LUDINGTON, MI – Historians are working to identify a shipwreck that recently emerged on the beach near Ludington State Park.
The wreckage, a hull fragment from a wooden vessel, was discovered the evening of Friday, April 24, on the Lake Michigan beach north of Ludington, according to a press release from the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum.
The remains are consistent with schooners built between the 1850s and 1880s, and museum officials are working with the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association to identify the shipwreck the wreckage is from, according to the release.
Wave action during times of high water levels, such as those the Great Lakes currently are experiencing, tend to reveal long-buried shipwrecks.
Last November, the wreckage of a flat-bottomed wooden barge emerged along the Lake Michigan shoreline just south of Muskegon’s Kruse Park. It’s believed the early 1900s barge was hauling a steam crane that sank in the mid-1930s, according to the West Michigan Underwater Preserve.
On April 19, a wreck was located on a northern Lake Michigan beach near Manistique and identified by the MSRA as the R. Kanters, which blew ashore in September 1903, according to a post on the MSRA’s website. The R. Kanters, named after former Holland mayor Rokus Kanters, was a two-masted schooner built in 1873 that operated for a time out of Holland and Grand Haven.
The recently discovered Ludington wreckage measures 32 feet by 8 feet and consists of 15 “ribs” with planking on both sides, according to the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum.
In the 1980s, a large wooden rudder, possibly from the same wreck, washed ashore nearby, according to the museum. And a few years ago, staff from Ludington State Park found a large wooden windlass – a type of winch -- that also may be from the same wreck that had washed ashore, the museum reported.
Researchers from the Port of Ludington Maritime Museum and MSRA have identified several possible vessels that wreckage could be from: the J.B. Skinner, built in 1841; the J.O. Moss, built in 1863; the Eclipse, built in 1852; the Orphan Boy, built in 1862; and the wooden-hulled tug the Frank Canfield, built in 1875.
More on MLive:
1903 shipwreck emerges from sand on U.P. peninsula
Shipwreck emerges from Lake Michigan near Muskegon coastline
Lake Michigan shipwreck could be world’s ‘most intact wooden schooner’ ever found