Shipwreck discovered of schooner that sank in Lake Michigan almost 140 years ago
Madison, Wisconsin – – After decades of the background of the bottom of Lake Michigan, the researchers finally found the wreck of a cargo gull that sank during a fierce storm almost 140 years off the coast of Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association announced on Monday that a team led by researcher Brandon Baillod found the wreck of the FJ King. Baillod said in an email to the Associated Press that the wreckage was discovered on June 28.
According to the announcement, the Baillod team found the ship off Bailey’s Harbor, a city of around 280 people on the Porte du Wisconsin Porte, an outcrop in Lake Michigan which gives the state its distinctive form in Mitten.
King FJ was a cargo cargo schooner with 144 feet (43.89 meters), built in 1867 in Toledo, Ohio, to transport cereals and iron ore. According to the announcement of the Historical Society and the Archaeology Association, the ship collided with a Gale Peninsula out of the door on September 15, 1886, while moving the irona ore of Escanaba, Michigan, in Chicago.
Waves estimated at 8 to 10 feet (2.4 to 3 meters) broke his seams and after several hours of pumping, Captain William Griffin ordered his men from the Yawl boat to the ship. The Goélette finally sank at the Arc-d’Abord around 2 a.m., with the severe bridge bridge from the ship blowing in the storm, sending the Griffin papers to 50 feet in the air. A passing schooner picked up the crew and took them to the port of Bailey.
Researchers have been trying to find King FJ since the 1970s, but contradictory stories of the ship’s location when he sank their efforts. Griffin reported that the ship had dropped by about 5 miles (8 kilometers) off the port of Bailey, but a head of lighthouse said he saw the masts of a schooner approaching the shore surface. The shipwrecked hunters traveled the area but came empty. Over the years, FJ King has developed a reputation among shipwrecked hunters as a ghost ship.
Baillod thought that Griffin might not know where he was in darkness when the ship was falling. He drew a grid of 2 square miles (5.17 square kilometers) around the location that the lighthouse keeper gave and carried out the excavation. The lateral scanning radar discovered an object measuring approximately 140 feet (42.6 meters) long by half a thousand (0.8 kilometer) of the location of the headlight goalkeeper. He turned out to be the FJ King.
“Some of us had to pinch,” said Baillod in the announcement. “After all the previous research, we could not believe that we had found it, and so quickly.”
He said that the shell seems to be intact, surprising researchers who expected to find it in pieces due to the weight of the iron ore that the schooner was carrying.
The Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association has now discovered five wrecks in the past three years. Earlier in 2025, the group found the LW steam crane in the Fox river in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as well as the tug John Evenson and the Gull Margaret A. Muir Off Algoma, Wisconsin. Baillod discovered the Trinidad Off Algoma schooner in 2023.
