The ghost ship discovery of the long-lost schooner F.J. King has brought closure to a 140-year-old Lake Michigan mystery. Researcher Brandon Baillod and his team located the wreck on June 28, confirmed Monday by the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association.
The F.J. King, a 144-foot cargo schooner built in Toledo in 1867, sank during a violent storm on September 15, 1886, while carrying iron ore from Escanaba, Michigan, to Chicago. Waves as high as 10 feet ruptured the vessel’s seams. Despite desperate efforts by Captain William Griffin and his crew to pump water from the ship, it slipped beneath the waves around 2 a.m. Another schooner later rescued the men and brought them safely to Bailey’s Harbor.
For decades, conflicting reports about the wreck’s location frustrated searches, earning the vessel its reputation as a “ghost ship.” Since the 1970s, shipwreck hunters scoured the waters near Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula without success.
Baillod shifted focus after reconsidering accounts from a lighthouse keeper. His team ultimately found the wreck half a mile from that original report. “A few of us had to pinch each other,” Baillod said of the discovery. “After all the previous searches, we couldn’t believe we had actually found it, and so quickly.”
The hull remains largely intact, surprising experts who expected the weight of the iron ore to have broken the vessel apart. The find adds to a growing list of wrecks discovered in Wisconsin waters, including the steamer L.W. Crane and schooner Trinidad.
