The True Graveyard of the Great Lakes
- Richard Crowder
- 23 hours ago
- 9 min read
In my previous work chronicling Great Lakes shipwrecks, we have explored the Marysburgh Vortex of Lake Ontario, also referred to as Canada’s Bermuda Triangle, and Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior. Both of these have been labelled, at least by some, as "The Graveyard of the Great Lakes."
But, anyone studying the shipwreck history of Lake Erie may disagree with that claim. Beyond any doubt, Lake Erie should hold the sadly appropriate titles of "The Graveyard of the Great Lakes." Some sources claim up to 1500, while others claim as high as perhaps 2000, ships have tragically ended their days on the bottom of the shallowest Great Lake. Whatever the truth, less than 300 of these wrecks have been confirmed and documented.
Lake Erie, with its endless sand beaches and warmer surface water than any other Great Lake, is known as a family summer vacation hub and a pleasure boater’s delight. That being said, boaters also know that keeping a sharp eye on the weather is essential as the lake is prone to fast changes in surface conditions. This is mainly due to its shallow water, which can blow up water high and steep into saw-tooth style waves in almost no time. Massive waves known to exceed 35 feet (almost 11 m) have occurred.
Couple the shallowness with its almost unobstructed southwest-to-northeast length of 240 miles (388 km) with prevailing west winds, and this long reach can cause 'piling' on the lake’s east end. It is not uncommon for water levels to quickly rise over six feet (2 m) near Buffalo, at the lake’s eastern end, while the water depth decreases by the same amount at its critically shallow western end. Two to four foot waves are often a daily occurrence depending on where you are on the lake.
Add to the shallowness an almost zero visibility in snow, fog, and storms, plus many changing and shifting sandbars and rocky shoals near almost every shoreline, plus a maze of islands and critically shallow water near the west end of the lake, and its distinction as The Graveyard of the Great Lakes makes perfect sense. In fact, Lake Erie is claimed to have the highest concentration of shipwrecks of any body of water in the world. We can only deal with a very few of the most interesting ones here, but they prove the point all the same.
When the War of 1812 between the United States and Canada broke out, the US had no warships ready for battle on Lake Erie, whereas Canada, via the British Royal Navy, had three warships and control of the lake. By September of 1813, however, following a hasty reallocation and shipbuilding spree, nine US warships defeated six British warships in the Battle of Lake Erie, also known as the Battle of Put-In-Bay off Port Clinton, Ohio. This gave the United States control of Lake Erie and allowed them to re-capture Fort Detroit. Surprisingly, there are no recorded wreckage locations of any military or commercial ships during this time period.
The oldest confirmed shipwreck in Lake Erie is that of the 47-foot (14 m) schooner Lake Serpent sent from Cleveland to pick up a load of limestone from the Lake Erie Islands, later renamed Kelleys Island. She sank in 1829 with that load during the return trip. The wreck was only positively identified in 2019, thanks to the work of The National Museum of the Great Lakes, after having being found only a few years earlier.
The 157-foot (48 m) wooden hull passenger sidewheeler Anthony Wayne is the oldest known steamboat to wreck in Lake Erie. She went down in April of 1850 with an estimated loss of life of about 70 of the 100 on board. Leaving Toledo with a stop in Sandusky and headed for Buffalo, she sank about 8 miles (13 km) north of Vermillion, Ohio from an explosion and fire of inside its two boilers. She rests in about 50 feet (15 m) of water.
One of the worst maritime disasters on Lake Erie was in August, 1852 of the three year old 267-foot (81 m) luxury paddlewheel steamer Atlantic after she was struck in a dense fog by the brand new 138-foot (42 m) propeller-driven cargo steamer Ogdensburg. The Atlantic sank in 150 feet (46 m) of water roughly three miles (5 km) southwest off the tip of Long Point. Although apparently rated for 300 passengers, the Atlantic departed Buffalo with just under 600 passengers, some 200 of which were Norwegian immigrants looking to settle in the US Midwest.
_01.jpg)
An estimated 300 people died in the disaster. The resulting inquiry established new rules for safety including better record-keeping, limits to number of passengers, lifeboat and life jacket requirements, and boiler and mechanical safety rules and inspections. At the time of the disaster, the Atlantic held the record for the fastest time between Buffalo and Detroit, accomplished by over-pressurizing her boilers for greater speed.
The 240-foot (73 m) package freighter Clarion had cleared the Detroit River and was headed downbound for Erie, Pennsylvania in December, 1909, in a terrible snowstorm with gale winds at the western end of Lake Erie. She had a full load of flour and livestock feed. In the Pelee Passage, the tricky shipping channel between Point Pelee and Pelee Island, the crew discovered a fire burning in the ship’s hold. The explosive nature of the flour dust quickly caused the fire to get out of control. About two miles west of the lightship marking the treacherous Southeast Shoal, the fire destroyed the steering gear leaving the Clarion drifting helplessly. There was no radio on board.
At this point, with visibility next to nil in the storm, a bulk freighter actually grazed the side of the Clarion but did not stop to help. Then the 530-foot (162 m) Josiah G. Munro arrived on the scene and maneuvered close to the Clarion several times but was not able to get close enough in the heavy seas to make a rescue. After several tries, the Munro eventually grounded out on Southeast Shoal. The captain and 12 of the Clarion’s crew launched a lifeboat off the bow, but it was soon swamped in the heavy seas with the loss of all lives. With the Munro aground, the Clarion drifting helplessly and ablaze above decks, and with a few other freighters having passed by, the remaining seven crewmen on the stern section launched a lifeboat of their own. It was instantly swamped before any crew embarked. One sailor lost his life trying to retrieve the boat, leaving six men onboard.
The 504-foot (154 m) freighter Leonard C. Hanna had heard the radio distress call from another ship and went to help. It circled the Clarion three times before it got close enough so that the remaining six crewmen could jump from the Clarion to the Hanna. The burned out remains of the Clarion sank near the Southeast Shoal about eight miles (13 km) both south of Point Pelee and east of the northern tip of Pelee island. Fifteen crew perished. Six were saved. Over the following year, two bodies washed ashore.
The largest shipwreck to date in Lake Erie is that of the April, 1944 sinking of the 468-foot (143 m) James H. Reed which was headed downstream in heavy fog from Escanaba, Michigan to Buffalo, NY with a full load of iron ore. Even though its modern hull had three watertight bulkheads and six separated cargo compartments, she sank very quickly after being rammed by the freighter Ashcroft 42-miles (68 km) west of Long Point.
Twelve lives were lost while 24 crew were rescued by the Ashcroft and by the US Coast Guard. As the Reed rested in only 76 feet (23 m) of water close to a shipping lane and was deemed a hazard to navigation, a few months after the sinking, the wreck’s superstructure was dynamited so that a minimum of 45 feet (14 m) of water was above the wreck.
Perhaps the most controversial and colourful of Lake Erie shipwrecks is that of the 135-foot (41 m) barquentine sailing vessel Success, built in 1840 in India. Originally a Burmese teak ship, it later served as a convict ship, then notoriously as a prison ship, then a floating wax museum, and eventually a tourist attraction in Cleveland. It was later sold again and towed to Port Clinton, Ohio where it ran aground and was later set ablaze by vandals in 1946. It remains at rest in 15 feet (4.5 m) of water roughly a half-mile (0.8 km) off Port Clinton harbor. Over its life it is claimed to have visited six continents and sank five times.
One of the most mysterious and unsolved shipwrecks in Lake Erie is perhaps that of the Marquette & Bessemer No. 2, a 338-foot (103 m) railway car ferry that disappeared in a nasty December storm in 1909 and has never been found. It was carrying 30 railway cars filled mostly with coal on what was usually a five-hour run straight across the middle of Lake Erie from Conneaut, Ohio to Port Stanley, Ontario. Conneaut is about half way between Erie, PA and Cleveland, OH and Port Stanley is on Lake Erie straight south of London, ON.
The Marquette & Bessemer No. 2 departed Conneaut in southwest winds gusting to 50 mph (80 kph), which quickly became steady at 75 mph (120 kph), thus pounding mighty waves and wind onto the ship’s port side and aft port quarter. Due to its design as a railway car ferry, there was no stern gate and waves crashed through the open stern. Not even her wreckage has ever been found. An estimated 34 people, with some sources claiming 38, perished. Sadly, the ship was scheduled to have a stern gate installed in the off season.
To end these shipwreck stories on a positive note, the cargo schooner New Connecticut departed Conneaut, Ohio bound for Buffalo in September of 1933. It capsized close to shore but did not sink and remained adrift on its side. The crew was able to swim ashore. The wife of the captain of another freighter, named Mary Applebee, who was on board in her cabin hitching a ride back to Buffalo, did not surface with the crew and was assumed to have drowned. Five days later, a rescue ship arrived and righted the schooner... and out of the cabin walked the woman. She had not eaten in five days and had lain on her back on an overturned bunk bed breathing from the bubble of air trapped above her.
But even with her troubled history for causing shipwrecks, Lake Erie herself boasts few facts that make her an especially unusual waterway. Her deepest point is only around 200 feet (61 m) with an average depth (however they calculate that) to be a very shallow 60 feet (18 m). Ever year, it is the first Great Lake to warm up and the first to freeze over – although the last time that happened was 1996.
One of the greatest concentrations of shipwrecks in Lake Erie resides in the very shallow western section of the Pelee Passage, a dredged and tricky navigation channel bounded by Point Pelee to the north and Pelee Island to the southwest. The stretch is tiny with a distance of only about 9 miles (15 km). But within it are 15 known shipwrecks. Of further interest, Point Pelee is a Canadian National Park, a world-renowned bird-watching spot, and is situated on two major migratory bird routes -- the Atlantic and the Mississippi Flyways. The point is the southern most part of mainland Canada, with its tip being further south than the northern part of California.
South of Pelee Island is Middle island, the most southern territory of Canada and literally a stone’s throw from the international border. The island was a jumping off point for rumrunners during the early 1900s US prohibition and housed a clubhouse, hotel, and even an airstrip. Middle Island is now part of Point Pelee National Park conservation area. Immediately to the south of Middle island are Kelleys island, Bass Islands, Put-In-Bay, Port Clinton and Sandusky. There are some 20 known wrecks in the western end of the lake where average water depth is only 30-odd feet (10 m) between Pelee Passage and the mouth of the Detroit River. There are another 10 wrecks in the vicinity of Kelleys Island plus the aforementioned 15 in the area of the Pelee Passage.
Another heavy concentration of wrecks lies in the vicinity of Long Point where over 30 have been documented. Some 15 or so wrecks are known to lie off Cleveland and another 30 or more further east toward Erie, PA and north within the main body of the lake. The heavy gales producing heavier than normal seas, spooled up by the shallow water, coupled with near zero visibility, have been the driving force behind countless ships being blown off course onto sandbars and reefs, or forcing collisions with other vessels inside her narrow passages. Adding in the historical tendency to overwork steam engines to speed up trips and increase revenues have all contributed to the high concentration of shipwrecks in Lake Erie.
It is, truly, the Graveyard of the Great Lakes.
