Previous | Next

Shipwreck Tours (Visit this link)

Located on picturesque Munising Bay in Munising, Michigan, Shipwreck Tours offers modern travelers a chance to see the proud boats which sailed the Great Lakes before the turn of the century.

Come Aboard! Discover the shipwrecks of the Alger Underwater Preserve through the clear waters of Lake Superior and view the rock formations of Grand Island.

Preserved by Lake Superior's frigid waters, these doomed vessels lay on the bay bottom where they met their fates when the tempestuous Lake displayed its violent power.

History comes alive as you hear about these turn of the century wrecks. Explore shipwrecks aboard the Miss Munising, a 60' Coast Guard Certified steel vessel equipped with specially designed through the hull glass viewing areas or the Fireball, the new addition to our fleet. Visit three shipwrecks on the bottom of the lake as seen through a glass viewing area. With fifty feet of visibility, these wrecks may now be seen by non-divers in comfort.

The two-hour tour covers a distance of about 10 miles and features sights both above and below the water. The Miss Munising pulls out of Munising harbor and heads toward Grand Island. This 13,000 acres of pristine wilderness has just a few settlements on it. Most of the island remains as it was during the fur-trading days of the Hudson Bay Company, which was established in 1670.

The boat passes the old East Channel Light, one of the earliest established lighthouses on Lake Superior.

Roughly one half mile northeast of Muskrat Point in Grand Island's Murray Bay, the Bermuda came to rest. The Bermuda is a 131-foot wooden schooner which foundered and sank on October 15, 1870 in Murray Bay. Her top deck is just 12 feet below the water's surface where she has remained for 128 years. The wreck is intact, remarkable condition for a shallow wreck.

The two-masted Bermuda was a typical canal schooner, one designed to trade through the confining dimensions of the old Welland Canal between Lakes Ontario and Erie. Launched at Oswego, New York in April 1860, she was 136 feet in length, 26 feet in beam and 11 feet, 9 inches in depth.

In November of 1926, 789-ton wooden steamer Herman H. Hettler was seeking shelter in Munising Harbor from a typical fall gale when a reported compass variation caused her to veer off course and slam into the rock reef off Trout Point, at the northeast end of the East Channel.

The Hettler, built in 1890, was bound for Duluth carrying a cargo of 1,100 tons of bulk table salt. The 210' wooden steamer was driven far up on the reef and a storm then carried off the upper works and sank the stern.

In any given year, in any given season, wrecks appear and disappear like apparitions as the currents uncover and cover wrecks. Shipwreck Tours is always on the lookout for new wrecks to include in the tour.

During the inaugural season of the glass bottom boat tours, passengers and crew spotted some previously undiscovered wooden wreckage close to shore along Grand Island's "Thumb." The wreckage consisted of a section of a schooner's bottom about 150 feet long by 35 feet wide along with a part of a side 130 feet long and 15 feet deep. At first the wooden hull pieces were thought to be the remains of the schooner Alta, which went ashore somewhere near Trout Bay in 1905. Closer examination showed the wreckage to be that of a scow schooner rather than the conventionally constructed Alta. A scow schooner was a cheaply built vessel with a flat bottom, flat sides and a square bow and stern. Historical research has failed to produce any record of a scow schooner meeting its end anywhere near Grand Island.

http://www.shipwrecktours.com