MILWAUKEE (AP) — A great wooden steamship that sank more than a
century ago in a violent Lake Michigan storm has been found off the
Milwaukee-area shoreline, and divers say the intact vessel appears
to have been perfectly preserved by the cold fresh waters.

Finding the 300-foot-long L.R. Doty was important because it was
the largest wooden ship that remained unaccounted for, said Brendon
Baillod, the president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology
Association.

“It’s the biggest one I’ve been involved with,” said Baillod,
who has taken part in about a dozen such finds. “It was really
exhilarating.”

The Doty was carrying a cargo of corn from South Chicago to
Ontario, Canada in October 1898 when it sailed into a terrible
storm, Baillod said. Along with snow and sleet, there were heavy
winds that whipped up waves of up to 30 feet.

The Doty should have been able to handle the weather. The ship
was only five years old, and the 300-foot wooden behemoth’s hull
was reinforced with steel arches.

But it was towing a small schooner, the Olive Jeanette, which
began to founder in the storm after the tow line apparently
snapped, Baillod said. The Doty probably sank when it came to the
schooner’s aid. All 17 of its crew members died, along with the
ship’s cats, Dewey and Watson.

As a maritime historian Baillod spent more than 20 years
researching the shipwreck. He knew that swaths of debris had washed
up afterward in Kenosha, about 40 miles south of Milwaukee. But he
found news accounts that it had last been seen closer to Milwaukee,
near Oak Creek.

Meanwhile, a Milwaukee fisherman in 1991 reported snagging his
nets on an obstruction about 300 feet under water. The observation
was largely forgotten for decades until diving technology improved
enough to enable exploration at that depth.

A number of explorers did some preliminary scouting on the
lake’s surface in recent months, using deep-sea technology to find
a massive submerged object. Divers waited until last week to
descend, when the weather was just right.

As soon as they got to the lake floor they knew they had found
the Doty.

“It felt so good to solve this,” said Jitka Hanakova, 33, a
diver and captain of the charter boat that led the exploration.
“This ship has been missing for so many years and it’s one of the
biggest out there.”

Divers found the ship upright and intact, settled into the clay
at the lake’s bottom. Even the ship’s cargo of corn was still in
its hold.

The Doty is so well-preserved because it’s in a cold, freshwater
lake. It’s also far enough below the surface that storms don’t
affect it.

Those same factors mean the crew’s corpses are likely intact as
well, Baillod said. Their bodies are probably still in the boiler
room, where the sailors must have huddled as the ship went down, he
added.

While details of the sinking remain unclear, Baillod said the
most likely explanation is that rudder chain snapped while the Doty
was turning around to aid the Olive Jeanette. That would have left
the 20-foot-tall ship at the mercy of 30-foot waves that would have
dumped tons of water on the fragile wooden hatches.

“When the rudder broke (the crew) must have known they were
going to die,” Baillod said. “They probably had a good hour to
contemplate their fate until the cargo holds collapsed.”

There are no plans to raise the Doty, which is now the property
of the state of Wisconsin. The ship will remain preserved
indefinitely where it is, rather than exposing it to air that would
cause it to rot away within a few years, Baillod said.

Few divers are expected to disturb it. It’s in such deep water
that only a small group of highly experienced divers can access it,
Hanakova said.

Thousands of ships remain submerged in the Great Lakes, some
vessels scuttled and others the victims of shipwrecks. Lake
Michigan has about 500 dive-worthy ships still to be found, Baillod
estimated.

He said his next target is the largest known missing ship: the
car ferry Pere Marquette 18. He said it went down in 1910, about 20
miles from the southeastern Wisconsin shore.

The new technology that made finding the Doty possible can also
help locate the Pere Marquette, he said.

“What’s nice about finding these ships is, it contributes to our
cultural history,” he said. “Many people are disconnected from
history so it’s nice to reconnect to our past — to maybe look out
today and think of the wooden steamships that were out there 100
years ago.

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Online:

http://www.ship-wreck.com/shipwreck/doty/

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Dinesh Ramde can be reached at dramde@ap.org.