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Even for the Thunder Bay area, a perilous swath of northern Lake Huron off the Michigan coast that has devoured many a ship, the Ironton’s fate seems particularly cruel.
The 191-foot (58-meter) cargo vessel collided with a grain hauler on a blustery night in September 1894, sinking both. The Ironton’s captain and six sailors clambered into a lifeboat but it was dragged to the bottom before they could detach it from the ship. Only two crewmen survived.
The gravesite long eluded shipwreck hunters.
Now, the mystery has been solved, officials with Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan, said Wednesday. The Associated Press obtained details of the discovery ahead of the announcement.
A team of historians, underwater archaeologists and technicians located the wreckage in 2019 and deployed remotely controlled cameras to scan and document it, Superintendent Jeff Gray said in an AP interview. The sanctuary plans to reveal the location in coming months and is considering placing a mooring buoy at the site. Officials have kept the find secret to prevent divers from disturbing the site before video and photo documentation is finished.
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.
AP News
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