some of the most famous shipwrecks in maritime history. Now their history is garnering more attention thanks to the discovery of a steamship missing since 1895.
The 128-year old wooden vessel was discovered by filmmakers Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick earlier this year. The pair received a tip from local scientists conducting a fish study off the coast of the Bruce Peninsula which led them to the ship’s resting place. The peninsula is a well-known landmark in the Great Lakes. The outcropping marks the divide between the larger Lake Huron to the south and the smaller Georgian Bay to the north. The scientists conducting the fish study had noted a sonar anomaly consistent with a shipwreck, which they forwarded to Drebart and Melnick for further study.
The filmmakers, a husband and wife team who live on the Bruce Peninsula and run Inspired Planet Productions, were in the midst of a documentary about the invasive quagga mussels currently wreaking havoc on the Great Lakes. Originally from the Black Sea region in Eurasia, quagga mussels can cover lake bottoms in massive quantities while simultaneously filtering plankton out of the water. The loss of plankton is devastating to fish populations and government agencies in both Canada and the United States have been fighting since the 1980s to limit their ecological impact.
To find the vessel, and the horde of mussels attached to it, Drebert and Melnick used an ROV to explore the lake bottom using the coordinates provided by the scientists.
“When we set out on this project we thought what’s the best possible tool for us to kind of play James Cameron and get to the bottom of the lakes and show people what’s happening there? This was the best tool,” Melnick told the Owen Sound TImes.
“The robot gets to the bottom of the lake and surprise, surprise there are mussels. So I’m thinking, oh great, let’s go back, this is going to be nothing,” Drebert added.
But, hovering at depth of nearly 280 feet in the deceptively clear waters, Drebert saw a silhouette in the distance.
“It’s like, OK, that could be a pile of rocks or something. Then it very slowly came into view and became obvious it was a shipwreck in incredible condition. We all started freaking out, really,” Melnick told the Owen Sound Times. After circling the vessel’s impressive length, Melnick and team then noticed the steam stack rising from the stern deck. A rare feature among Great Lakes shipwrecks, the steam stack would mark the beginning of a mission to uncover the vessel’s name and origin.
“We started putting all the pieces together and started getting even more and more excited about it and we started thinking what is this?” Melnick recalled.
The task wouldn’t be easy, first and foremost because of the quagga mussels coating the hull. Since nearly all shipwrecks fall under preservation and anti-salvaging laws in Canada, the vessel couldn’t be touched. That meant Melnick and Drebert would have to explore other avenues to uncover the ship’s origin.
“It’s a bit of a double-edged sword for us because it’s kind of great to be able to see with the clarity the mussels have
102 | ISSUE 106 | DEC 2023 | THE REPORT
created but they’re also having these huge ecosystem impacts,” Drebert told the Owen Sound Times. “It’s really flipped the whole ecosystem on its head.”
The qauggas, which are a cousin of the equally problematic zebra mussel, coat surfaces by the thousands, making it impossible (or potentially illegal) to clear away a section of the hull to locate a name or ID number. With the circumstances making an identification difficult, the filmmakers approached maritime historian Patrick Folkes and marine archaeologist Scarlett Janusas for help.
In an article with Canadian Geographic, Folkes, the author of “Shipwrecks of the Saugeen,” estimates about 100 ships sunk in the region between 1848 and 1930. Approximately 40 to 50 were never found, which means there are many undiscovered shipwrecks littering the floor of Lake Huron. “Sometimes the only clue [that a ship had been lost] was when bodies or wreckage washed ashore,” Folkes told Canadian Geographic.
In order to continue searching around the vessel, the team secured an archaeological license from the province of Ontario allowing them to return to the shipwreck with an ROV to look for more clues. After taking measurements to confirm the ship’s length, wide, and signature features, their research narrowed it down to three names -- the Eclipse, last seen in 1883; the Africa, sunk in 1895; and the Saturn, lost in 1901.
In the silt surrounding the wreckage were pieces of coal, a telltale sign that she was a cargo ship. That detail, paired her surprising length and steam stack, made for only one logical candidate, the Africa. And therein lies the story of a mysterious vessel whose unique appearance had to be unwound through the webs of time.
Most of the original photos and construction details for the Africa didn’t match the ship found at the bottom of
The ‘Africa’ as a passenger ship. Photo credit: Historical Collections of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University
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