Dozens died when massive ship vanished on Lake Superior 132 years ago. Now it’s found
In 1892, a massive steel steamer, considered an engineering marvel of its time and revered for its speed and safety, got caught in a squall in the middle of Lake Superior and vanished.
Just one person out of 27 people on board the Western Reserve survived the harrowing 60-mile journey back to shore. Now, 132 years later, researchers with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society have confirmed the discovery of the ship’s remains.
“The final resting place of the 300’ steel steamer Western Reserve has been discovered roughly 60 miles northwest of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior,” the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum said in a March 10 news release.
The ship was found broken in two at a depth of about 600 feet, experts said.
“Knowing how the 300-foot Western Reserve was caught in a storm this far from shore made an uneasy feeling in the back of my neck,” Darryl Ertel, director of marine operations at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, said in the release. “A squall can come up unexpectedly … anywhere, and anytime.”
The Western Reserve, owned by millionaire and shipping magnate Peter G. Minch, “was a very important ship in her time,” museum officials said. “She was one of the first all-steel vessels on the Great Lakes, ... was built to break cargo shipping records and was deemed one of the safest ships afloat.”
Summer cruise turns deadly
On Aug. 30, 1892, Minch took his wife, two young children, sister-in-law and niece on a late-summer cruise aboard the Western Reserve up through Lake Huron when bad weather in Whitefish Bay forced them to drop anchor, experts said.
Soon after, they steamed into Lake Superior, but around 9 p.m. “a gale overtook the ship,” causing the Western Reserve to break apart and sink, experts said.
All 27 passengers were able to board the ship’s two lifeboats, but one overturned “almost immediately,” according to the museum.
Only two of the crewman were pulled into the other lifeboat that held Minch and his family, and the vessel bobbed in the darkness amid rough weather for 10 hours, experts said.
When a steamship passed the lifeboat in the middle of the night, they “screamed for a half-hour, but with no flares … they were not seen,” researchers said.
By the next morning, the lifeboat drifted within one mile of Lake Superior’s southeastern shoreline, but it overturned in the breakers, according to the museum.
The Western Reserve’s wheelsman, Harry W. Stewart of Algonac, Michigan, was the only survivor, experts said.
“Every shipwreck has its own story, but some are just that much more tragic,” Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, said in the news release.
Darryl Ertel and his brother Dan Ertel spent more than two years searching for the Western Reserve and first spotted the potential remains in 2024 using side-scan sonar, their team said.
The identity of the shipwreck was confirmed using remotely operated vehicles, according to the museum.
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 2:58 PM with the headline "Dozens died when massive ship vanished on Lake Superior 132 years ago. Now it’s found."
