The Discovery of a Legendary Shipwreck
In a stunning revelation for ship-lover worldwide, explorers have found the long-lost shipwreck of the F.J. King—a craft so mysterious it earned the nickname “the ghost ship of the Great Lakes.” After lying hidden for 139 years, the wooden hull now rests quietly on the sandy floor of Lake Michigan. A devoted team of volunteer divers and historians with the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association (WUAA) uncovered it on an expedition that concluded a 50-year quest for one of the state’s most nagging nautical puzzles.
News of the revelation broke on September 14, 2025, sending excitement through North America’s shipwreck-loving community. The announcement, a blend of high-tech imaging and passionate local sleuthing, proved that modern science and deep local knowledge can still pursue a mystery that mesmerized many for lifetimes.
The History Behind the F.J. King Shipwreck
The F.J. King was a 144-foot, three-masted merchant classic, launched on the banks of Toledo, Ohio, in 1867. For 18 years, the cluttered deck bustled with stained wooden barrels of grain and iron samples, while the hold creaked with freshly cut estimates of the region’s famous northwestern pines. The wooden craft was an iron yet fragile resist that brightened the growing industrial ambition of what was still then dubbed the “breadbasket of the nation.”
On September 15, 1886, the F.J. King met its end in one of the Great Lakes’ fiercest storms. Loaded with 600 tons of iron ore, the vessel had left Escanaba, Michigan, bound for Chicago. As it rounded the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin, the winds reached gale force, and waves climbed 8 to 10 feet. The wooden hull, weakened by years of service, groaned under the assault until the seams gave way. The crew fought back by manning the pumps, but water surged into the hold faster than it could be chased out. Captain William Griffin faced the grim choice every mariner dreads: he ordered the men to the yawl.
From that tiny lifeboat the sailors could do nothing but watch. At around 2 a.m. the King’s stern suddenly rose, as if the ship were trying to climb the face of a mountain of water. The iron ore shifted with a thunderous roar that splintered the deckhouse. The captain’s papers, blasted into the gale, were seen drifting out 50 feet before vanishing into the swallowing black.
The King plunged bow-first, a last gasp of splintering wood, iron, and salt air, and slipped into the depths of Lake Michigan, coming to rest 137 feet below the surface. The schooner La Petite, a lucky encounter, picked the men out of the yawl and took them to Baileys Harbor. The ship that had carried them in had lost its name, and the exact site of its grave would remain hidden for more than a hundred years.
The Elusive Shipwreck Hunt
The F.J. King was labeled as a phantom vessel the day it shipwrecked. Only weeks later, Cana Island’s lightkeeper William Sanderson told townsfolk his lanterns must’ve been played for a dream: the ship’s vertical masts loomed above the waves, an unlit, silent warning. Drift-netters echoed the same story, claiming splintered hull pieces tangled in their catches. Neither sight, neither sound, solved the riddle, and the F.J. King drifted deeper into the legend.
Search teams came and went, decade after decade, clutching a dying captain’s simple note that said the ship had found bottom five nautical miles northeast of Baileys Harbor. Beyond the flare of an e-poster channeling fearless divers, the cold stones of the lake refused to speak. The Neptune’s Dive Club, whose chartered hulls normally mapped reef caverns and ghost bomber pods, slapped up a bounty: anyone pin-pining the F.J. King’s grave gets a crisp thousand. Good press. The prize, however, stayed locked inside the silt.
Brendon Baillod, the scruffy love-child of the salt breeze and old book paste, started chasing the ghost the winter a new school-bill came in. He wrote, archived, and re-pub-al-ished a trove of yellowed papers. The ground-bottle of his quest was a faded 1886 scrap that mentioned Sanderson’s lanterns, but with a key confessional: a new base-fix said the F.J. King had imploded a mere three monitored miles east of the Harbor. Brendon’s paused heart almost refused the next logical beat—Griffin’s dead mileage was evaporating, and the mystery was still vapor-ghost.
Baillod imagined how Captain Griffin must’ve felt: a dark ship screaming with panic, a broad iron hull suddenly a deathtrap, and no compass glimmering amid the chaos. Instead of charting a position, Griffin had to hope that the lighthouse keeper had seen the tornado of disaster and had marked the position correctly. Baillod, trusting the keeper’s shaky report, sketched a bright 2-square-mile box around Sanderson’s guess on a chart and started pulling his people together.
The Little-Known Victory of the Citizen Scientists
When the sun climbed on June 28, 2025, Baillod and twenty amateur scientists—ordinary people who liked the same old lake and had joined the WUAA for twenty bucks a year—stepped aboard a charter known as The Shoreline. The plan had two nodes: familiarization with zipping side-scan sonar and the silent torpedoes of the ROV, and a reality check on the keeper’s recollection of the lighthouse. They assumed the whole thing was a long-shot bingo; mark the box and move on—next stop: diner chat with grizzled fishermen.
To the team’s disbelief, two hours into the run, that black-on-black sight appeared on the screen. The side-scan grinned and spat out the bulky outline of a limestone mirage: the long-explored lakeboat, cradled on the silt. Only a half-mile from Sanderson’s shaky mark, sitting comfortably in 120 to 130 feet of thin cold wet. There was a sudden, triumphant half-mad whoop that rattled the soda cups; they all knew they had named the ghost.
“We kept pinching each other to be sure,” Baillod said. “After so many searches, finding it this fast felt unreal.” Next, they sent remote-operated vehicles to snag sharp, close-up photos of the shipwreck. The photos surprised everyone: the hull sat mostly whole, defying the idea that tons of iron ore would splinter the metal on impact. You could still make out the ship’s wheel, the capstan, and other details, all draped in the ghostly white of quagga mussels, the invasive species that’s now filtering the waters of Lake Michigan.
These citizen scientists were the first to see theF. J. King since it slipped from the light in 1886. For two months the team kept the location to themselves while the Wisconsin Historical Society sent in divers to sketch the wreck and build a 3D photogrammetry model. The shipwreck site is now going up for nomination to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. State and federal laws already blanket it, forbidding anyone from moving or harming the ship and its secrets.
The Bigger Picture: Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes
The recent unearthing of the F.J. King is just another chapter in a much larger saga. The Great Lakes remain the planet’s biggest trove of sunken boats: somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 of them have slipped beneath the surface since the 1600s. In Lake Michigan alone, experts guess that more than 200 shipwrecks are still waiting to be found.
This moment is like a second “gold rush” for wreck hunters. Two main trends are pushing the boom. First, the water has become remarkably clear, thanks to the growing army of quagga mussels. What once averaged a few feet of visibility has stretched in some spots to 100 feet. The second factor is pure tech magic: the side-scan sonar systems that used to cost as much as a small house are now on the shelf for almost anyone with a decent hobby budget. This allows weekend explorers and part-time historians to map the lakes like never before.
The Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association is a shining example: they’ve cataloged five shipwrecks in just the last three years, the schooner Trinidad being the latest of the trio off the coast of Algoma, Wisconsin, in 2023. Still, a cloud of worry lifts over every new find. The same mussels that give us a better view are also busy covering every surface of these ships. Wood and steel succumb to that slow, decorative armor, turning once-proud vessels into fragile whispers of the past. The clock is ticking for these submerged stories.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is racing to finish a project that will scan every inch of the Great Lakes floor in stunning detail by 2030. Pulling this off would spotlight every still-hidden shipwreck and reshape how the world studies history beneath the waves.
The Historic Importance of the Wreck
The F.J. King isn’t just another lost ship; it’s a living by-product of a roaring chapter in U.S. history. Against the backdrop of the late 1800s, vessels like the King carried the very iron, coal, and timber that turned small towns into engines of industry and propelled the nation’s rapid growth.
Re-Mapper Ric Mixter, who studies lost vessels, points to the ongoing potential of new finds. He notes, “The Great Lakes still hide clues to the daily life, the smells, the sounds of that long-gone world. Seeing them turn to clear sonar images is a breakthrough. It’s thrilling to think we can unlock a ship’s stories it has buried for a century and more.”
The way the F.J. King wreck was found shows why citizen science matters more than ever. Baillod’s crew was a one-of-a-kind mix—students, retirees, and history buffs, all covering their own costs just to make a meaningful contribution. Their win proves that regular folks, not just scientists, can push history and archaeology forward in ways that surprise even the experts.
“We set out to make it a citizen science mission so anyone could experience the thrill of diving into Lake Michigan’s hidden stories,” Baillod said. The plan not only shed light on a mystery that’s been hanging for decades; it also gave everyday people a hands-on stake in the lakes’ ship-lore.
The Future of Shipwreck Exploration
Now, folks can’t stop buzzing over what other treasures are waiting on the lake bed. Baillod and the crew of The Shoreline are already booking next summer’s cruise to keep the search rolling. Who knows what stories are just waiting to be outshined by another good old-fashioned detective trip into the depths?
This recent shipwreck discovery proves that the Great Lakes still keep countless tales waiting for someone to find them. Each wreck acts like a time capsule, holding fragments of sorrow, bravery, and determination. With technology marching forward and more treasure-hunters and tinkerers pouring into the water, the next few years may reveal even more astonishing sites, deepening our picture of the Lakes’ busy, storied past.
The haunting tale of the F.J. King—ghost ship that slipped silently into the night—has at last been sealed. The shipwreck’s finding proves that patient study, crowdsourced curiosity, and teamwork can unlock even stubborn mysteries. Scholars and everyday lake-lovers will circle back to this find for years, intrigued by what its missed journey can teach about both the shocks and sirens that marked life among the Lakes.
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/17/science/shipwreck-lake-michigan-ghost-ship-schooner
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