You’ve heard of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. But did you know about another famous sinking 20 years earlier? That wreckage was lost for more than 130 years. Now people have finally found it. The finders announced their discovery on Saturday.
The SS Western Reserve set sail on Lake Superior in 1892. People thought this ship was a technological marvel. (They said the same thing about Titanic, remember?) At that time, most ships were still wooden. The new ship was one of the first all-steel cargo ships on the Great Lakes. It was 300 feet long and built to break speed records. Newspapers nicknamed it “the inland greyhound.”
It was also supposed to be one of the safest ships afloat. Peter Minch owned it. He was proud of it. He even brought his wife and young children aboard for a trip on an August day.
But sadly, the ship met a storm between Michigan and Canada. It cracked in half. Twenty-seven people perished, including the Minch family. Only wheelsman Harry W. Stewart survived. He swam a mile to shore after his lifeboat flipped.
But where was the evidence of the wreck? For almost 132 years, the lake hid it.
Last summer, explorers from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society found Western Reserve off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Brothers Darryl and Dan Ertel spent more than two years looking for Western Reserve. On July 22, they set out on a boat. Heavy ship traffic forced them to change course. They looked in a spot different from where they had planned. Good thing! The brothers used sonar scans to search the water. In 600 feet of water, they found a large ship broken in half.
The storm tore up the ship. But the cold freshwater also preserved it well.
Sailing on the Great Lakes can be more dangerous than sailing on the ocean. Since the 1700s, thousands of ships have sunk in them. On oceans, ships have space to move away from storms. But lakes are smaller. It’s harder for ships to steer out of the way.
Since steel boats were still new, the steel may have been too brittle in the cold water. Western Reserve and Titanic were made of the same type of steel.
And He awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. — Mark 4:39
