A century-old mystery of the Great Lakes has eerily surfaced from the deep. The Adella Shores, a wooden steamship that vanished in 1909, has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Superior, with its final resting place now known more than 40 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan, as reported by ClickOnDetroit.
Built in 1894 at Gibraltar, Michigan, the Adella Shores was a 195-foot, 735-ton behemoth owned by the Shores Lumber Company and sadly, sank with all hands on deck on May 1, 1909. "I pretty much knew that had to be the Adella Shores when I measured the length of it, because there were no other ships out there missing in that size range," Darryl Ertel of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, said, per WXYZ. It's a dive into history that has brought a somber chapter of Michigan's maritime legacy back into the limelight—soberly underscoring the perilous nature of early 20th-century lake shipping.
The endeavor to pinpoint the ship's location was thorough and technologically savvy, utilizing a side-scan sonar system operated by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. The society aims to preserve these tales of lost vessels, as echoed by their Content/Communications Director, Corey Adkins, "Every one of these stories is important and deserves to be told with the utmost honor and respect." The ship's finding comes as part of a series of successful searches by the society, which also discovered a 244-foot bulk carrier called The Arlington, among others, as reported by WXYZ.
Despite the vessel's multiple misfortunes, including two prior sinkings in shallower waters, and the ominous christening with water instead of champagne—due to the owner's strict beliefs about alcohol—the finding of the Adella Shores gives closure to a long-lost piece of nautical history. The discovery made deep beneath the lake's surface among unfriendly currents and the ghosts of the past, serves as a haunting reminder of the lake's storied yet tragic history. "As soon as I put the ROV down on it for the first time, I could see the design of the ship and I could match it right up to the Adella Shores," Ertel, added to the narrative provided by WXYZ.
