The Lac La Belle sank off the coast of Wisconsin due to inclement weather more than 150 years ago — and it's taken shipwreck hunters decades to finally locate it.
Paul EhornThe wreck of the Lac La Belle was discovered off the coast of Wisconsin between Racine and Kenosha.
Ever since the steamer Lac La Belle went down in a storm off the coast of Wisconsin in 1872, the location of its wreck has remained a mystery. Shipwreck hunters have been looking for it for decades, but it wasn’t until a fresh clue emerged in 2022 that they were finally able to locate this doomed vessel on the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Though covered with destructive quagga mussels, the ship’s wooden framing is largely well-preserved, leaving a ghostly outline of the Lac La Belle still visible deep beneath the surface of the lake after 154 years.
The Discovery Of The Lac La Belle Shipwreck At The Bottom Of Lake Michigan
The story behind the discovery of the remains of the Lac La Belle begins with a shipwreck hunter named Paul Ehorn. According to a statement from Shipwreck World, Ehorn has been interested in shipwrecks since the 1960s, when he became a certified scuba diver at the age of 15. Ehorn started looking for shipwrecks in the Great Lakes in 1965, and located several, including the automobile carrier Senator, which sank in 1929. But the fabled Lac La Belle always proved elusive.
Paul EhornA diver swims near the bow of the Lac La Belle.
In 2022, however, a fellow shipwreck hunter named Ross Richardson shared a clue about the possible location of the Lac La Belle. Richardson had learned that a fisherman in Lake Michigan had found an item specific to 19th-century steamers, which helped Ehorn narrow down his search area.
In October 2022, after just two hours of searching in the area that Richardson had suggested, Ehorn spotted a promising shape on his underwater sonar. It was the outline of a ship — none other than the Lac La Belle.
“It was a moment of real jubilation,” Ehorn said. “We knew we had done it.”
That said, both bad weather and the wreck’s distance from shore made visiting it in person a challenge. The now-80-year-old Ehorn ultimately hired divers to visit the site, who were able to film the wreck of the 217-foot ship. They found that it was largely still intact, though its upper cabins were gone.
For Ehorn, it was a thrill decades in the making.
Paul EhornThough the ship’s upper cabins are gone, the wreck itself is in remarkably good shape.
“As a woodworker myself, I appreciate the hand craftsmanship that went into these early vessels,” he said. “The Lac La Belle was close to home for me and is a wreck that’s always been on my radar.”
So how did the doomed ship sink?
The Tragic Sinking Of The Lac La Belle In 1872
Brendon Baillod/Baillod CollectionThe Lac La Belle in 1866, six years before it sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Built in Cleveland as a passenger steamer in 1864, the Lac La Belle initially traversed Lake Superior. But then, the ship sank in the St. Clair River in 1866. However, the vessel was only 25 feet deep, and it was raised in 1869 and soon put back into action.
Just a few years later, on the night of October 13, 1872, the Lac La Belle set out into Lake Michigan from Milwaukee with 53 passengers and crew, as well as a cargo of 19,000 bushels of barley, 1,200 barrels of flour, 50 barrels of pork, and 25 barrels of whiskey. There was a “moderate gale” at the beginning of the trip, but things took a turn for the worse when the Lac La Belle suddenly sprung a leak from an unknown source. Though the captain tried to turn the vessel back, the gale worsened, and huge waves began to swamp the ship.
The vessel began to sink and, at 5 a.m. on October 14, the captain ordered the passengers and crew to abandon ship. Though everyone safely made it into lifeboats — and witnessed the ship sink stern first — one lifeboat capsized in the rough seas, killing eight people. The others made it safely to shore.
But the wreck of the Lac La Belle remained a mystery — until Ehorn located it almost exactly 150 years after it originally went down.
The shipwreck hunter thus solved a mystery more than a century old. But still, there are an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks that remain in the Great Lakes today — and thus plenty more just waiting to be discovered.
After reading about the Lac La Belle, discover the fascinating — and often tragic — stories of some of the most famous shipwrecks found around the world. Then, look through these heartbreaking artifacts recovered from the Titanic.
