Jim Schaefer of the Detroit Free Press writes about shipwreck hunters who dove into Lake Huron this past summer and discovered the 436-foot steamship, the Hydrus, which had been lost at sea in the Great Storm of 1913. Twenty-two aboard died.
The Freep's Eric Seals made a 50-minute documentary about the search.
Schaefer writes:
Since the Great Storm of 1913, the 436-foot steamship Hydrus had been lost. It sank, most likely on Nov. 9 of that year, during a storm so ferocious it has been called the “White Hurricane.” The sky unleashed a blizzard over the Great Lakes, hitting Lake Huron hardest with wind gusts up to 90 m.p.h. and waves to 35 feet.
The Great Storm, even today, is the worst recorded on the lakes. Not even the weather that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald, 40 years ago this week compares to the 1913 disaster. There were a dozen major shipwrecks from Nov. 7 through 10, and eight of them were on Lake Huron. More than 250 people perished.
The Hydrus had been headed south toward the St. Clair River, iron ore in its belly. The ship lost everyone on board, a crew of 22, including five found frozen to death in a lifeboat that washed up in Canada.
Since that time, every ship believed to have gone down in U.S. waters in Lake Huron was discovered except the Hydrus. Veteran shipwreck hunter David Trotter, a 74-year-old former Ford financial man who lives in Canton, has had it on his wanted list for 30 years. Along the way, he has found scores of other ships and even a few airplanes as he scours Lake Huron’s bottom every year with his crew. It was Trotter who, in 1985, found another of the 1913 casualties, the John A. McGean, which was heading north in Lake Huron with a load of coal when it went down.
"Graveyard of the Great Lakes: A Shipwreck Hunter's Quest to Discover the Past," the documentary by Eric Seals, will be screened at 7 p.m. Thursday in Port Huronb at the McMorran Place Sports & Entertainment Center, 701 McMorran Blvd. Tickets are available for $10 through Ticketmaster.