Shipwreck hunters make rare find Posted on Sun, Jul. 25, 2004 Shipwreck hunters make rare find Ore freighter located century after sinking BY CHUCK FREDERICK Duluth News Tribune   After more than five years of motoring in slow circles around Lake Superior, a team of shipwreck hunters has found a reason to cut the engines. In more than 300 feet of water about 13 miles south-southeast of Two Harbors, Minn., the five-member search team's sonar detected something on the bottom. The remains of the bulk freighter Robert Wallace, which took on water and sank more than a century ago, became the first shipwreck to be found in Lake Superior in three years. The wreck was first detected by sonar June 5. Three subsequent weekend trips to the site returned photos of the lost and now silt-covered vessel, a rare find, said shipwreck and Great Lakes experts. "We were amazed. It's so intact," said the search team's Jerry Eliason, a longtime diver who lives in Scanlon, Minn. "None of us had ever seen a wooden steamer that looked like that before. There's very little debris. Just about everything is still on the wreck. It's even sitting upright on an even keel." The iron ore-laden Robert Wallace was lost in November, but not during one of the infamous gales of November, historical accounts show. The big lake was relatively calm the evening of Nov. 17, 1902. About 11 p.m., the captain, J.W. Nicholson, felt a heavy vibration. Moments later, a second mate brought word that water was pouring into the stern. The captain ordered his crew into a lifeboat, which took the men to the barge they were towing, the 218-foot Ashland. There, the crew burned distress flares. After midnight, the railroad tug Edna G. responded, returning the barge and its crew to Two Harbors. "There was no loss of life," Eliason said. "It hit a log or something, is what it did, and tore out its stern post." The wreck was found in Wisconsin waters. For more than 100 years, it was believed to be in the Minnesota side of the lake. "This discovery means a little adjustment to the historical record," said Thom Holden, director of the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Duluth. "It's an important find." "It's been the buzz of the diving community," said Jay Hanson, owner of Superior Scuba Center in Duluth. "This is a pretty big deal to us. It's pretty rare to find a wreck in Lake Superior." The last one, not including the discovery two years ago of small barges and tugboats scuttled near Thunder Bay, was the wooden steamer A.A. Parker discovered in June 2001 near Grand Marais, Mich., by a research vessel operated by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society of Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. Eliason's last discovery, with longtime hunting partner Kraig Smith of Rice Lake, Wis., was in 1990. He found the freighter Judge Hart, which sank in a storm in November 1942 in Canadian waters. Two years earlier, Eliason discovered the Onoko, an iron-hulled steamer that sank south of Knife Island in September 1915. His search team has been together seven or eight years. Members include Smith, Randy Beebe of Duluth and Ken Merryman of Fridley. Eliason's son, Jarrod Eliason of Colorado Springs, Colo., designed the torpedo-looking side-scan sonar that first detected the Robert Wallace. "We were all excited when we first saw it. We'd been working on this mystery five years," said Merryman, a shipwreck hunter of more than 30 years and a member of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society. "They're all interesting. They're all pretty neat," Merryman said of the wrecks. "We drive around in circles a lot. It's nice to finally have a place to stop." The team is making plans to dive to the Robert Wallace. That trip will probably take place in August when Lake Superior warms up. The water is only about 42 degrees now, Merryman said. The team bought suit heaters for the dive and is determining the proper mix of helium and oxygen necessary for the depth. Diving to the wreck will take about five minutes, Merryman said. The team will spend about 10 minutes videotaping and photographing the ship and then about two hours slowly returning to the surface. A slow ascent is a must to avoid the bends, or decompression sickness. The Wallace appears to have sunk slowly and landed softly on the bottom. It's one of only a couple of wrecks in Lake Superior with its smokestack still in place. "It's like nothing we've ever seen before," Eliason said of the wreck's condition. "The only thing we can detect missing is the wheelhouse." Worrisome to the search team turned dive team is the amount of silt on the wreck. If disturbed, a cloud of slow-settling silt could obscure the divers' 10 minutes with the wreck. "It'll be interesting and exciting and a little scary," Merryman said of the coming dive. In all, about 350 vessels have been lost in Lake Superior. All but about 100 ran aground near shore and were broken up by waves and nature. About half of the remaining 100 have been discovered. Once their work with the Robert Wallace is complete, Eliason's team plans to renew a search for the steamer Benjamin Noble, believed to be in about 600 to 700 feet of water about five miles south of Two Harbors. AT A GLANCE Name: Robert Wallace Built: In 1882 by Globe Iron Works, Cleveland. The vessel was named for Globe's founder and president. Owner: Corrigan, McKinney and Co., Cleveland Type: Bulk freighter Length: 209 feet Sank: In Lake Superior on Nov. 17, 1902. The vessel was loaded with iron ore and was towing the 218-foot schooner barge Ashland, which also was laden with ore.