.?
What Ley saw was a lake sturgeon, which, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is the only sturgeon species endemic to the Great Lakes basins. They are the largest freshwater fish indigenous to that system, as well as part of an ancient family of fish ‘recognized since the Upper Cretaceous period (136 million years ago), at a time when dinosaurs were at the height of their development.?
One of Sara’s favorite dive memories involved a less-threatening looking creature she saw while diving in Crystal Springs, Fla.? a manatee that scratched its back on her diver fins, allowed her to pet it and then swam away, leaving her with a new favorite animal.
‘I said, ‘We can end the dive now, I’m happy, I don’t need to see the springs,?? she laughs.
There appears, however, to be no end in sight for her new hobby. Sara has done 63 dives since she started, averaging about 30 minutes each and is looking forward to many more, including deeper dives in the Great Lakes and ocean dives as well.
‘I like getting to spend time with my dad doing something we both love,? she said. ‘I was very hesitant and he pushed me to do it and I’m glad, because it is something I’ll probably be doing for the rest of my life.?