A World War II-era steamship that sank along with its captain in a strong storm in 1940 has been found at the bottom of Lake Superior after a 10-year search.
The 244-foot SS Arlington lay under 650 feet of water around 35 miles north of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula for 74 years and was only found after a dogged shipwreck hunter kept up the painstaking hunt.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which worked on the discovery with researcher Dan Fountain, confirmed the find in a statement on Monday.
Fountain spotted something at the bottom of the lake using remote sensing data and contacted the society for help to find out what it was. Last year, the society towed a sonar device over the suspected resting place and confirmed it was a shipwreck, before underwater drones verified it was the missing Arlington.
Video footage released by the society showed decayed wreckage, with its smokestack toppled over and its helm, or steering wheel, still intact.
Captain Frederick “Tatey Bug” Burke, an experienced sailor in the Lakes, was the sole crewmember to die in the incident. It remains a mystery why he went down with the ship and didn’t escape to a nearby vessel like his crew.
The Arlington was a Canadian bulk carrier that had set off fully loaded with wheat from Port Arthur, Ontario, on April 30 1940 bound for Owen Sound, Ontario, 1,000 miles to the east on Lake Huron. It was found near Copper Harbor, Michigan.
The ship and another that it accompanied, the Collingwood, were met with thick fog on Lake Superior that turned into a storm as night fell, with both ships rocked by the churning waters, the society said.
The Arlington’s first mate, Junis Macksey, ordered the ship to sail close to the Canadian shore to the north, to provide some cover from swirling winds and waves.
But Captain Burke overrode the order and sent the ship back out into open waters. At 4:30 a.m. on May 1, Chief Engineer Fred Gilbert sounded the alarm — the Arlington was sinking.
“Out of fear for…
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