That treasure-hunting is not without its romance, as well as its reward, is shown by the case of the Pewabic. This vessel, with her treasure in copper, disappeared as completely as though she had been lifted above the clouds. Expedition after expedition was fitted out to search for her—a search which continued over a period of thirty years. In 1897, a party of fortune-seekers from Milwaukee succeeded in finding the long-lost ship six miles south-east of Thunder Bay. Another terrible event was the loss of the steamer Atlantic, off Long Point, Lake Erie, with three hundred lives. For many years, futile search was made for her; not till nearly a quarter of a century was she found, and $30,000 recovered.
This is One of the Most Remarkable Photographs ever Taken on the Lakes. It Shows a Sinking Lumber Barge just as She Was Breaking in Two.
The Photograph was taken from a small boat.
Whisky and coal form quite an important part of the treasure which awaits recovery in the Inland Seas. Many vessels with cargoes of whisky have been lost, and this liquor would be as good to-day as when it went down. In 1846, the Lexington, Captain Peer, cleared from Cleveland for Port Huron, freighted with one hundred and ten barrels of whisky. In mid-lake, the vessel foundered with all on board, and though more than sixty years have passed, she has never been found. To-day her cargo would be worth $115 a barrel. The Anthony Wayne also sank in Lake Erie with three hundred barrels of whisky and of wine; and five years afterwards, the Westmoreland sank near Manitou Island with a similar cargo. These are only a few of many such cargoes now at the bottom of the Lakes. Of treasure in lost coal, that of the Gilcher and Ostrich, steamer and tow, that disappeared in Lake Michigan, is one of the largest. The two vessels carried three thousand tons, and as yet they have not been traced to their resting place. In 1895, the steamer Africa went down in a gale on Lake Huron, carrying two thousand tons of coal with her, and at the bottom of Lake Ontario is the ship St. Peter, with a big cargo of fuel. It is estimated that at least half a million dollars in coal awaits recovery at the bottom of the Lakes.
But, after all, perhaps the most romantic of all disappearances on the Inland Seas is that of the Griffin, built by La Salle at the foot of Lake Erie, in January, 1679. The Griffin sailed across Lake Erie, up the Detroit River, and continued until she entered Lake Michigan. In the autumn of 1680, she started on her return trip, laden with furs and with $12,000 in gold. She was never heard of again, and historians are generally of the opinion that the little vessel sank during a storm on Lake Huron.
Or it may be that one must choose between this earliest voyager of the Lakes and that other shrouded mystery—the “Frozen Ship.” Lake Superior has been the scene of as weird happenings as any tropic sea, and this of the Frozen Ship, perhaps, is the weirdest of all. She was a schooner, with towering masts, of the days when canvas was monarch of the seas; and the captain was her owner, who set out one day in late November for a more southern port than Duluth. And then came the Great Storm—that storm which comes once each year in the days of late navigation to add to the lists of ships and men lost and dead—and just what happened to the schooner no living man can say. But one day, many weeks afterward, the corpse of a ship was found on the edge of the pine wilderness on the north Superior shore; and around and above this ship were the tracks of wild animals, and from stem to stern she was a mass of ice and snow, and when she was entered two men were found in her, frozen stiff, just as the “Frozen Pirate” was discovered in a story not so true.
So might the tragedy and the romance of the Inland Seas be written without end, for each year adds a new chapter to the old; and yet, how many thousands of our seekers of novelty say, with the young woman I know, “I want to go where something has happened—where there have been battles, and pirates, and where there’s sunken ships, and treasure, and things!”