A team of shipwreck hunters have found the wreckage of a merchant ship that sank in the icy waters of Lake Superior in 1940. The 244-foot bulk carrier Arlington was discovered 600 feet deep, roughly 35 miles north of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula.
[Related: Dead ships find solace under the treacherous surface of the Great Lakes.]
For the past decade, shipwreck researcher Dan Fountain has been analyzing remote sensing data in search for shipwrecks in Lake Superior. At 20,287,963 acres, Lake Superior is the largest of the five Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area. It’s estimated that there have been 500 to 600 shipwrecks in the lake since the 1850s, including the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.
Fountain reached out to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan for help in identifying the potential Arlington wreck. In 2023, Fountain, GLSHS Director of Marine Operations Darryl Ertel, and the crew of the R/V David Boyd towed side-scan sonar over an anomaly on the bottom of the lake. The sonar detected that this shipwreck and subsequent dives with a remote operating vehicle positively identified the sunken Arlington.
“One of the most important aspects of everything we do as an organization involves the concept of teamwork,” GLSHS Executive Director Bruce Lynn said in a statement. “This goes for our operations at Whitefish Point, as well as on the water aboard the David Boyd. We are lucky to have so many dedicated shipwreck historians and researchers as friends of GLSHS.”
What happened to the Arlington?
According to the GLSHS, the Arlington left Port Arthur, Ontario on April 30, 1940. It was fully loaded with wheat and headed east towards Owen Sound, Ontario. The ship was under the command of an experienced Great Lakes sailor, Captain…
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