Alpena, MI

Flying over Michigan’s Thunder Bay for an aerial survey on May 4, 1992, John McConnell spotted a long-hidden treasure—the wreck of the New Orleans, a wooden vessel whose whereabouts had been a mystery for more than 150 years.

“That day the visibility just happened to be very clear,” explains McConnell, a scuba diver, historian, and photographer in Alpena, Mich. “It’s so exciting when you make a find like that.”

The New Orleans now is one of an estimated 116 shipwrecks protected in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve, off the coast of Alpena (pop. 11,589) in Lake Huron. The designation of the 448-square-mile marine sanctuary on Oct. 7, 2000, was the culmination of nearly three decades of support for preservation of two centuries of maritime history.

Alpena, in the northeast corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, is popular with visitors seeking lakeside beauty, water sports, and views of historic lighthouses, which are honored each October during the town’s Great Lakes Lighthouse Festival.

“Everything here leans toward the water,” says Deborah Pardike, director of the Alpena Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The water is intrinsically related to our quality of life, recreational opportunities, and our history.”

Divers long have been drawn to the shipwrecks in Thunder Bay, and new programs planned by sanctuary officials soon will allow students and non-divers to see the sites through divers’ direct video feeds to the shore.

“It is really phenomenal to see what is down there,” McConnell says. “But, unless you dive, the greater public isn’t able to do that.”

McConnell, 50, has been working for protection of the region’s underwater treasures since the 1970s. “Each of those shipwrecks has a story to tell,” he says. “This sanctuary is very important.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the state of Michigan manage and protect the historic collection of shipwrecks in the sanctuary. The collection reads like a textbook of maritime history—a vast wealth of wooden schooners, barks, brigs, steamers, barges, tugboats, and steel-hulled steamers and freighters. Submerged remnants of early wharves and piers, and archaeological artifacts also remain on the floor of Lake Huron.

“The cold, fresh water of Lake Huron is a great preservative,” says Karen Brubeck, the sanctuary’s public outreach coordinator. “Many of these nationally significant shipwrecks have been preserved, some to an exceptional degree.”

Why so many shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay area?

“Thunder Bay had a great deal of traffic because it was an important passageway and trade route before roads existed,” McConnell says. “Thunder Bay also is noted for violent weather picking up rather quickly.”

For instance, on Nov. 9, 1913, the steel-hulled Isaac M. Scott left Port Huron and ran into the path of a cyclonic storm with 90-mile-per-hour winds. Officials characterized the storm as a “freak of nature” that raged for 16 hours and packed 35-foot waves. Known as the most disastrous storm that ever swept the Great Lakes, the Great Storm of 1913 claimed 11 vessels and the lives of an estimated 235 mariners, 178 on Lake Huron.

The Isaac M. Scott foundered and sank with a loss of all 28 crew members. In 1976, the Scott was discovered in 176 feet of water about seven miles off Thunder Bay Island. The ship is reported to be upside down and half-buried in the mud.

The last vessel lost in Thunder Bay was the 470-foot German freighter Nordmeer, which stranded on a shoal in 1966. Jagged rocks ripped her bottom, and the Nordmeer settled upright in 40 feet of water, seven miles northeast of Thunder Bay Island. The ship’s crew was safely rescued.

With its new designation and programs, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve will protect the remains of ships like the Scott and Nordmeer and give people a glimpse of two centuries of Great Lakes’ shipping history.

“Our divers’ motto,” McConnell concludes, “is to take nothing but pictures; leave nothing but bubbles.”

Jackie Sheckler Finch is a freelance writer in Bloomington, Ind.

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