The wreck of a luxury steamer that sank in a Lake Michigan gale nearly 150 years ago has been discovered, searchers announced last week, completing a quest that began nearly 60 years ago.
Shipwreck World, a group that works to locate shipwrecks around the world, revealed Friday that a team led by Illinois shipwreck hunter Paul Ehron found the wreck of the Lac La Belle in October 2022. It was found about 20 miles offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Ehron, whose interest in the Lac La Belle dates back decades, told the Associated Press on Sunday that the announcement of the discovery was delayed because the team wanted to include a three-dimensional video model of the ship but poor weather and other commitments kept his dive team from going back down to the wreck until last summer.
The stern of the Lac La Belle is showing one of her propellers missing.
Paul Ehorn/Shipwreck World
The Lac La Belle was one of the most popular steamers on Lake Michigan. The massive 217-foot ship was built in 1864 in Cleveland, Ohio and spent most of her early years running from Cleveland to Lake Superior before an unfortunate collision sank her in 25 feet of water in the St. Clair River in 1866. She was raised in 1869 and had to be completely reconditioned, the group said.
Milwaukee's Englemann Transportation Company purchased the ship and ran her in the passenger trade to Grand Haven, Michigan.
On Oct. 13, 1872, with 53 passengers and crew on board plus a cargo of barley, pork, flour and whiskey, she departed Milwaukee when, about two hours into her trip, she began leaking uncontrollably from an unknown source. While the captain tried to turn her back, the weather deteriorated and huge waves extinguished the ship's boiler fires.
At around 5 a.m., the Lac La Belle went down stern first as passengers and crew watched on lifeboats. One of the lifeboats capsized on the way to shore, killing eight people.
Ehorn, 80, has been searching for shipwrecks since he was 15 years old. He said that he's been trying to pinpoint the Lac La Belle's location since 1965. He used a clue from fellow wreck hunter and author Ross Richardson in 2022 to narrow down his search grid and found the ship using side-scan sonar after just two hours on the lake, he said.
"It's kind of a game, like solve the puzzle. Sometimes you don't have many pieces to put the puzzle together but this one worked out and we found it right away," he said. The finding left him "super elated."
Large wooden steamers like the Lac La Belle needed longitudinal hogging arches for strength.
Paul Ehorn/Shipwreck World
Ehorn declined to discuss the clue that led to the discovery. Richardson said in a short telephone interview Sunday that he learned that a commercial fisherman at a "certain location" had snagged what Richardson called an item specific to steam ships from the 1800s. He declined to elaborate further on how competitive shipwreck hunting has become and the information could alert searchers to another way to conduct research.
The wreck's exterior is covered with quagga mussels and the upper cabins are gone, Ehorn said, but the hull looks intact and the oak interiors are still 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. Shipwreck hunters have been searching the lakes with more urgency in recent years out of concerns that invasive quagga mussels are slowly destroying wrecks.
In May 2025, a Wisconsin angler fishing in the fog discovered the wreck of the J.C. Ames, an abandoned tugboat submerged in the waters of Lake Michigan for more than a century.
In September 2024, maritime historians Brendon Baillod and Bob Jaeck announced they had discovered the wreck of the John Evenson, a towing tug that was lost in June 1895 while assisting a freighter as it was entering the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal in Lake Michigan. The two historians also found the schooner Margaret A. Muir in June 2024.
In March 2024, the wreck of the steamship Milwaukee, which sank after colliding with another vessel in 1886, was found 360 feet below the water's surface in Lake Michigan.
That discovery came just a few months after a man and his daughter found the remains of a ship that sank in Lake Michigan 15 years before the Milwaukee, in 1871.
The Lac La Belle is the 15th shipwreck Ehorn has located. "It was one more to put a check mark by," he said. "Now it's on to the next one. It's getting harder and harder. The easier ones have been found."
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Shipwreck found in Lake Michigan
Shipwreck found in Lake Michigan
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