Even for the Thunder Bay area, a perilous swath of northern Lake Huron off the Michigan coast that has devoured many ships, the Ironton’s fate seems particularly cruel.
In this image taken from video provided by the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the bow of the Ironton is seen in Lake Huron off Michigan's east coast in a June 2021 photo.
Video footage shows the Ironton sitting upright on the lake bottom, hundreds of feet down — “remarkably preserved” by the cold, fresh water like many other Great Lakes shipwrecks, Gray said. The search and inspections involved a number of organizations, including Ocean Exploration Trust, founded by Robert Ballard, who located the sunken wreckage of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck.
Several factors made the area a “shipwreck alley” for more than two centuries, until modern navigation and weather forecasting reduced the danger, said Stephanie Gandulla, the sanctuary’s resource protection coordinator.The late 1800s was a busy period for Great Lakes commerce. Thousands of schooners, or sailing ships, and hundreds of steamers hauled cargo and passengers between bustling port cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland.
The steamer broke down in heavy Lake Huron seas around 12:30 a.m. the morning of Sept. 26. The Ironton and the Moonlight disconnected their tow lines and drifted apart, with the Ironton crew setting sails and firing up its engine. It veered off course and ran into the Ohio, a freighter loaded with 1,000 tons of flour, about 10 miles off Presque Isle, Michigan.The Ohio soon foundered, its crew of 16 rescued by the Moonlight. The Ironton stayed afloat more than an hour before going down.
Staffers with the sanctuary, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, took a sonar survey in the area of the Ironton-Ohio collision in 2017. They detected two images on the lake bed, one later identified as the Ohio. The other was a more recent shipwreck.It took two more years to track down the Ironton several miles away. Ballard’s organization provided an autonomous surface vehicle designed for seafloor mapping.
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