After 132 years, team finds wreck of the Western Reserve in Lake Superior

The gales of Lake Superior thrashed against the Western Reserve when it cracked in half with 28 souls aboard on Aug. 30, 1892.

The roughly 300-foot steel steamer had been considered one of the safest afloat when it was built in 1890, faster and stronger than wooden steamers common at the time.

On the ship’s final voyage, Capt. Peter G. Minch, a wealthy shipping magnate, had embarked from Ohio with his family on a Great Lakes cruise to Two Harbors under the command of Albert Myer. Both men were considered well-seasoned mariners.

But the lake claimed their lives and those of everyone aboard but one survivor, and the wreckage of the Western Reserve was lost to the deep.

That is until now.

After 132 years, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society recently announced that it discovered the shipwreck around 60 miles northwest of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior in late July. It was found on a stretch of lake bottom between Grand Marais and Whitefish Point, Michigan, known as “The Graveyard of the Great Lakes.”

The area is the final resting place of roughly 200 shipwrecks.

Corey Adkins, the group’s communications director, said the crew exchanged high fives and colorful language at the discovery.

“It solves another Great Lakes mystery,” Adkins said. “It’s a piece of history that people don’t know about. It’s forgotten, but there are still family members out there when we find these things that it’s important to them.”

Great Lakes maritime historian Fred Stonehouse dubbed the find one of the top three shipwrecks that had yet to be discovered in Lake Superior.

“To be able to do it as efficiently, and I think as remarkably well as the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society folks have done it is just really a tribute to their expertise, of the good research they did beforehand, and certainly for the continuing opportunity to tell the story of the Western Reserve,” Stonehouse said.

The sinking of the Western Reserve

The Western Reserve was the flagship of the Minch Navigation Company and carried bulk cargoes like coal and iron ore. When the vessel set out for Two Harbors, the ship was running light with no cargo and only 28 people aboard.

They included the crew and Minch, his wife Anna,  their 9-year-old son Charlie and 6-year-old daughter Florence. Anna’s sister, Mary Englebry, and Mary’s 10-year-old daughter, Bertha, were also on board.

When they reached Whitefish Bay, wind and waves prompted the captain to drop anchor as they waited for a storm to pass. However, a decision to head back out into the open lake sealed their fates, and waves overtook the vessel around 9 p.m.

The ship cracked in half with most of the crew in the stern and the family and a few crew members in the bow. Crew in the back of the boat began lowering lifeboats as the ship sank.

Wheelsman Harry W. Stewart leaped with the Minch family across the severed section to reach two lifeboats. As survivors fled, the lake engulfed the ship within 10 minutes, and one of the lifeboats capsized.

The Minch family and remaining crew fought the wind and waves for 10 hours, screaming for roughly a half-hour at a passing steamship to no avail. Survivors came within one mile of Lake Superior’s southeastern shoreline before the boat overturned in the breakers around 7:30 a.m.

Stewart, the sole survivor, swam to shore and hiked to the Deer Park Life-Saving Station.

Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, said in a statement that some shipwrecks are just more tragic.

“It is hard to imagine that Capt. Peter G. Minch would have foreseen any trouble when he invited his wife, two young children and sister-in-law with her daughter aboard the Western Reserve for a summer cruise up the lakes,” Lynn said. “It just reinforces how dangerous the Great Lakes can be … any time of year.”

The cause of the ship splitting in half is not yet known. While the storm was rough, Stonehouse said the ship had been punching its way through. He said one theory is that the ship may have suffered from a brittle steel fracture or a sudden rapid failure that usually occurs at times of high stress.

“This was a time when you were beginning to build ships with steel. Steel was a relatively new product, as opposed to iron,” Stonehouse said. “But the quality control of the steel as it was coming out of the mills, steel plates particularly, wasn’t always up to what it should be.”

Finding the Western Reserve

There are between 6,000 and 8,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes.

When weather allows, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society has been going out every summer to tow sonar behind the group’s research vessel. They’ve mapped grids over the years to determine the location of shipwrecks. They’ve found about a dozen wrecks in recent years.

Last July, the group was surveying a “monster” grid from the Keweenaw Peninsula to Whitefish Point. Darryl Ertel, the group’s director of marine operations, had been searching for the Western Reserve for two years with his brother Dan.

As they scanned the bottom, they caught sight of a shadow that indicated something large on the port side.

“So we went back over the top of the ship and saw that it had cargo hatches, and it looked like it was broken in two, one half on top of the other,” Ertel said in a statement. “And each half measured with the side scan 150 feet long and then we measured the width and it was right on so we knew that we’d found the Western Reserve.”

They also confirmed the wreck by sending a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, about  600 feet down toward the lake bottom. Adkins said images showed the mast had been sheared off and laid over the bow. They also found the port-side running light matching the starboard light that had washed ashore long ago. It is now held by the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Ohio. 

Adkins said the group’s crew plans to go back out on Lake Superior to take another look at the Western Reserve whenever weather allows. When they return, they’ll be using a custom-built ROV. For now, he said they’re celebrating a job well done.

“It’s a story that we can get out there and now tell people,” Adkins said. “That’s part of our mission is to remember these people and these wrecks out on the Great Lakes.”