The Tragic Tale of the Ironton: Uncovering a Shipwreck Lost for 128 Years
The Ironton was a cargo vessel that sailed on Lake Huron off the coast of Michigan in 1894. On a blustery night in September of that year, the Ironton collided with a grain hauler and both ships sank. The captain and six sailors clambered into a lifeboat but it was dragged to the bottom before they could detach it from the ship. Only two crewmen survived.
For 128 years, the gravesite of the Ironton eluded shipwreck hunters. That all changed in 2019 when a team of historians, underwater archaeologists and technicians located the wreckage. Video footage shows the Ironton sitting upright on the lake bottom, hundreds of feet down, remarkably preserved by the cold, fresh water like many other Great Lakes shipwrecks.
The Ironton was part of a busy period for Great Lakes commerce. Thousands of schooners and hundreds of steamers hauled cargo and passengers between bustling port cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which includes the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center in Alpena and some 4,300 square miles of northwestern Lake Huron, is believed to have nearly 200 shipwrecks within or nearby its boundaries.
Several factors made the area a “shipwreck alley” for more than two centuries, until modern navigation and weather forecasting reduced the danger. The weather was notoriously unstable – dense fog, sudden storms, islands and submerged reefs all lurked. On the fateful night, the Ironton and another schooner barge, the Moonlight, were being towed northward from the Lake Erie town of Ashtabula, Ohio, by a steam-powered ship. They were bound for Marquette, a port city on Lake Superior.
When the steamer broke down in heavy Lake Huron seas around 12:30 a.m., the Ironton and the Moonlight disconnected their tow lines and drifted apart. The Ironton veered off course and ran into the Ohio, a freighter loaded with 1,000 tons of flour, about 10 miles off Presque Isle, Michigan. The Ohio soon foundered, its crew of 16 rescued by the Moonlight. The Ironton stayed afloat more than an hour before going down.
The search and inspections involved a number of organizations, including Ocean Exploration Trust, founded by Robert Ballard, who located the sunken wreckage of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck. Staffers with the sanctuary took a sonar survey in the area of the collision in 2017 and detected two images on the lake bed. It took two more years to track down the Ironton several miles away.
A high-resolution scan in 2021 provided more details. The vessel is largely intact, with its masts pointing skyward, rigging and ropes tied to spars and lying on deck. The robotic camera also showed the lifeboat tied to the ship’s stern, a poignant confirmation of witness accounts from 128 years ago.
The tragedy of the Ironton is yet another reminder of the powerful and unpredictable forces of Lake Huron, and the danger that once existed for sailors who plied the lake’s waters. With the discovery of the Ironton, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary hopes to preserve this story for future generations and provide some closure to the extended families of those lost on the Ironton.
