Searchers find missing ship in Lake Michigan, over 150 years after it sunk | Wisconsin

Researchers recently discovered the wreck of one of Lake Michigan’s “most wanted missing ships,” which sank to the bottom of the lake more than 150 years ago.

A wreck hunter and diver named Paul Ehorn made the discovery after searching for the steamboat Lac La Belle for nearly 60 years. Shipwreck World, a group that works to locate shipwrecks around the world, announced Friday that the team led by Ehorn had discovered the wreck about 20 miles offshore, between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Ehorn’s discovery of Lac La Belle took place in October 2022. The announcement was delayed because his team wanted to include a three-dimensional video model of the ship, but bad weather and other commitments kept his dive team from descending on the wreck until last summer, he told The Associated Press in an interview.

Ehorn, 80, has been searching for wrecks since he was 15. He said he had been trying to locate Lac La Belle since 1965. He used a tip from fellow wreck hunter and author Ross Richardson in 2022 to narrow his search grid and found the vessel using side-scan sonar after just two hours on the lake, he said.

“It’s kind of a game, like solving a puzzle. Sometimes you don’t have a lot of pieces to put the puzzle together, but this one worked and we found it right away,” he said. This discovery left him “super delighted”.

Ehorn declined to discuss the clue that led to the discovery.

Richardson said in a brief telephone interview Sunday that he learned that a commercial fisherman in a “certain location” had caught what Richardson called an item specific to steamboats from the 1800s. He declined to elaborate further on how competitive wreck hunting has become and how that information might alert researchers to another way to conduct research.

The luxury steamboat, called Lac La Belle, departed from Milwaukee to Grand Haven, Michigan, one night in October 1872, with 53 passengers and crew along with a cargo of 19,000 bushels of barley, 1,200 barrels of flour, 50 barrels of pork and 25 barrels of whiskey, according to Shipwreck World.

About two hours into the voyage, the ship began to leak uncontrollably. The captain steered the ship back toward Milwaukee, but huge waves crashed in, extinguishing its boilers. The storm pushed the ship south. At around 5 a.m. the captain ordered the lifeboats lowered and the ship sank stern-first.

One of the lifeboats capsized while heading towards shore, killing eight people. The remaining lifeboats made landfall along the Wisconsin coast.

According to an account from Shipwreck World, the Lac La Belle was built in 1864 in Cleveland, Ohio. The massive 220-foot steamboat was sailing between Cleveland and Lake Superior, but sank in the St. Clair River in 1866 after a collision. The ship was refloated in 1869 and refitted.

According to Ehorn, the ship’s exterior is covered in mold and the upper cabins are missing, but the hull appears intact and the oak interiors are still in good condition.

The Great Lakes are home to between 6,000 and 10,000 shipwrecks, most of which remain unknown, Discover reported. Wreck hunters have been searching the lakes with more urgency in recent years, fearing that invasive quagga mussels are slowly destroying the wrecks.

Lac La Belle is the 15th wreck located by Ehorn, the Associated Press reports.

“That was one more check mark,” Ehron said. “Now let’s move on to the next one. It gets harder and harder. The easier ones have been found.”

Ehorn will present the discovery in person at the 2026 Ghost Ships Festival in Wisconsin in March, along with video and other images of the wreck.