Rescue found, but reasons for sinking remain a mystery

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Local diver, filmmaker and author Ross Richardson has solved one local mystery — the location of the steamship Rescue, which owner Ralph Dorsey intentionally sank in Big Glen Lake 98 years ago. But the reason why Dorsey destroyed his boat is known only by the lake, and Dorsey’s ghost, leaving folklore to play a guessing game.

Richardson, an accomplished diver from nearby Lake Ann who chronicled his discovery of the 1854 Westmoreland shipwreck in his book The Search for the Westmoreland, searched for the Rescue two months ago. Empire historian Dave Taghon had the geographic coordinates for what they believed was the Rescue, from an unsuccessful Michigan state police dive to recover the body of drowned swimmer David Schmid in 2005. The police never found the body, but stumbled across what appeared to be a sunken steamboat 120 feet deep in the middle of Big Glen Lake.

A minute after their search began at 2 p.m. on Sept. 8, Richardson and Milwaukee divers Cal Kolthrade and Steve Wimer found the Rescue with their boat’s side-scan sonar, and they could tell that its canopy was still intact. The weather posed a challenge on that late summer Saturday, with wind blowing from the northwest at 15 knots and intermittent rain showers, so the team took care not to drop anchor too close to the wreck — they didn’t know if the steamboat could break apart.

Kolthrade and Wimer dove first, tying themselves to the anchor with ropes so they wouldn’t stray too far from the presumed location of the wreck. But at the bottom of Big Glen Lake, the light was so poor that they were unable to spot the Rescue. Visibility was only eight feet, and the color at that depth was a murky green. Next went Richardson, who swam at a right angle to the first two, and circled clockwise around the anchor line. Within a couple minutes, he saw the steamboat’s rough outline — a thrilling relief, though Richardson was also prepared for the fact that he might encounter a body.

Ninety-eight years later, the Rescue was, indeed, intact. Her smokestack rose four feet over the canopy, and she wasn’t covered in Quagga mussels, which Richardson had feared. The cabin floor was covered in six-12 inches of silt, and the top blade of her propeller protruded out of the muck. The diver found her “pretty as can be”. Despite the low light, he took an underwater video of Dorsey’s turn-of-the-20th-century steamboat in her resting place. (Visit our website, GlenArborSun.com to see that video.)

But because the base of the boat’s hull is buried in the lake bottom, Richardson was unable to see Dorsey’s axe holes that sank the Rescue on that day in 1914. And even if he could, the evidence likely wouldn’t reveal the captain’s motive for destroying his own craft. “I’ve heard the legend,” says Richardson. “There are three-four different versions of the story, and I really don’t know which one it is.”

Why Ralph Dorsey sank the Rescue remains one of our town’s great mysteries. So great, in fact, that in May 2003, a flotilla of professional scientists from the University of Michigan, their hi-tech underwater robot, a dozen local fishermen and historians, and boatloads of enthusiastic students from two area high schools trolled Big Glen Lake, and explored local lore, for clues about why Dorsey sank his boat.

Their only evidence was a black-and white-photograph from Rob Rader’s historical book Beautiful Glen Arbor of the Rescue slowly sinking in the lake, and a man nearby in a rowboat, presumably its captain. Barely visible in the background is what appears to be Alligator Hill. The identity of the photographer, and why that person happened to be nearby at the moment in question, is also unknown, especially given that cameras weren’t that common in 1914.

• “Ralph was a heavy drinker, and his passengers refused to ride with him any longer,” goes one legend. Ralph’s nephews, Jim and John Dorsey, who took a joyride on the lake during the 2003 community search, confirmed that their uncle liked to tip back the bottle, even in his latter years living in Frankfort after he brought his boating business here to an abrupt halt. “We were known to drink a little hard cider whenever the neighbors came for a visit,” recalled Jim.

• “Nightmares of drowning children haunted Ralph, so he sank his boat before tragedy could strike,” is another theory, introduced by Taghon, the proprietor of the Empire Area Historical Museum. “Some say he had a premonition that something bad was going to happen.” According to Barb Siepker, who owns the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, Ralph had six brothers, one of whom disappeared while boating in northern Lake Superior.

• “Ralph lost the boat in a card game, but didn’t want anyone else to ride off in his mahogany-lined craft,” suggested Dottie Lanham. “I heard they played a lot of cards in those days because of the idle time on their hands,” she added. “But these stories have probably been exaggerated as they were passed down through generations.”

• “Business was bad, and the frustration of cruising around the lake, only to find no one on the docks waiting for him in need of a lift to Glen Arbor, finally got to Ralph,” is yet another explanation. Dr. Chuck Olson, who initiated the 2003 search, recalls a story told to him by the late John Tobin, who claimed to be fishing where the Narrows Bridge is today when Dorsey paddled ashore in a rowboat, minutes after having chopped a hole in Rescue’s hull with an axe, muttering “If they won’t ride with me, they won’t ride with anyone else!”

Neither Ross Richardson nor Dave Taghon has any plans to raise the Rescue from its watery grave at the bottom of Big Glen Lake. So if the hull holds more evidence, we may never see it. And the diver and historian respectfully refuse to publicize the boat’s geographical coordinates, for fear that amateur or trophy divers would violate the Rescue, make off with her brass steam whistle or her ship’s wheel, or carry invasive species with them from Lake Michigan.

“It’s a difficult thing when you want to preserve it but share her at the same time,” offered Richardson. “It’s an unmolested original steamboat from 100 years ago, and she could sit there for another 100 years.” While he won’t disclose her location, Richardson took video of the Rescue to share with the public. “Shipwrecks and history are my passion. Videos give me a way to share it, so we can all go down there and see it together.”

Richardson’s obsession with shipwrecks and underwater exploration began when he was in the second grade and became intrigued by the story of the Titanic. He played with model ships, which he sent to the bottom of his parents’ pool in Grand Rapids and then donned a mask to descend and look at them. He claims that a “real big discovery in Lake Michigan” awaits this coming year.

Five days after his initial Rescue dive this fall, Richardson went down again on Sept. 13, with the goal of capturing better video. But this time the karma — or perhaps Ralph Dorsey’s ghost — were not on his side. Richardson saw the wreck from his anchor line, swam there and shot 10 minutes of video, but when he returned to ascend, the video had disappeared. Low on oxygen, he had to “blow a lift bag” to reach the water surface. Once there, an otherwise calm day had turned windy, pushing the boat 100 yards away from him.

“All that filming I did was for nothing,” lamented Richardson, who showed his video from Sept. 8 at the Empire Heritage Day festival on Oct. 13 and later in Muskegon. “I don’t really believe in that supernatural stuff, but it was a set of unfortunate circumstances.”

Others aren’t so sure that Dorsey isn’t watching over his boat, irritated that it’s been found or concerned that someone might raise it. “He’s upset,” family member Jerry Hodge joked during the 2003 search. “Ralph is somewhere up there, saying ‘Don’t monkey with my boat’!”

Watch video of Ross Richardson’s dive to the Rescue: