Shipwreck Hunters Find Lac La Belle Wreck After 150 Years

A team of shipwreck hunters has discovered the long-lost wreck of the Lac La Belle, a luxury passenger steamer that sank in a violent gale on Lake Michigan more than 150 years ago, ending a search that spanned nearly six decades.

The vessel, which vanished on October 13, 1872, was located in October 2022 about 20 miles offshore between Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Shipwreck World, an organization dedicated to finding underwater wrecks globally, announced the discovery publicly last Friday. The announcement was delayed, according to team leader Paul Ehorn, because the group aimed to create a three-dimensional video model of the site, though poor weather and scheduling issues postponed return dives until last summer.

Ehorn, an 80-year-old experienced scuba diver and shipwreck enthusiast from Illinois, has pursued wrecks since he was 15 years old. He began targeting the Lac La Belle specifically in 1965 and described the hunt as "kind of a game, like solve the puzzle." Using side-scan sonar, his team identified the ship after just two hours on the water, guided by a key clue from fellow wreck hunter and author Ross Richardson. Richardson learned from a commercial fisherman who...