The long walk down the Dune Climb trail to Lake Michigan has blessed hikers with an added gift this fall. Not just the azure waters at the conclusion of the 2.5-mile hike in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — but a shipwreck. The historic windstorm two weeks ago probably pushed the wreck up onto the beach, where chairman of Friends of the Sleeping Bear Dunes Kerry Kelly and others have gazed at and photographed the 16 feet by 40 feet remnants of a wooden ship. Follow Kelly’s blog here.
Photographs by Kerry Kelly
And view Andy McFarlane’s photo slideshow here
“It is huge, and it is heavy, and it is out of the water,” Kelly said. “Those winds must have been blowing out there.” According to Kelly, the wreck now rests about a quarter mile north of where the Dune Trail meets the beach.
Is this one of two ships lost in the Manitou Passage 150 years ago? Here’s what the Traverse City Record-Eagle wrote yesterday about the wreck’s possible DNA:
The most recent shipwreck appears to be a propeller-driven steamer, not a schooner, said Laura Quackenbush, museum technician with Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
The ship piece offers evidence it was constructed to accommodate the weight of a boiler and steam system, Quackenbush said.
She contacted Steve Harold, director of the Manistee County Historical Museum, who said the shipwreck could be that of the St. Nicholas or the General Taylor — both lost during fall months in the mid-19th century.
The St. Nicholas carried wheat when it started to leak and became stranded in Sleeping Bear Bay in November 1857. The General Taylor was stranded in October 1862 near Sleeping Bear Point.
Both ships were wrecked near where the wooden hull washed ashore, said Harold, author of “Shipwrecks of the Sleeping Bear.” Determining its identity will be harder, since wood can float for miles and no name or serial numbers were recovered.
You can watch a video of the shipwreck 9&10 News’ webpage.
Tags: Dune Climb, Friends of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, General Taylor, Kerry Kelly, Laura Quackenbush, Manistee County Historical Museum, Manitou Passage, shipwreck, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, St. Nicholas, Steve Harold, Traverse City Record-Eagle
Were the two steamers built in the same boat yard/city/year? I wonder if the various yards bought lumber from the same sources. Possibly even the whorls or radioactive carbon dating might at least tell the date the trees were cut.
The General Taylor was built in 1848; the St. Nicholas in 1853. So there’s not much difference in age. Complicating this further is the fact that timber could be kept in a shipyard, seasoning, for a while. Also, the fact that to do a tree-ring dating analysis (aka dendrochronology), you need three things: an established tree-ring sequence on file somewhere; a sample of at least 40 rings to match on; and a set of rings that extends to the outer (growing) edge of the original tree– so you can see when the tree was felled, not just when it began to grow.
That said, there are other diagnostic methods– construction techniques, for example, that can be matched against the known products of a particular shipyard.
[...] Harrison, a commenter on the Glen Arbor Sun blog article, said there are ways to date the [...]
Would the storms have unburied a deep water wreck and move it a shore or is it more likely the wrecks have been there and the storms eroded existing sand to reveal.
We saw these two pieces of the wreck in mid December on a dune hike – they were not covered with much sand then.
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