Lake Superior, known as “the graveyard of the Great Lakes,” is an underwater time capsule. Over 350 shipwrecks have already been discovered on the frigid lake bottom, and potentially at least 200 others are yet to be located. Superior conceals a wealth of history and intrigue that has been preserved by its cold, clean water and brought alive by writers, divers, and 3D modelers. Here’s a glimpse into three shipwrecks that serve as remnants of a bygone era when maritime travel was the lifeline of Minnesota’s North Shore.
Madeira
Superior’s vast size, great depths, and bone-chilling year-round temps have preserved many shipwrecks for over a century. One of them is the Madeira, a schooner barge that sank on Nov. 28, 1905, upon crashing into the rocky coastline of what is now Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. But there wasn’t always a lighthouse there—in fact, the Madeira wreck was the catalyst for the familiar North Shore lighthouse we know today.
Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society
Imagine riding out a late-November gale on a steel cargo ship in 70 to 80 mph winds, with snow whipping the deck and the barge bobbing up and down on huge swells. The Madeira was getting a tow from the William Edenborn when the wind struck, but the Edenborn captain cut the towline to try and save the two ships from peril. Instead, the opposite happened: The Edenborn was swept on shore and split in two, while the Madeira slammed into Gold Rock cliff.
The drama was only starting, though. The Madeira had 10 crew members on board, including Fred Benson, who leapt from the sinking schooner to the base of the cliff with a safety line. He scrambled up the cliff face, tied a rock to the line, and dropped it down to the remaining crew members. Benson hauled eight of the nine remaining crew off the sinking boat using the lifeline. Only one crew member, the first mate, who tried climbing the mast to jump to shore, was drowned when he got thrown off the mast by a massive wave. The surviving crew members were stranded for two days on the cliff before being rescued from their rocky roost by the tugboat Edna G.
The Madeira’s dramatic story captivated divers like Jorie Strunk, owner of Unsalted Adventures dive company. Strunk, a charter boat captain, runs dive classes and charters on the North Shore from his boat Lake Superior Diver. “The Madeira transformed a whole part of the state. Split Rock Lighthouse was built because of this shipwreck. There are entire storms that have been named after ships that wrecked. Certain laws on ship-building requirements have been changed because of shipwrecks,” Strunk explains. “There’s a lot that can happen as a result of one moment in time.”
Courtesy of Superior Trips
Indeed, the storm of 1905 spurred the U.S. Congress to build Split Rock Lighthouse in 1910, saving many ships—and lives—since.
Daley Valentine, a 17-year-old Duluth diver who has been down to the Madeira with Strunk, describes seeing the destruction firsthand: “It looked like it went through a blender.
It was 2-inch-thick steel that got picked up and turned around like spaghetti noodles.” Calling the wreckage on the bottom of Superior “insane,” Valentine says, “it’s amazing what can happen with the power of the lake. It bends, twists, and turns stuff. The lake doesn’t care.”
Courtesy of Unsalted Adventures
Today, an interactive 3D model of the Madeira shipwreck can be viewed online via the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society of Minnesota.
Samuel P. Ely
Another famous Minnesota shipwreck is the Samuel P. Ely, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. “It’s a fantastic shipwreck for anyone looking to get into wreck diving,” says Strunk of Unsalted Adventures. “It’s also a fun one for those who don’t dive. You can snorkel it, but you do need a boat to get to it,” Strunk explains. The Ely is a unique example of a pre-1900s schooner still intact on the Superior floor. It wrecked in October 1896, under similar circumstances to Madeira. The Samuel P. Ely (named after the same mining magnate—Samuel Partridge Ely—for whom the town of Ely, Minnesota, is named) was being towed by another boat, the steamship Hesper, from Duluth to Two Harbors, when they encountered a ferocious storm.
The Hesper and Ely battled the raging gale for nine hours, but finally the winds were so bad that the Hesper cut the Ely loose—or it broke free. The Ely blew across the Two Harbors harbor, smashed into another boat, and hit the stone breakwater, eventually getting hung up in the rocks and sinking the next morning.
The crew clung to the masts, still above water, and were eventually rescued by the tugboat Ella G. Stone.
Kathy Groth, author of “Sunken: Shipwrecks of Lake Superior” and “Sunken: Shipwrecks of Lake Michigan,” has researched hundreds of wrecks, including the Ely, and is drawn to the human element of surviving these events. “I’ve always been shocked by the bravery, the lack of panic, and everyone working together even when your ship is going down,” says Groth. “It’s captivating because it’s so compelling. There’s something so intriguing about wrecks that happen so fast in such treacherous, extreme conditions, and how people adapt to survive.”
Underwater, Strunk says there are still places on the Ely where you can pick out white paint on the wood, 129 years after it sunk. “For what it is, it’s very intact. It’s a really fun, easy dive to get started with,” Strunk says.
Western Reserve
Another intriguing aspect of Superior shipwrecks is how they are continuously being found to this day. In fact, Superior shipwrecks are being found more frequently now than ever before, as modern technologies like side-scanning sonar make them easier to locate, even at great depths.
This spring marked the discovery of the final resting spot of the Western Reserve, owned by millionaire Captain Peter G. Minch, a highly respected shipping magnate. The Reserve sank on Aug. 30, 1892, and was finally found by an expert team of shipwreck hunters from Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society.
The ship had been heading from the Lower Great Lakes across Lake Superior to Two Harbors for a late summer cruise, with Minch’s wife and two young children aboard. Near Deer Park, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula, it ran into disaster, encountering a gale and breaking in two.
Courtesy of Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum recounts the ensuing events: “The Minch family and the Western Reserve crew safely boarded and launched the vessel’s two lifeboats. Almost immediately, one lifeboat overturned and many of the ship’s crew disappeared. The remaining lifeboat occupants recovered only two of the crewmen. Within 10 minutes, the big ship was gone, leaving one lifeboat with the Minch family and the remaining crew aboard. They would be in the gale and darkness for the next 10 hours.”
“Salvation was near at hand when a steamship passed them in the night. They screamed for half an hour, but with no flares… they were not seen. At about 7:30 a.m. the next morning, they were within 1 mile of the shoreline west of the Deer Park Life-Saving Station (Lake Superior’s southeastern shoreline), when the lifeboat overturned in the breakers.”
Only Harry W. Stewart, a crew member from Algonac, Michigan, lived to tell the tale. He swam for two hours to the deserted Superior shore, then walked 12 miles to the life-saving station.
Part of the Western Reserve’s mystique was that it had eluded researchers for so long. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society used its professional underwater research vessel
R.V. David Boyd for two years to scour the bottom of Lake Superior with Marine Sonic Technology’s side-scan sonar, eventually finding the long-lost treasure. The Society then used a remotely operated submersible vehicle to take measurements and pictures to confirm the wreck was indeed the Western Reserve.
The Madeira, Samuel P. Ely, and Western Reserve are proof of the ingenuity of both the survivors and of modern preservationists and divers who record and document shipwreck artefacts, bringing them back to life. With this year being the 50th anniversary of the most famous Superior shipwreck of all, the Edmund Fitzgerald (which sank on Nov. 10, 1975), shipwrecks will continue to captivate the public eye in 2025 and for generations to come.
