Spectacular find: the ship lost 138 years ago emerges from Lake Michigan

Nearly 140 years ago, the Frank D. Barker was headed to Escanaba on the coast of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to pick up a cargo of iron ore. The two-masted, 137-foot-long wooden vessel ran off course in bad weather according to the Wisconsin Historical Society and in foggy conditions ran into a limestone outcropping.

The captain and crew, all of whom survived, attempted to correct course but ended up stranded on Spider Island. Multiple attempts to salvage the vessel that year and the next failed.

It became one of the thousands of ships to end up at the bottom of the Great Lakes over the years. Many of them have remained hidden underneath the waves, but now the Frank D. Barker has been discovered thanks to the sharp eye of Door County rafter and shipwreck hunter Matt Olson.

Lake Michigan shipwreck lost to the deep no longer

Olson, owner of Door County Adventure Rafting, was searching through online satellite images of Rowleys Bay for places to take customers when he noticed a dark patch off the coast. Up on further investigation when scouting the site, he confirmed that what he had seen was in fact a submerged shipwreck.

He reported his find to the State Historic Preservation Office and a team of maritime archaeologists with the Wisconsin Historical Society went to examine the wreckage. During diving missions, they were able to confirm that the remains were those of the Frank D. Barker that sank in 1887.

“Whenever we receive this type of call, it’s hard to know exactly what we will find,” said Tamara Thomsen, Wisconsin Historical Society maritime archaeologist said in a press release. “We were excited to identify the wreck as the Frank D. Barker, whose exact location has been lost for over a century.”

“We are grateful for Matt Olson’s keen sense of observation and quick reporting of the discovery so we can document this chapter of Wisconsin’s storied maritime history,” she added.

Third shipwreck found in recent years

Olson himself went to take a closer look at the sunken vessel after reporting his find, “I was surprised by how big it was. A lot of it is still there today, which is pretty cool because a lot of these wrecks get destroyed by the wind and ice as time goes on,” Olson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Frank D. Barker llies in shallow water, sitting just 24 feet below the surface.

“I took out my six-year-old son to snorkel on it, too. So he was one of the first people to see this ship in over 100 years,” Olson shared with the outlet.

The Frank D. Barker is the third shipwreck Olson has found in recent years. Last year he found the Grey Eagle, which sank in 1869, and he located the Sunshine that sank the same year.

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