History’s relics still reside beneath the surface of the Keweenaw Waterway

Adrienne Newman learned about local shipwreck research while watching her neighbor’s garage burn down. She ran into another neighbor and friend, Captain Stephen Roblee, while viewing the scene.

“And he’s like, ‘Hey, I’m doing this shipwreck research, and I’m wondering--I need somebody to help me with social media content and basically marketing communications. Do you know anybody?” Newman said.

Newman had been doing a mentorship in marketing communications, and just the day before had told herself she’d learn about sailing as a new interest and way of meeting new people and exploring the community. Shipwreck research was completely “off the radar” at the time, but it was close enough to sailing for her.

“I was like, ‘Heck yeah, let me in’,” Newman said. “So I really knew nothing about the world prior to that. I’ve lived in the Keweenaw for 20 years. I didn’t even go boating prior to that. I didn’t know the water.”

Roblee is a professor retired from Michigan Technological University, and used to sail a Tartan 34.

“And I sailed that, mostly single-handed, all over the Great Lakes,” Roblee said.

MTU’s video about how the Agassiz is used.

He got trained and certified as a captain to pilot a commercial boat with the support of MTU, and he’s been the captain of the R/V Agassiz, which operates out of MTU’s Great Lake Research Center, for fifteen years. 

His independent shipwreck hunting is a more recent development.

“Everybody uses the word shipwreck and I have been using it, too,” Roblee said. “But in the Keweenaw Waterway, there are very few shipwrecks, but many, many, many, many abandoned vessels.”

Roblee said a shipwreck is the result of an accident, and injury and death are at risk. Many of the vessels in the Keweenaw Waterway were simply abandoned to what fate befell them. Sometimes a fire or a mechanical failure causes them to be left moored until they sink, as was the case with the Sea Fox.

“There are many boats and vessels in here for one reason or another,” Roblee said. “And over time all those boats get abandoned.”

From Brendon Baillod’s collection, parts of which are online at Baillod.com. Used with permission.

In 2019, Roblee and the Agassiz were part of a GLRC team that conducted a wide-area search with side-scan sonar to try and find a location for the Cerisoles and Inkerman shipwrecks. They are two French minesweepers that were lost in a November 1918 storm in the deep waters of Lake Superior while on their maiden voyage. 

The team scanned roughly miles of Lake Superior’s bottom with side-scan sonar. Side-scan sonar works similar to a fish finder, but rather than pointing straight down from a boat, it images to either side of a torpedo-shaped “fish” that gets dragged behind the boat. It’s focused on scanning the ground rather than for fish in the water. 

MTU runs R/V Agassiz as a self-sustaining enterprise.

“And that means somebody is going to pay for it,” Roblee said. “And usually, nobody is interested in paying for shipwrecks.”

Roblee said the week-long search for the minesweepers cost $10,000, and was funded largely through crowdsourcing. Most shipwreck hunters--even the experts--are enthusiasts, not getting paid but doing the work out of curiosity and passion.

Through the summer of 2020, Newman and Roblee went out frequently to scan for and observe vessels at the bottom of the Keweenaw Waterway in Roblee’s private vessel, a 22-foot C-Dory, with a small, inexpensive side-scan unit. Roblee says side-scan units can range in cost from $700 to $150,000. 

To augment Roblee’s own search equipment, GLRC’s Christopher Pinnow, an electronics and computer engineer, has lent his technical expertise and some equipment on loan from GLRC to Roblee’s summer work. Pinnow is also a sailing enthusiast with a small boat, and worked with MTU on a shipwreck hunting project in Thunder Bay, a marine sanctuary in Lake Huron, using unmanned vehicles to document two shipwrecks.

A side-scan image taken by the GLRC’s IVER3 during work Christopher Pinnow helped with in Thunder Bay. The black stripe in the center of the image in the water column directly below the IVER3 as it moves, and the shadow it casts to either side helps define 3-dimensional objects. Researchers believe this to be the wooden bulk carrier Ohio, which sank in 1894. (Image courtesy of MTU’s GLRC)

Roblee and Pinnow each have their expertise and tend to focus closely on their duties of making sure the people and equipment are safe and operational. The side-scan sonar equipment and Remote Operated Vehicles require constant monitoring when in use to make sure they’re operating well and not in any danger of getting tangled, snagged or damaged.

This means Newman fulfills an important role by being available for a variety of other tasks.

“I have helped hold the [ROV’s] umbilical line, which is like the connection between the camera and the device that we use to navigate,” Newman said. “I help drop the anchor, I keep track of where the camera is…”

The umbilical line, or tether, is made of a heavy PVC-like material, with woven Kevlar underneath that, protecting the cables within that carry data. Pinnow said it’s more like a really long, formed cylinder than a rope. If it gets broken or cut, it’s not really repairable.

Underwater ROV’s always have an umbilical, because radio waves don’t propagate well through water. This makes the transmission necessary to send video, data, or guidance information, impossible via radio between the vehicle and operator.

A short video from MTU about the IVER3 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle.

This also means no GPS signals for the unmanned vehicles like IVER3 that Pinnow works with on projects like in Thunder Bay.

“You can talk to them over radio when they're there on the surface,” Pinnow said.

Once floating on the surface IVER3 can send telemetry and receive commands wirelessly, but once they dive, all contact is lost until they resurface. So the UAV navigates with a magnetic compass and gyroscopes to measure inertia and establish orientation.

“So that means it can feel as it gets shoved around by the currents and stuff like that. Just by inertia,” Pinnow said.

For their work in the Keweenaw Waterway, the group uses a much smaller unit than the IVER3, a ROV called the Trident.

Newman has had a chance to “drive” the Trident, too. It’s controlled with something very similar to a Playstation controller, with a large screen in the center.

“I have a 15-year-old and we play video games together and I was like, ‘This is amazing,’” Newman said. “Like, the time I spent with my son is helping me on this new project.”

Newman also helps keep track of where the boat is in relationship to shore. This can be important because the sidescan sonar is used while the boat is moving, so after spotting something on the sonar, the boat still has to turn back to try and more accurately pinpoint the location.

“So I’m just an extra set of eyes, and backup,” Newman said.

Roblee said that an extra set of eyes can help a lot. Spotting something on the bottom once can be luck. Because side-scan sonar produces an image that’s disconnected with the boat’s position, it often takes multiple passes to be sure of anything’s location despite GPS and other location technology.

“When you're dealing with a space that you can only see tangentially, it's not actually very simple,” Newman said. “It's like it disappears. You know, it's a little bit like a mirage.”

Even with an ROV under the surface, visibility can be as short as 4 feet in turbid water, so even finding something you know is there can be challenging, let alone something you’re unsure of. An extra set of sharp eyes to pick up on details that might help realign the boat, or guide the ROV operator, can make the difference between success and failure.

“I like to have someone you know, like shoulder surfing, right?” Pinnow said. “Because there might be things that you see that can help you stay oriented as well.”

Anchor lines, big rocks, and other features can help the operator navigate, and keeping track of what side they’re passed on can help avoid tangling the tether on the ROV’s trip back to the boat.

On July 4, 2020, Roblee, Pinnow and Newman were joined by Brendon Baillod. Baillod grew up around the Keweenaw Waterway, though he now lives in Wisconsin. 

“I cut my teeth up there on the waterway, when I was a young man, in the 1970s and 80s, identifying many of the early sites up there” Baillod said.

The Sea Fox was one of his early finds. He regularly posts his research finds to Facebook.

Click here to go to Baillod’s Facebook post to view the photos.

He said he’s found everything from old industrial sites and copper ingots to dugout canoes and antique snowmobiles on the bottom of the Keweenaw Waterway.

“Things like the ingots and like these historical artifacts on the bottom are prohibited from illegal recovery because they are now in a national park,” Baillod said.

Baillod said the focus is on finding and documenting the wrecks and telling their history, not recovering artifacts or “getting rich.”

“There's no money to be had in it,” he said “A lot of money spent on it.”

Baillod is a widely-recognized expert on the history of Great Lakes shipping and shipwrecks now, and serves on the board of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association. He has an immense personal collection of photographs, artifacts and other shipwreck information. 

“I have a huge collection,” Baillod said. “Largest private collection of Great Lakes antiquities, private or public, in the world.”

For the last two years, he’s hosted Great Lakes Shipwrecks LIVE, a livestreaming interview show with other experts and shipwreck hunters. One page on his website focuses on the wrecks of the Keweenaw Underwater Preserve and the Keweenaw Waterway, with documentation of over 30 wrecks.

Click here to see the full Facebook post and images.

“To be out on the water with Brendon Baillod is a real treat, because he’s a historian,” Newman said.

Roblee played hockey with Baillod and worked with his father, and reconnected with him through Facebook, where Baillod hosts a group, Great Lakes Shipwreck Research. It’s a private group of shipwreck researchers and enthusiasts with well over 3,000 members.

“And he’s real good with diving, and also high-tech hardware,” Roblee said. “But the thing he’s most known for is… archaeology aspects in the searches. He’s a search master. He’s a master of information related to shipwrecks.”

While surveying a different sunken barge in the Keweenaw Waterway that day, the group spotted something else on the sonar. It looked like a small vessel of about 25 feet.

“Brendon, because he is an expert, was able to say ‘This is unknown. We don’t know this thing,’” Newman said.

Pinnow sent down the GLRC’s Trident to take a closer look with a camera. The group’s find looks like a wooden Victorian-era private pleasure vessel, which Baillod announced on his Facebook later that week.

Click here to visit Baillod’s Facebook post and see the photos.

For now, they don’t plan on releasing any more details, including the location, of this new find.

The wrecks in Lake Superior are protected by the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987, and many of the wrecks in the Keweenaw Waterway are within the territory of the National Park Service, who thus owns them.

“Those that are not, are owned by the nearest riparian landowner,” Baillod said.

He said often those landowners don’t care, but if they are preservation-minded, Baillod likes to work with them on a stewardship agreement for the site. Otherwise, he at least likes to document them before releasing the location to anyone else.

“I always report them to the state underwater archaeologist or the state historic preservation officer for the state or province in which they lie,” Baillod said.

He’ll report his finds to the NPS if they lie within a park, and he said the “gold standard” is to get a significant wreck added to the National Register of Historic Places.

What Baillod and many shipwreck hunters want to avoid is allowing someone to pull the wrecks out of the water “and make letter openers out of them”.

“There’s a long history of making shipwreck furniture on the Great Lakes,” he said.

When Baillod’s friend and shipwreck-hunting colleague Jim Kennard discovered the HMS Ontario, a ship lost on Lake Ontario in 1780, he contacted the British Navy. They still own it under Admiralty law, and the ship is also the gravesite for many sailors. Kennard signed a non-disclosure agreement with the British Navy concerning the location of the wreck to protect it from salvagers and potential vandalism.

“The US military and the military of any country never abandons a site or a vessel or an airplane, any of their property,” Baillod said.

If the Cerisoles and Inkerman are found, they will belong to the French government.

French minesweepers at dock, possibly the Cerisoles and Inkerman. (City of Thunder Bay Archives via wikimedia)

Stumbling upon something entirely unknown can be exciting, because most of the time shipwreck hunters don’t go out on the water until they know what they’re looking for, and have an idea of where to find it.

“When we want to find a ship, we construct a search grid based on primary source material, usually eyewitness accounts or newspaper microfilm accounts,” Baillod said. “And debris sightings.”

Newman said the preparatory work is a lot like getting ready to paint. The more carefully you prepare, boxing in your search area and preparing the right tools, the easier the job is once you begin.

Pinnow also said that people sometimes get the wrong idea about shipwreck hunting because of what they see on television.

“If you're used to the National Geographic kind of point of view… the sun is shining and, the research vessel is plowing through the water and people are standing around with sunglasses eating sandwiches. That’s not it,” he said.

He said it can be cold on the boat, and between preparatory work, traveling to the site, searching and documentation, and then the return trip, some of the days can get long, too.

“Some of this work is extremely time consuming,” he said. “A lot of it’s not even spent on a boat.” 

Once the search area is as narrow as possible, a team can start “painting the bottom” with the side-scan sonar. Baillod said the data is viewed live, but also saved to be reviewed and analyzed more closely later.

“Oftentimes, we’re shooting out, you know, sometimes a quarter of a mile on each side, we’re painting a half-mile wide swath of the bottom,” Baillod said. “So a small vessel is easy to miss.”

In the Keweenaw Waterway, where they know there is a lot of industrial debris, they can use a higher-frequency sonar, and they only cover about a 300-foot swath.

Because of emerging technology, Baillod thinks all the wrecks of the Great Lakes will be found within the next twenty years, and that’s not a small statement. 

“The Great Lakes have more wrecks per square mile than anyplace else in the world,” Baillod said.

He said there used to be 40,000 commercial vessels alone on the Great Lakes, and roughly 8,000 of them have been lost.

One shipwreck hunter, Jerry Eliason, used magnetic anomaly data he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover the location of the Henry B. Smith in 2013.

Baillod said the same strategy could be used to find other significant steel wrecks on the Great Lakes.

Side-scan equipped AUV’s similar to the IVER3 are also being deployed by enthusiasts in some places, and can be used more easily than regular side-scan in deep water, because they don’t depend on a boat being steady on the surface. Baillod said the boat can’t be moving more than about 2 feet.

“If the boat is rocking, and that fish is cavitating, you lose your resolution of the bottom,” Baillod said. “You can't see it.”

There’s also a possibility of using a ROV during the winter, while the waterway is covered in ice. This would eliminate the unsteadiness of the boat and the difficulty of keeping it positioned. But working on the ice is not without its own drawbacks.

“There's a lot of computers and stuff involved that-- we can't really use them in the snow very well,” Pinnow said.

It’s also not known how current side-scan technology would handle the acoustic reflections of the ice.

Roblee is recruiting people now for a week-long shipwreck exploration experience in summer of 2022. Participants will work with the crew of the Agassiz to document wrecks in both the Keweenaw Waterway and Lake Superior, using side-scan and MTU’s larger ROV, an Outland 1000. Registration has not been announced and the total cost will be $1,500 per person.

Editor’s note: This story has been edited with updated information on Roblee’s summer of 2022 program, and for technical detail.