Kate Kauffman of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve explores one of the sanctuary's shipwrecks. Photo courtesy of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve.
The Great Lakes have long been important for trade. As the United States expanded westward, goods and people often got there by boat. Thunder Bay in Lake Huron was a place where ships found shelter from the Lake’s legendary storms. But the Bay is filled with rocky shoals that caused more than 100 ships to crash. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, these shipwrecks are the foundation of a recently created National Marine Sanctuary:
Transcript
The Great Lakes have long been important for trade. As the United States expanded westward, goods and people often got there by boat. Thunder Bay in Lake Huron was a place where ships found shelter from the Lake’s legendary storms, but the Bay is filled with rocky shoals that caused more than 100 ships to crash. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, these shipwrecks are the foundation of a recently created National Marine Sanctuary:
Kate Kauffman, from the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve, is an avid diver. She’s been fascinated with shipwrecks since she saw a 1985 National Geographic Magazine with the Titanic wreck on its cover.
“It’s almost like walking on a Civil War battle site. You get that feeling, that kind of shiver, you feel the history seep through you and the people that worked on those vessels, and I think it’s very important to teach people who aren’t divers how important it is and that’s why I’m here today.”
Recently she’s been spending a lot of time indoors trying to get other people excited about the wrecks in Thunder Bay and the stories they tell about Great Lakes shipping. Today she’s talking to a group of senior citizens in Alpena, Michigan, and showing them pictures of the watery graveyard under the bay their hometown overlooks.
“And this is me…(laughs) hanging upside down, looking at some of the parts of the side wheel steamer which we had done an archeological study site plan of.”
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, trade and supply boats routinely stopped in Alpena on their way to Sault Saint Marie, Green Bay, and Chicago. They carried iron ore, lumber, grain, and all the things needed in the Midwest’s growing cities. But according to historical records at least 115 of these ships sank in Alpena’s Thunder Bay between 1845 and 1966. 42 of them are identified…including an 1830’s double masted schooner, a side-wheel steamer and a modern German freighter. They illustrate the evolution of construction methods and ship design. Some are basically intact and some rest close to the surface just 12 feet down. A year and a half ago, Congress designated this collection of shipwrecks a National Marine Sanctuary. It’s the first one in the Great Lakes region.
Ellen Brody works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as the acting manager of the Sanctuary. She says this is only the second sanctuary dedicated to preserving historic artifacts.
“I mean it’s in the National Marine Sanctuary Act that NOAA will protect both cultural and natural, but the focus of the program has been natural with Florida Keys, humpback whales in the Hawaiian Island sanctuary.”
National Marine Sanctuaries are also tourist attractions and Brody expects this sanctuary will become a major draw for divers. That’s partially because there will be displays about Thunder Bay at other sanctuaries around the U.S.
“An underwater sanctuary appeals to divers, but most of us are not divers, so we believe for this to be a success we need to reach out to the people who will never go underwater.”
So far there’s not much to see on the surface, but Brody says in the coming years they’ll create a hi-tech visitors center.
“We’ve been working very closely with the Institute for Exploration which was founded by Dr. Robert Ballard and his image of the sanctuary system is what he calls ring road technology where you actually install a track on the bottom of the sanctuary and have underwater cameras, and people in a visitor’s center or a classroom can operate those cameras and see first-hand what’s down there.”
She says such a system is still far in the future. Meanwhile, the sanctuary wants to find out exactly what is sitting on the bottom of Thunder Bay. This summer a remote-controlled underwater vehicle will be dispatched to take a look around. And teams of volunteer divers are learning how to help out in the search for undiscovered wrecks in Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.