Underwater Archaeology Team Finds Stunningly Visual Ship Wreck

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Modern day ship wreck hunters aren’t after the gold. The treasure they prize is historical information. Thanks to the persistent efforts of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association, “The 156-year-old Trinidad vessel was located 270 feet deep near the Algoma coast.” They used all the latest gadgets to convert their find to an interactive 3-D model for everyone to explore without getting wet.

Ship wreck details revealed

The ship wreck incident itself can be blamed almost entirely on lack of maintenance. That’s a shame because the “schooner-type vessel” Trinidad was state of the art when built in 1867. It also made the owners a whole bunch of money. It seems they considered it “disposable.” It sank only 14 years later, in 1881, off the coast of Wisconsin.

Finding the wreck in Lake Michigan “has been hailed as a ‘remarkable discovery‘ by maritime historians.” You can check it out in remarkable detail since they posted “a 3D photogrammetry model of the wreck,” put together from “3,600 high resolution images.

Brendon Baillod and Bob Jaeck with the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association “used sonar technology to locate the vessel.” That was the break out the Champaign moment after years of hard work pouring through old and poorly hand-written historical records searching for clues to the ship wreck location.

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Few people if any had ever searched for her,” Baillod notes in a statement, adding that the “vessel is ‘remarkably intact‘ with some of the crew’s possessions such as plates, bells and anchors well preserved.” Before they started slogging through dusty documents, they picked a target with a good chance of being found to start with.

The Trinidad and it’s demise were well documented so the ship “ticked all the boxes” as a “candidate for discovery.” It didn’t happen during a storm so the crew had plenty of time to prepare. In fact, they were practically expecting it to sink on them sooner or later.

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As Baillod explians, “her crew gave a good description of where she sank, and she went down fairly slowly in deep water so she was likely very intact. She was also fairly near to a port city for convenient access.

Custom built for comfort

Back in the day, the Trinidad would have been a great ship to work on. At least it should have been. Merchants John Keller and Aaron B. Merriam were raking in money by the boatload but stingy when it came to maintenance. The “schooner” type sailing vessel “was built in 1867 at Grand Island, N.Y., by shipbuilder William Keefe at a shipyard established specifically for its construction.

Because it had to pass through the Welland Canal connecting Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, “it had features such as a lifeboat davit that folded in, so the vessel could traverse narrow waterways.” Something you can find on custom built luxury yachts today for launching a tender boat.

The research team spent months in the library before they ever got near the water. “after two years of archival research, studying historical news articles and records as well as shipping lanes and nautical charts to narrow down the search area,” they finally got to break out the sonar gear. On the first pass they nearly missed the ship wreck but a “smudge” turned out to be worth checking out again, slower.

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That’s when they “took their findings to underwater archaeologist Tamara Thomsen of the Wisconsin Historical Society, who arranged for the site to be surveyed with an underwater vehicle and successfully identified it as the Trinidad vessel.

The two masted schooner plied “coal from New York and returned with Midwest grain, traveling between Milwaukee, Chicago, Buffalo and Oswego.” At 140 feet long, the Trinidad had “unusually large and well-appointed accommodations for her day.” The grain trade “was extremely lucrative, and the Trinidad made a fortune for her owners, making hundreds of trips during her career.” Unfortunately, “the owners did not invest much money” into the ship.

The “hull was leaky” and “the captain was nearly killed by a block that fell from the decaying wire rigging.” On May 11, 1881, they were headed “down the coast of Wisconsin toward Milwaukee, where the vessel began to fill with water about 4:45 a.m.” That was not “an uncommon occurrence” and they “continued on course until the vessel suddenly and violently lurched and began to sink.” The crew made it to a life boat but didn’t have their coats or other warm gear. Rowing for eight hours kept them warm until they made shore. “The ship’s mascot, a large Newfoundland dog who was asleep next to the stove when the ship began to sink,” didn’t make it.

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