Sunken History: The Ironton Discovery,

AHOY! Welcome to I’dRatherBeSailing, we bring you the best sailing news from above deck, below deck, and the internet-deck. Today we’re exploring a newly discovered piece of marine history, and diving those incredible historical wrecks.

Lets cast off and get into it:

• The Ironton Discovery

• Diving Marine History

• Sailing ‘Round the Web

Shipwreck Alley

125 years after sinking, the sailing schooner Ironton has been discovered resting upright with its three masts still standing, by researchers from NOAA, the state of Michigan, and Ocean Exploration. The 191-foot ship sits 300 feet below the surface of Lake Huron in Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary, perfectly preserved by the icy cold freshwater of the Great Lakes. The liferaft sits behind her, still attached by the painter the crew desperately tried to cut in time to escape.

Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary is also known as Shipwreck Alley.

The Sinking

September, 1894. The Ironton is being towed across Lake Huron by the 190-foot steamer Charles J. Kershaw, along with the schooner Moonlight. Common practice for the day was to tow multiple empty ships on a tow line across the lake to save on gas during repositioning.

12:30am, September 26. Township Kershaw’s engine fails. Skies are clear, but strong southerly winds begin to push Ironton and Moonlight toward the disabled Kershaw. The collision risk is clear, so Moonlight’s crew are forced to fall back on the plan of last resort: cut the line.

Ironton is now adrift in the night at the mercy of the unpredictable Lake Huron wind and swell. To regain control of the ship, Captain Pete Girard orders the crew to fire up the vessel’s auxiliary steam powered engine. As the 5 man crew struggle to set the sails, Ironton veers off course into the path of the Ohio, a 203-foot steamer loaded with 1,000 tons of grain.

By the time Ironton's crew spot the approaching Ohio through the darkness, it was too late—a head-on collision with the steamer was unavoidable.

In an interview published by the Duluth News Tribune the following day, William Wooley of Cleveland, Ohio, a surviving crew member of Ironton, recounted his experience.

The two vessels separate after the impact, both fatally damaged. Ironton's bow tore a 12-foot diameter hole into Ohio's wooden hull. Heavily laden with cargo, Ohio sank quickly, with all 16 crew escaping on lifeboats. Nearby ships rescued the sailors. The damaged Ironton, however, drifted out of sight of the responding vessels. By the time Captain Girard realized he could not save the ship, Ironton had drifted for over an hour, far from the view of any surrounding vessels.

As the schooner barge slipped swiftly beneath the waves, Ironton's seven-man crew retreated to their lifeboat. But in the commotion, no one untied the painter that secured the lifeboat to Ironton. Survivor William W. Parry of East China, Michigan, recounted:

Wooley and Parry clung to floating wreckage as they battled the wind and waves in frigid Lake Huron. Within hours the passing steamer Charles Hebard spotted and rescued the men. Lake Huron claimed Captain Girard and four other Ironton crew: Mate Ed Bostwick, Sailor John Pope, and two unidentified sailors.

The Discovery

Eye-witness accounts reported the general area of Ironton’s sinking, but the exact location remained a mystery. In 2017, the Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary and a group of partners led an expedition to survey 100 miles of unmapped lakebed, which led to the discovery of the Ohio. With the location of the Ohio, and weather data from the night of the sinking, the team was able to triangulate search areas for Ironton. The team used sonar and Remote Operated Vehicles to search the lakebed and finally, at the end of their search, an unmistakable image appears on the sonar screen: a shipwreck.

June 2021: the team partners with University of North Carolina’s Undersea Vehicle Program to collect high-resolution video and further document the wreck. The haunting images from their ROV are the ones you see here. Resting upright and incredibly well preserved by Lake Huron's cold freshwater, Ironton looks almost ready to load cargo.

Diving the Wrecks

As sailors, we feel almost magnetically drawn to explore the liquid tombs of shipwrecks.

Pack your Snorkel Gear: Our research into the story of course led us to wonder whether we can visit these shipwrecks, and we’re happy to report we were not disappointed. Not only can you visit, but there are multiple shallow water shipwrecks that you can easily snorkel and shore dive, or rent a paddle board to explore the pristine marine mysteries. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary protects nearly 100 historical shipwrecks in Lake Huron along the Michigan coast, that range in depth from 8’ to 300’

Unsurprisingly, bareboat sailboat rentals do not seem to be available in the area, but who can you really blame. It is called Shipwreck Alley, after all.

Getting There:

APN Alpena Regional Airport

MBS Saginaw International Airport (2.5 hr drive way)

Paddle & Snorkel Guide: This takes you to the Alpena Michigan visitors site, which has a snorkeling guide linked. The guide shows location of shipwrecks, including distance from shore.

Dive Buoys mark the sites. They are maintained by the sanctuary and are free, open May-September.

Local tour operators do SCUBA wreck tours for the advanced divers. For those that don’t dive, there’s 3D Video Dive here from the NOAA site that lets you go on a virtual dive.

If any readers have visited the Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary, we would love to hear your notes on the trip!

200 Year Old Charts & A Tribute

Golden Globe Race Update:

Racing yachts around the world use computerised weather routing programs to optimise courses against satellite weather data. It’s the norm! Both are banned in the Golden Globe but the current leader and only woman in the race, South African Kirsten Neuschäfer, found the perfect solution for her best route home to Les Sables d’Olonne after rounding Cape Horn.

She consulted Ocean Passages of the World with its 200-year-old weather routing charts, historical weather and suggested routes from the original clipper sailing ships. Following that advice is now paying strong dividends sailing through the tricky horse latitudes! She sailed out to the east and is now in a commanding windward position as she reaches the South East Trades ahead of the rest of the fleet. Read the full GGR press release here

Canadian singer songwriter Lennie Gallant released a tribute song this week to Kirsten called On the Minnehaha, and her exploding following from her incredible race is racking up the views! Hit play below to play us off into the weekend.

Sailing ‘Round the Web

🛳️ The 3 Year Cruise is almost sold out. The total breaks down to about 29k a year…or you buy a sailboat for 29k and sail for a lifetime. That story is here.

🥚 Scrambled Skegs: Jeff Besos’s new sailing yacht was spotted at sea trials. 5,000 internet pranksters signed up to egg it, as it passess through the Dutch city of Rotterdam this summer.

🇪🇸 Mama Maria!: The replica of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, The Santa Maria, sails down the florida coast.

That’s it for today, stay safe out there you salty dogs.