A Wisconsin angler fishing within the fog this week found the wreck of an deserted tugboat submerged within the waters of Lake Michigan for greater than a century, state officers introduced Friday.
Wisconsin Historic Society Maritime Archaeologist Tamara Thomsen stated that the society confirmed that Christopher Thuss discovered the wreck of the J.C. Ames. Thuss was fishing in Lake Michigan off the town of Manitowoc in foggy circumstances on Tuesday when he observed the wreckage in 9 toes of water off a breakwater, she stated in a message to The Related Press.
The society stated that in response to the ebook “Green Bay Workhorses: The Nau Tug Line,” the Rand and Burger shipbuilding firm in Manitowoc constructed the J.C. Ames in 1881 to assist transfer lumber. The tug was one of many largest and strongest on the Nice Lakes, with a 670-horsepower engine.
On this Thursday, Could 15, 2025 picture offered by the Wisconsin Historic Society, Tim Pranke, a volunteer diver for the Wisconsin Historic Society, approaches the wreckage of the J.C. Ames tugboat which was scuttled in 1923 and was rediscovered on Tuesday, Could 13, 2025, simply off the Lake Michigan shoreline in Manitowoc, Wis.
Tamara Thomsen / AP
The tug served a number of functions past shifting lumber, together with transporting railway vehicles. It will definitely fell into disrepair and was scuttled in 1923, as was the apply then when ships outlived their usefulness, Thomsen stated.
The ship had been buried within the sand on the backside of the lake for many years earlier than storms this winter apparently revealed it, Thomsen stated. A scarcity of quagga mussels hooked up to the ship signifies it was solely lately uncovered, she stated.
Historians are racing to find shipwrecks and downed planes within the Nice Lakes earlier than quagga mussels destroy them. Quagga have change into the dominant invasive species within the decrease lakes over the past 30 years, attaching themselves to wood shipwrecks and sunken plane in layers so thick they finally crush the wreckage.
“These kinds of discoveries are always so exciting because it allows a piece of lost history to resurface. It sat there for over a hundred years and then came back on our radar completely by chance,” Thomsen stated in a press release. “We are grateful that Chris Thuss noticed the wreck and reported it so we can share this story with the Wisconsin communities that this history belongs to.”
In September, maritime historians Brendon Baillod and Bob Jaeck introduced that they had found the wreck of the John Evenson, a towing tug was misplaced in June 1895 whereas helping a freighter because it was coming into the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Lake Michigan. The 2 historians additionally discovered the schooner Margaret A. Muir in June 2024.
In March 2024, the wreck of the steamship Milwaukee, which sank after colliding with one other vessel in 1886, was discovered 360 toes under the water’s floor in Lake Michigan.
That discovery got here only a few months after a person and his daughter discovered the stays of a ship that sank in Lake Michigan 15 years earlier than the Milwaukee, in 1871.
Consultants estimate greater than 6,000 ships have gone down within the Nice Lakes for the reason that late 1600s.
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