It was a normal evening in mid -July when Matt Olson sat at home at his computer, scaning the satellite photos of Lake Michigan.
Olson, which owns the Tour Company Door County Adventure Rafting, regularly used images taken from orbit to help identify interesting attractions and new places to its customers. When he essentially studied the shallow waters of the Rowleys Bay, near the long northern end of the narrow peninsula, which forms Door County, Wisconsin, Olson noticed a change in water color.
At the time, he did not know it, but Olson had just stumbled upon a long-lost ship debris-lame, which drowned in 1887.
The door district is not a stranger to ship debris. Due to the complex sailing conditions, which are often around the peninsula, more than 250 known debris are scattered around the area. However, these discoveries help to fill the region’s maritime history, allowing people to better understand how the water roads of large lakes have been used over the years.
Frank D. Barker was built in 1867. And drowned in 1887. (Wisconsin Historical Society)
According to Olson, the debris was in shallow waters, about 20 feet deep. From what he could say, the bottom of the housing was essentially intact, but the sides of the ship were distinguished and leveled like fillets – probably due to 138 years when wind, waves and ice were beaten.
Tamara Thomara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist at the State Historical Society, spent several weeks combing in a database of newspaper scraps, archive insurance documents and port reception, similar to motor vehicles.
Thomsen and her colleagues also carried out diving missions to search for any identification qualities.
Given the appearance of the ship and the overall ship accident, the Historical Society was able to confirm that Olson had found the remains of the long -lost Frank D. Barker.
“What is really cool is that it’s all,” Thomsen said. “These were spreading at the bottom, almost like pieces of puzzle that you could assemble in your thoughts and put it back.”
1867. A 137 -foot Frank D. Barker was built from a tree from a tree was built by a veteran builder named Simon G. Johnson of Clayton, New York. It was a Canaller, which is a kind of ship that is uniquely for the great lakes, Thomsen said. Canalrs were built through the Wellland channel – a series of locks and both natural and modified waterways that allowed ships to bypass the Niagara Falls.
Frank D. Barker was used to transport grain from ports in Milwaukee and Chicago to Ontarijus Lake. Usually on the west, the ship was transported by a coal from Lake Ports to the Middle West so that the fuel factories and houses were heated.
1887 Frank D. Barker traveled from Manistee, Michigan, to Escanaba, Michigan, to take a lot of iron ore. The captain and crew of the ship entered the bad weather and the vague conditions for which it went.
The ship eventually ran to the ground and stuck on a limestone outcrop on the spider island. Five separate attempts to save the ship – one in 1887. October, others in June, August, 1888. September and October – Finally failed.
“They finally decided they couldn’t pull it out of this pocket where she was resting, and they eventually abandoned the ship,” Thomsen said.
The loss of the ship is estimated to be around $ 8,000 at the time, which is more than $ 250,000 in today’s dollars, the Wisconsin Historical Society reports.
Frank D. Barker’s finding after 138 marks a fun moment in Door County, but for Olson it was also very personal.
After reporting to the State Historical Sustaining Service, Olson decided to take a closer look.
“To think that my 6-year-old son was snorkeling for the first time on an accident,” he said, “and as one of the first people, he saw this debris more than 130 years later,” it is quite interesting. “
This article was originally published in nbcnews.com