Searchers have discovered the wreck of the Lac La Belle, a 19th-century luxury steamer that sank in a Lake Michigan storm in 1872, a finding announced more than a decade after the final dive. Shipwreck World said Illinois shipwreck hunter Paul Ehorn located the steamer about 20 miles offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin, in October 2022, but delayed the announcement while his team prepared additional documentation.
Ehorn told The Associated Press that the announcement did not come sooner because his team wanted to include a three-dimensional video model of the ship. He said his dive team could not make a return trip to the wreck until last summer due to poor weather and other commitments. Ehorn, 80, has been searching for shipwrecks since he was 15 and said he has been trying to pinpoint the Lac La Belle’s location since 1965.
In the AP interview, Ehorn described the process as a puzzle that sometimes comes together quickly. He said he used a clue from fellow wreck hunter and author Ross Richardson in 2022 to narrow his search grid, and then found the ship using side-scan sonar after roughly two hours on the lake. He said the discovery left him “super elated,” adding that “It’s kind of a game, like solve the puzzle,” before describing how the search “worked out” and the team “found it right away.”
Richardson said in a telephone interview that he learned the clue from a commercial fisherman who had snagged an item specific to steam ships from the 1800s at a “certain location.” He said he did not want to elaborate further, and declined to discuss details on what he described as how competitive shipwreck hunting has become, saying the information could alert searchers to another way to conduct research.
According to an account on Shipwreck World, the Lac La Belle was built in 1864 in Cleveland, Ohio. The 217-foot steamer ran between Cleveland and Lake Superior but sank in the St. Clair River in 1866 after a collision, and was raised in 1869 and reconditioned before returning to service.
The ship left Milwaukee for Grand Haven, Michigan, on the night of Oct. 13, 1872, in a gale carrying 53 passengers and crew and cargo including barley, pork, flour and whiskey. About two hours into the trip, the ship began taking on water uncontrollably, and the captain turned the Lac La Belle back toward Milwaukee. Ehorn said huge waves extinguished her boilers and that the storm drove the ship south; around 5 a.m., the captain ordered lifeboats lowered and the ship went down stern-first. One lifeboat capsized on the way to shore, killing eight people, while the other lifeboats made landfall along the Wisconsin coast between Racine and Kenosha.
Ehorn said the wreck’s exterior is covered with quagga mussels and the upper cabins are gone, but the hull looks intact and the oak interiors remain in good shape. The Great Lakes are home to anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks, most of which remain undiscovered, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Water Library.
Ehorn also said shipwreck hunters have increased their efforts in recent years as invasive quagga mussels slowly destroy wrecks. He said the Lac La Belle was the 15th shipwreck he has located, adding that “It was one more to put a check mark by” and that “It’s getting harder and harder,” because “The easier ones have been found.”