Wreck of 150-year-old unlucky ship found off Lake Superior's Shipwreck Coast

The discovery of one of the oldest — and, perhaps, unluckiest — ships to sink off Lake Superior's Shipwreck Coast is being celebrated by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS).

The society announced this week it had located the wreckage of the Nucleus, a 144-foot barquentine, under 600 feet of water northwest of Vermilion Point, off Lake Superior's Shipwreck Coast in Michigan. 

The Nucleus sank on Sept. 14, 1869, but that wasn't the first time it sank; the ship earned the nickname "Bad Luck Barquentine" due to the number of accidents it was involved in.

"It's one of the oldest shipwrecks along the Shipwreck Coast," said Corey Adkins, director of content and communications with the GLSHS, which is based in Michigan. "It's the oldest one we have found.

"We were surprised to find there are shovels everywhere on the bottom of this wreck, and that kind of represents what the working conditions were like for the crew back then," he said.

"These guys had to unload the cargo themselves," Adkins said. "Just imagine having to load all that iron ore into the holds of that ship, and then unload it, and they did it with those shovels."

On Sept. 14, 1869, the Nucleus had departed Marquette, Michigan, and was heading for Sault Ste. Marie with a load of iron ore. The ship was caught in a storm on Lake Superior, and began taking on water; the crew was forced to abandon ship.

The Nucleus sank shortly after. The crew, meanwhile, had escaped in the ship's lifeboats, and flagged down a steamship called the Union.

The Union, however, "pulled right up next to the guys and then just kept steaming, just left them there," Adkins said, adding he intends to do some research to try and determine if the captain and crew of the Union were punished for leaving the Nucleus crew.

"In 1869, there is nothing out there," Adkins said. "There's nothing out there to help these guys that are in a bad storm.

"They had salvation with the Union, but the Union just took off on them."

The crew was rescued a few hours later by a schooner called the Worthington. All members of the Nucleus crew survived.

By the time it sank for the final time, the Nucleus had developed a reputation of being accident-prone; in fact, there are 11 recorded incidents of the ship running into trouble.

The ship had previously sunk twice, it had run aground, and even rammed and sank the S.S. Detroit on Lake Huron in 1854. In 1858, a crew member died falling from one of the ship's masts.

Adkins said the GLSHS initially discovered a wreck using sonar in summer 2021; a subsequent search of the site using a remotely-operated vehicle identified the wreckage as that of the Nucleus.

The Nucleus was one of 10 wrecks discovered by the GLSHS during the summer of 2021, a number Adkins called "unheard of" for one season. 

Now, the organization is working to identify the others.

"It's a part of our history," Adkins said of the wrecks below the waters of Lake Superior. "And it's important to know that history.

"There's so many wrecks, so many stories, and every single one of them deserve to be told, and told correctly. That's one of our missions, is to find these wrecks, tell that history, because it deserves to be told."