By Jared Daniel
Guest Writer, Dive News Network
It was a beautiful night, miles out in the middle of Northern Lake Huron. We were on the 32 ft. Obsession Too, the legendary boat that Dave Trotter and his team used to discover lost history on the bottom of Lake Huron. We were in the middle of a search grid when an object appeared on the computer screen.
The first images of the object were not clear because we “spiked” it. Spiking an object happens when the tow fish (the actual sonar) and the boat rides directly over an object. The side scan sonar came close to hitting the upright masts, but went in between them. We marked the location of the object and continued on with the search grid; this is common practice among professional shipwreck hunters. It lets us continue searching the grid until it is complete because there are real difficulties of realigning ourselves with the course we were on.
A few hours later in mid-morning, we were finished with the grid and we decided to survey the object. We went back and dropped a temporary buoy where the wreck was and put the tow fish back in the water to do passes over the object so the team could get a good look at what we were seeing on the bottom. The first few passes were unsuccessful in detailing the wreck sight, but with a few more we got a great image on the screen. The screen showed a sailing vessel upright and intact on the bottom of the lake with both masts still standing and evidence of rigging appearing on the screen as well. We were excited but what exactly did we find?
A few weeks later we went back out to the wreck site to dive and try to identify the wreck. The first dive to the wreck showed the early design of a canal schooner. The cabins at the stern were intact and in great condition, both of the 130 ft. tall masts were still towering over the deck with the wire rigging still hanging on them. The hatches on the deck were still tightly battened down as if ready to sail again. The schooner appeared to be intact with no damage and when the divers got to the bow of the vessel, a large gash on the starboard bow appeared through the murk. It looked like she was hit hard and sank quickly, but then why would her cabins and masts still be intact and standing?
When a ship sinks, the escaping air usually blows off the superstructure and allows the ship to sink even faster and if a ship sinks fast enough the impact with the bottom will snap the masts and break the vessel up to an unidentifiable pile of boards on the bottom of the lake. This wreck lies 30 miles out in Lake Huron in 250 ft. of water, with the decks rising up to 230 ft. with the tip of the masts at 125 ft. This only gave the divers a maximum bottom time of 20 minutes with 64 minutes of decompression stops. It took weeks to video and explore the wreck to get a more complete picture of what we had found but we could not find any way to positively identify her. We got a few cargo samples from the collision area and it showed the vessel was carrying a cargo of coal. We also tried to discover the position of the wreck to see if she was either upbound or downbound. It showed the wreck was pointing east, so it was a clue that could not be played out, but we did know that if a vessel was carrying coal, she was usually going up to Lake Superior or to a port on Lake Michigan. It took weeks of research in order to narrow down the candidates.
Within a few weeks we had two candidates, one of them was a schooner thought to be found a few years ago a couple dozen miles away. The task fell on the two historians on the team to put an end to the confusing matter. Only three schooners of the size, length and cargo matched the description of the wreck. The Corsica, S.H. Kimball and the Marion Egan all matched the bid. The Corsica was found by NOAA in 2008 north of Thunder Bay, so it was ruled out. Trotter “thought” we found the Kimball north of Port Austin in 2003, so it was ruled out but the Marion Egan remained missing.
In the end, the Marion Egan seemed to be the answer. The two team members researched the story on the Egan’s demise. The report put our fears to rest about mis-identifying the Kimball. The Marion Egan was a canal schooner built in Ohio in 1861. The demand from the civil war kept the Egan’s existance profitable. In the early 1870’s, the Egan was wrecked on a Canadian island and was bought and salvaged. The Egan was rebuilt which would explain the wire rigging and why she is still in good condition. On the night of September 23, 1875, the Egan was upbound with a cargo of coal when the downbound schooner E.R. Williams collided with her in an almost head-on collision. The report said the Egan went down in less than seven minutes with the loss of two lives. Through the hours of research we have done, we decided the wreck had to be the Marion Egan. Before she was lying in the deep dark waters of Lake Huron, alone and unidentified. Now, thanks to hard work and modern technology, the Marion Egan stands mute testimony to human error and as tomb for two sailors who now stand on eternal deck watch in the waters of a Great Lake. ■
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