Wreck search: Ghost ship - schooner "F. J. King" discovered after 139 years

The Great Lakes on the border of the USA and Canada are an extensive area, the largest connected inland waterway in the world. Around 1000 nautical miles lie between their beginning at the exit of the St Lawrence Seaway in the east and the city of Duluth in the west. They cover an area of a quarter of a million square kilometres - roughly the size of the Baltic Sea without the Gulf of Bothnia.

Profit counted on the Great Lakes

As important as the Great Lakes are as transport routes for freight, they are notorious for their severe storms, especially in earlier times. In the past, thousands of ships sank and countless sailors drowned. In a business with fierce competition, safety regulations remained minimal for a long time. What counted was the number of voyages, the profit.

The downfall of the ageing "F. J. King"

One ship that fell victim to these circumstances was the "F. J. King", a wooden schooner. Built in 1867, she sailed for almost two decades on cargo voyages. But the rigours of service on the Great Lakes eventually had fatal consequences for the 44-metre-long ship. On 15 September 1886, she was caught in a severe south-westerly storm on Lake Michigan with a cargo of iron ore. She never reached her destination of Chicago.

In the heavy seas, the schooner's ageing hull worked so hard that it began to leak. It soon took on so much water that the "F. J. King" could no longer be saved. Fortunately, they were close to land. The crew launched the dinghy and then watched as the sailboat sank over the bow. However, Captain Griffin and his eight men survived.

The schooner becomes a ghost ship

There are at least two definitions of a ghost ship. According to the first, a ship disappears without a trace; according to the second, it reappears at some point - without a crew. What earned the "F. J. King" this reputation was the fact that it could not be found after its sinking - even though it had sunk in a comparatively well-known and accessible location.

While the Great Lakes had revealed a number of its long-kept secrets in recent decades as one lost wreck after another was discovered, the "F. J. King" remained missing despite numerous searches. The mystery of the ghost ship became so great that a diving club in the nearby town of Green Bay offered a reward of 1000 US dollars for its discovery.

The search has finally come to an end

This should now be due: On 14 September, the Wisconsin Underwater Archeological Association announced that one of its expeditions had been successful: The "F. J. King" had finally been located using side-scan sonar.

"We had to pinch each other," said underwater archaeologist Brendon Baillod. "After all the previous endeavours, we couldn't believe that we had found it so quickly". Even though it was in an area that had been searched many times since the 1970s.

Still well preserved after 139 years

The wreck of the "F. J. King" is well preserved even after 139 years at the bottom of Lake Michigan. It rests upright in a water depth of 40 metres in the west of the Door Peninsula off Cana Island. From its lighthouse, the keeper was still able to see the mast tips of the sunken schooner the day after it sank. And yet the "F. J. King" had managed to evade all searches.