Re: P M 18, or Marquette & Bessemer No. 2 ?

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: : We all know about the carferry "Milwaukee", lost off Milwaukee's northern suburbs on Oct. 22, : : 1929, but not found until 1976 (but, happily, well within safe diving limits!!). And there's been : : much discussion on this board recently about the Pere Marquette 18, lost 19 or 20 miles off : : Sheboygan, Wisconsin on Sept. 9, 1910. As most of us know, the PM 18 had a wireless, and : : called for and received help from a sister ship, the PM 17, which arrived just as PM 18 listed : : heavily to starboard, and sank stern first. There were 33 survivors, and apparently 28 deaths. : : Before this desperate final act, PM 18's Captain Kilty ordered that many of the freight cars : : be run off the stern to lighten ship (to deal with an influx of water filling the lower compartments : : (perhaps from a fractured stern tube, a broken stern gland, or maybe a failed sea cock. : : But realistically, I'm looking at NOAA Chart No. 14903, showing the west shore of Lake Michigan : : out to mid-lake in the Sheboygan area. All the depths in the areas about 20 miles east of : : Sheboygan are over 350 feet! I agree, it would be terrific to find PM 18, but for those of us : : who dive, well 350 + feet may as well be in the Marianas Trench, unless you own a submersible. : : In reading through the comments about PM 18, only Ross Richardson mentioned the near- : : sister to PM 18 and S.S. Milwaukee, the "Marquette & Bessemer No. 2", lost in (you guessed : : it) another miserable autumn storm, but this time on Lake Erie, presumable somewhere between : : its last port of Conneaut, Ohio and its destination, Port Stanley, Ontario, with over 30 freight : : cars on board, and the loss of its entire crew (variously reported as 31 to 38 crew, and perhaps : : one unfortunate passenger. : : Now there were three major carferry disasters in the Great Lakes in the 20th Century: The : : Marquette & Bessemer No. 2, on Dec. 7, 1909, the PM 18 the following year on Sept. 9, 1910, : : and the Milwaukee on Oct. 22, 1929. All three involved total losses, all involved 338-foot : : railroad carferries (338 x 55 x 19.5), and all were constructed by American Shipbuilding in : : Cleveland, Ohio. Of the three, only PM 18 had a wireless, so only PM 18 got any help when : : it ran into trouble, and only PM 18 had any survivors. After the losses of near-sisters M & B : : No. 2 and PM 18 within ten months, somebody apparently looked at the design (none of these : : ships were originally equipped with stern gates). Milwaukee was then retro-fitted with a : : stern gate, the twisted remains of which can still be seen dangling from its stern in a little over : : 100 feet. : : My point is that, with one exception, all the signs point to us hearing first about the M & B : : No. 2 being found, way ahead of the PM 18. For one thing, there are a whole lot of divers : : searching for the M & B No. 2 right now, and there almost seems to be a coordinated effort : : of sorts to cooperate on search areas and grids. For another, Lake Erie is a lot smaller and : : shallower lake. Think about it. Most of Lake Erie is 100 feet in depth or less, and the deepest : : point in the entire lake is only 200 feet! Lake Michigan has a whole lot of underwater real : : estate, including the entire area off Sheboygan, at depths greater than 300 feet, and the : : deepest spot on Lake Michigan is well over 800 feet. The only thing PM 18 has going for : : it, is that it left survivors from its crew, plus the crew of the Pere Marquette 17, who saw it : : sink and who have left at least a rough idea (no GPS coordinates in 1910, sadly!) where it is. : : But that advantage is largely offset by the fact that searchers for the M & B No. 2 have already : : covered such a wide area of likely resting spots, on both sides of Long Point on the Canadian : : Lake Erie shore, and along a wide swath between Erieau and Conneaut, and Port Stanley : : and Conneaut. : : So there you have it. My money is on the Marquette & Bessemer No. 2. I'm betting that : : those of us who love the carferry Milwaukee will be loading our dive gear into our cars in the : : next two or three summers to visit the Canadian Lake Erie shore, and compare notes on the : : similarities and differences between the two wrecks. : : If you think about it, what's really amazing is that the M & B No. 2 hasn't been found already : : (if indeed it hasn't -- I got an e-mail about a week ago from an Ontario boater, reporting yet : : another rumor that some divers were sent out to investigate a pinched underwater gas line : : [Come on -- are there gas lines just laid along the lake floor anywhere in the Great Lakes?] : : they dropped : : directly onto four railroad cars on the bottom, and found the gas line draped right over them, and : : and over a nearby shadowy object which of course turned out to be the M & B -- but they're : : keeping quiet until they can have some fun exploring to their heart's content before reporting : : it, etc. etc) : : But I digress. The thing is, how the heck has it taken so long to find a ship that must stand : : (as the Milwaukee does) at least 40 feet off the bottom, in a lake with an average depth of : : 100 feet!!!??? You'd think your depth sounder/fish locater/sidescan sonar would jump off : : its mounting when you idled over this underwater office building, wouldn't you?? : : And that returns me to my original reaction to all the talk in this forum about finding the PM : : 18. I hope we do find it, and soon. But look how long it's taken to find the M & B No. 2, : : in what you'd have to think is a much smaller and shallower target area. : : I did some diving in Lake Erie off Long Point,we had hooked up with a guy who had purchased a bunch of “hot” numbers, about ten years ago. He claimed to have the numbers to the M&B #2. To make a long story, involving a bunch of idiots, short; I actually wound up doing a ten minute drop to 190-feet on the alleged M&B #2. The ship turned out to be an old wooden steamer that had burned down to the main deck, at least in the bow area that I was on. I was really surprised to find that the bottom area around Long Point is so soft that most of this ship was under the mud- the bottom was at 190, and the main deck was 185. I think the main reason that the M&B #2 hasn’t been found may be that it is under the Lake bottom in the area off Long Point

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