Shipwreck found after 60 year search
The hull of the ship is mainly intact
- Published
A shipwreck hunter and scuba diver has finally found a ship he has been looking for for 60 years.
Paul Ehorn made the watery discovery after having searched for the Lac La Belle passenger steamer since 1965.
The wreck is of one of the "most sought-after missing ships" in Lake Michigan, in the US. It sank to the bottom of the lake more than 150 years ago.
Ehorn said solving the mystery left him feeling "super elated".
The Lac La Belle's upper works were completely torn off when she sank in rough water.
The luxury passenger steamer set off from Milwaukee to Grand Haven, Michigan, one October night in 1872, according to Shipwreck World - a group that finds wrecks all over the world.
It carried 53 passengers and crew as well as barley, 1,200 barrels of flour, 50 barrels of pork and 25 barrels of whiskey, according to Shipwreck World.
But about two hours into the trip, the ship began to take on water and huge waves kept crashing over it, until it eventually sank.
Ehorn said the outside of the ship is covered in mussels, but the hull - the main outer bits of the boat - look intact and much of the inside is still in good nick.
Ehorn, 80, has been searching for shipwrecks since he was 15 years old. He used a clue from a fellow wreck hunter in 2022 to narrow down his search for the La Lac Belle and found the ship after just two hours on the lake, he said.
"It's kind of a game, like solve the puzzle. Sometimes you don't have many pieces to put the puzzle together but this one worked out and we found it right away," he said.
