Lake Michigan Shipwreck Discovered to Hold Fascinating History

Shipwrecks often hold much more than buried treasure; they can help illuminate part of the past and give an inside look at history dating back centuries. On Lake Michigan, two-masted schooners once ruled over the body of water, though many of them sunk and became relics of the past. 

With the lakebed constantly shifting, spotting one of these wrecks, even from the air, has proven incredibly difficult. But thanks to the work of former Coast Guard helicopter pilot Matthew Keiper, a piece of Lake Michigan history has come to the surface, figuratively speaking.  While out on a training mission, he noticed something underwater in a remote northeastern portion of the lake off the uninhabited High Island. 

“We were practicing an approach to the water simulating low-visibility situation. So we made that approach to a hover over the water near High Island. And when I looked down, I saw the remnants of an old wooden ship,” he recounted to WZTV.

It turns out it was a 125-foot ship known as the Live Yankee, which was built in 1854 in Milan, OH and carried grain, freight, and passengers between Buffalo, Chicago, and Milwaukee. It met its fate on Nov. 5, 1869 when it crashed into rocks during a snowstorm, leaving the crew to abandon ship and seek refuge with local Native Americans on High Island. It was lodged in about 12 feet of water just 1,000 feet offshore, but storms would continue to break down the ship until barely anything remained. 

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Ross Richardson, a local shipwreck hunter and president of the Maritime Heritage Alliance, said that the moving sand underwater made it impossible to find the Live Yankee until now. “These ships, sometimes just a few planks are sticking up. Sometimes the whole thing’s exposed,” he explained. “You just got to get lucky.”

“The front end of the vessel is buried into small stones and rocks, which is very unusual bottom for Lake Michigan,” Richardson added. “I haven’t seen anything like it. But then I haven’t been out to the Beaver Island archipelago. You see a different geology out there.” 

It didn’t look like much from the air, but Richardson realized what he’d come across when he dove underwater. Between some unique markings and notches carved in the ship, the length of the wreck, and remote location, Richardson said he had “99.9-percent identification that this was the Live Yankee.”

“Very rarely do you get a wreck like this that jumps in your lap,” Richardson confessed. “I mean, this one was handed to us. Usually, we gotta go out there and spend hundreds of hours to find a shipwreck. But each shipwreck is important. Again, it’s the story. We’re storytellers. We love a good story. And this is a good story.”