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Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary

– Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. I’m Tom Zinnen. I work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biotechnology Center. I also work for the Division of Extension Wisconsin 4-H. And on behalf of those folks and our other co-organizers, PBS Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the UW-Madison Science Alliance, thanks again for coming to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year. Tonight, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Caitlin Zant and Tamara Thomsen. They’re both maritime archeologists with the Wisconsin Historical Society and the State Historic Preservation Office there. They’re gonna be speaking with us about the new Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary. It was designated in 2021, and it is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The sanctuary runs in some of the waters of Wisconsin and Lake Michigan, from Port Washington north to just beyond the southern border of Kewaunee County. And in that sanctuary are 36 known shipwrecks and up to 59 possible other shipwrecks that haven’t been found yet, but based on historic documents, may be in that region. This sanctuary recalls and reaffirms the legacy and the heritage of Wisconsin as a home of sailors, of mariners, and of ship builders. Would you please join me in welcoming Caitlin Zant and Tamara Thomsen to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab?

– Well, thanks for having us back, Tom. I guess we did a satisfactory job the last time we were with you, so thank you. We wanted to share with you something new that’s going on in Wisconsin. And if you haven’t heard the news, as of August 2021, there is a new national marine sanctuary, which is right along our shores. So I’m gonna start out by telling you a little bit about what national marine sanctuaries are and the process that we went through to get it designated, and then I’m gonna pass this off to Caitlin Zant, my colleague, and she’s gonna tell you a little bit about the resources and what to expect next. So first off, if you haven’t– if you don’t know what a national marine sanctuary is, this is the place for you to be, ’cause I’m gonna tell you a little bit about what goes into national marine sanctuaries. So national marine sanctuaries are sort of like underwater parks.

However, they are managed by NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And although oceanographic is sort of upfront ocean science, up front in their name, they’re probably best known for the National Weather Service, which is another arm of NOAA, and they’re the ones that predict our weather. But as far as the national marine sanctuaries go, there are a lot of things that go into what makes a sanctuary and how to get one designated. So in Wisconsin, our sanctuary is called the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary. And it is a partnership between the State of Wisconsin, coastal communities, stakeholders, and NOAA in order to protect and interpret Wisconsin’s nationally significant shipwrecks. So this is our new map that NOAA just gave to us. And you can see that the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast Sanctuary has been turned from its yellow box over into a white circle. So that means that we have been designated. We are no longer a proposed national marine sanctuary anymore. The National Marine Sanctuary System started really in 1975 to protect a shipwreck.

It was to protect the USS Monitor, which is a Civil War ironclad that’s off the coast of North Carolina. And from that, it expanded to, well, now we’re the 15th national marine sanctuary in its system. And each sanctuary has something special to protect, whether it’s a cultural resource or a natural resource. But for us, we’re now the fourth sanctuary that’s designated to protect submerged cultural resources. So after Monitor, then in the 1990s, it took a little bit of time to get there, but there was a sanctuary designated in, it’s called the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and that’s in Lake Huron. And that was the second one to protect exclusively submerged cultural resources. And then, at the same time that the Wisconsin sanctuary was proposed, there was another sanctuary that came up for consideration, which was the Mallows Bay National Marine Sanctuary on the Potomac River. So because of political strife, our sanctuary was delayed about two years and it took additional two years for it to really come to fruition. There’s a lot of things that go into making a national marine sanctuary, but really at the heart of it is conservation and preservation. And into those, there’s a lot of pieces that are to be considered.

There’s resource protection, there’s education and outreach, there’s research and monitoring, and also community engagement. And so we are going to expect that our national marine sanctuary, of course, we’re in the planning phases of it now, what will it look like? It’s been designated, how do we get there? And we expect all of these things to really develop in the years to come. So the first and probably most prominent thing that we will see is additions of moorings. This falls under the resource protection. So right now the State of Wisconsin, so the program that I work for, the Maritime Preservation and Archeology Program, we have eight moorings on shipwrecks that are in this region. And so with NOAA coming in, we’ll see quite a few more of these mooring buoys in place. And the reason for these is that it makes it easier for divers and boaters to find where the shipwrecks are. It also makes it easier for us to avoid any damage that will occur to the shipwrecks by people improperly anchoring into them or hooking them. And so we will see this almost immediately. After that, we see with this designation, we see a prohibition on removing artifacts and damage to the shipwrecks.

Although our state laws are pretty strong in these matters and protect our shipwrecks, this is sort of a layering effect of the laws that comes in. Now, we will have federal level of laws that will be protecting these shipwrecks if there is any damage that’s caused to them or any artifacts that go missing. As far as the mooring buoys go, right now we really don’t have, our state doesn’t have a way of sharing which of those eight mooring buoys are out. So we have a volunteer system that puts out the moorings and takes them in and monitors them, but we don’t have a website that shares which ones are out. And so you can see in this slide, this is a map of shipwrecks in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. And each one of them is a little box, orange box. And if you click on them, you can tell whether the shipwreck mooring is out, whether it’s gone missing, whether it’s been damaged. And this would allow you to adjust your plan for going out to visit a particular shipwreck. Also, this is a story map, so it’s interactive. And so by touching on the mooring to find out if it’s there, you can also get information on what the history of the ship was, what to expect to see when you go diving there, maybe a site plan of the wreck site and maybe a couple pictures or a video associated with that as well.

So it will really help you to plan your visitation to these particular resources. We also have education and outreach. And although our program does pretty well now, associating with teachers and museums in the communities where the national marine sanctuary is, this will be a doubling of our effort. So we know that NOAA, just this past summer in 2021, received an Ocean Exploration grant. And in that, the role of the grant was to educate educators and to teach them about science and also archeology and really the science of archeology. So it really incorporated new techniques that are coming to play in the field of archeology and allowed them to explore shipwrecks right along their shoreline, but then to take that information back to the classroom, so that we’ll have a new generation that will be excited about what’s right in their backyard. NOAA also has a underwater robotics program. Here we have a competition that’s shown, that takes place in the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Again, they have sort of a package program that can be implemented in the communities and in the schools to build robots and to have them do specialized things underwater. And then they have competitions, so we can really see the potential for expanding this to students along our coastline.

And then research and monitoring. So again, although our program has been very active, and that’s actually one of the reasons the sanctuary is here, because of all of the activity, we’ll have this increase in assistance, this doubling of our efforts, to go out to these resources, to collect additional data, to collect pictures on a yearly basis so that we can see a continuity of monitoring on some of these sites, but also to produce photogrammetry and to use the latest in technology to understand the resources that we have here. And also community engagement. People wanna be active in their sanctuary. So we see here in these pictures, beach cleanups and citizen science, and we really expect this to come to our sanctuary in years to come. So as far as nominating an area as a national marine sanctuary, this is really not something that we’ve ever done before. So it took quite a bit to go into the process. All nominations for national marine sanctuaries have to show that the resources have national significance. It also needs to show that there is community-based support for the sanctuary coming in. And then it needs to spell out possible commitments for partnership opportunities for NOAA.

There also needs to be additional opportunities for research and education. So we started putting this nomination together and we finally submitted it for consideration in December of 2014. And then NOAA, it took about a year, and NOAA approved it and it moved into sort of the next phase of consideration toward designation in October of 2015. But it didn’t start there; it started long before that. Actually in 2007, we received a grant from NOAA through the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program. And this was to understand our resources a little more. It enabled us to compile a list and to analyze all the submerged cultural resources of the state. And in doing this, we looked for natural groupings of the shipwrecks. We wanted to see where there were these concentrations, but also really look at them and determine which ones told this whole story of the maritime history of the state and which ones would be the best. And in doing this, we ended up weighing the different regions, the different groupings, and based on a number of factors, National Register of Historic Places listings, the integrity of the shipwrecks.

And there’s certainly areas that have more shipwrecks, but the shipwrecks aren’t intact or they’ve been broken upon the shore in the waves and ice. And so we wanted to look for ones that had the most intact hulls, ones that had rigging that were still upright. And we also looked at potential for discovery. Were there other unknown shipwrecks or known shipwrecks that are in an area, but unknown to us as far as their location? And what was the potential for them to be discovered? And several other factors as well. But that’s really what went into this initial report. And then, this picture here is of our nomination document, and it’s on the wisconsinshipwrecks. org website in case you would like to go and see what a nomination looks like. This lays out that national significance of our shipwrecks and how they really fit into this landscape of maritime history that exists here on the western edge of the Great Lakes. It also builds upon our state program, the state program that I’ve been with for over 20 years, and highlights a regional collaboration. It also builds on existing infrastructure programs and other coastal investments that have been made here.

And it lays out a vision of what we expect to see in the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary. So this is the area that was chosen for our sanctuary. It runs just south of Port Washington and out toward the middle of the lake, not quite to our state line, and then cuts north to and jogs in to include all of the known resources. And it originally ran up to the Manitowoc County line, but the county of Kewaunee came forward and said that they were very interested in being involved. But Kewaunee County only has a few shipwrecks, and so it seemed logical to include the one that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which is the America. It’s a canaller, which it’s a ship built for transiting the Welland Canal that’s just over their border. So that’s where the sanctuary line then cuts back in to the coastline. So the sanctuary itself is all in the water. So there’s no land that’s associated with this. It is entirely water-based and it is structured around the preservation only of shipwrecks.

So this area encompasses 962 square miles. Within it are 39 known shipwrecks. 27 of those, our office here at the State has worked on and been able to list to the National Register of Historic Places. 60 shipwrecks are known to have been lost within the region, but have not been discovered yet. And the area includes two of Wisconsin’s oldest shipwrecks. The Gallinipper, which is the oldest known shipwreck, was owned by Michael Dousman, who was the western agent for the John Jacob Astor American Fur Company. And the second oldest one is the schooner Home. And it was a small trading schooner lost in a collision off Manitowoc and has a number of merchandise, boxes of merchandise on board, as well as wood products. There are 18 intact shipwrecks that are within this area. Three of them still have the mast standing, and the rigging look almost like they could sail away today.

And the date range of the resources is 1833 through 1918. So it really does cover a breadth of maritime history really from even before the founding of our state. So from here, I’m gonna pass you on to my colleague, Caitlin Zant, and she’s going to cover the wealth of resources that are within the sanctuary and give you sort of an idea of what lays below the surface, and then talk about what’s next, what we expect to see in coming years.

– Thank you, Tammy. I appreciate that. And now I’m here to talk to you guys about the different resources that we have in the sanctuary and kind of a little bit more discussion about the national significance that Wisconsin shipwrecks have, and in particular, this region of Wisconsin. So when a lot of people hear about a marine sanctuary in Wisconsin, associating Wisconsin with any kind of body of water is not something that’s always done. People kind of question as to, how could there be a marine sanctuary in the state of Wisconsin? And the thing about Wisconsin is that it is pretty much perfectly situated along the Great Lakes, and that Wisconsin’s Great Lakes shoreline has been incredibly important to the state throughout its career. As you can see, just from its location of where it is on the western side of the Great Lakes, it’s very well-situated for this transportation via waterway and had a lot of traffic throughout its career. And so because of this ease of access to the Great Lakes, there was a lot of transportation and a lot of traffic that came through the area, and so Wisconsin had a lot of shipwrecks.

It was a place where people used it as kind of a jumping off point. As immigrants began moving westward, as people really started to come into the central part of the country, traveling by waterway was actually a lot easier and a lot faster than traveling over land. And so because of Wisconsin’s situation and where it is, a lot in the Great Lakes system, it was a really great place for immigrants to come to move westward and for also goods to come as things needed to get further west. On the flip side of this, all the rich farmland of the Midwest had Wisconsin really well-situated to be this kind of major distribution point for a lot of these goods to then go back out east and was really a part of this. And so really a lot of the shipwrecks that we have here in Wisconsin, they’re not just Wisconsin shipwrecks. They’re located in Wisconsin, but they are a part of this larger regional and national story. And so one of the major components of this sanctuary designation was demonstrating this exact fact, was talking about the different kinds of significance that all of these vessels have. So this part of Wisconsin’s history is something that’s not new, it’s not something that has just developed, it’s been around since Wisconsin’s inception. As you can see here from the Seal of the State of Wisconsin, which was developed in 1846, you can really see this maritime influence on the state from its inception. On the seal, we have three different maritime resources that are represented.

We have the sailor, the anchor, and then the arm and hammer, which the arm is actually holding a caulking mallet, which was used in shipbuilding, which was another one of the major industries in Wisconsin throughout a good portion of its history. So even this discussion of Wisconsin’s maritime history might be something that’s relatively new for a lot of people today, it’s always kind of been in the framework of the state of Wisconsin, even from its very earliest inception. So the entire state of Wisconsin has these nationally and regionally significant shipwrecks. One of the main reasons, as Tammy mentioned, that this area was actually chosen was due to this clustering of wrecks that is in this particular Lake Michigan region. And so that’s not to say that any of the shipwrecks in the rest of the state aren’t just as significant both on a national and regional level, but it’s that this particular area, there were a lot of very intact wrecks of varying types. And so I’m gonna go through a couple of those examples for you today, just to give you a taste of what we have here underneath the shore of Lake Michigan. So the first vessel we have here is the Walter B. Allen. And this was a vessel known as a sailing canaller. And sailing canallers are really exciting vessels, and they’re something that are very unique to the Great Lakes.

Sailing canallers were built very specifically to fit through the Welland Canal. This particular era of sailing canallers was built to fit through the second generation of the Welland Canal, which was around the late 19th century. And these vessels were a major part of this east-west trade that developed out of the Midwest. So major bulk goods, grain, lumber, iron ore, were coming out of the Midwest and they would need to be transported to the eastern, major eastern cities like New York and other places such as that. In return, these vessels came back to the Midwest with cargos full of coal, and this coal and other goods and manufactured goods really helped propel the development of the major Midwestern cities that we know today like Chicago and Milwaukee. And so this trade was something that really developed out of the late 19th century, and canallers were really at the backbone of this. They were kind of the workhorses of this particular trade. And so Walter B. Allen in and of itself, the vessel was built in 1866 and it sank in 1880. And so it fits right into this time period, and it’s a really great example of this type of vessel.

It’s very well intact and it’s in relatively deep water. And so the preservation of the ship is very, very good. And so from archeological work on this vessel, we have been able to learn a lot about canallers and the different components that it had. And so canallers aren’t just found in Wisconsin; they’re found throughout the Great Lakes. We have a very high collection of them here in Wisconsin waters, but it is something that tells the story of the Great Lakes region. And from having these very intact shipwrecks, we can use the Walter B. Allen and other canallers like it as kind of a jumping-off point to tell this story and to learn a little bit more about this era of the Great Lakes history. The next vessel that I’m going to talk to you about is the steamer Vernon. The steamer Vernon was built in 1886 and it sank in 1887, and it was primarily used in the passenger and freight trade. Now, this trade in the Great Lakes was something that was very popular in the late 1800s and into the early 20th century.

And really wasn’t just found in the state of Wisconsin, but it was something that was popular throughout the Great Lakes, where you would have passengers that would get on these excursion vessels and sightsee and have a good time in the hot summer afternoons. And so beyond just carrying passengers, these vessels would also have their holds full of cargo and full of freight to be able to transport different kinds of goods across the Great Lakes. In Vernon’s example, the vessel itself was carrying a lot of home goods including wooden bowls, wooden mashers, other wooden components, along with pitchers and other different types of items that you would find in an everyday kitchen at the time. So the vessel Vernon was built to be this beautiful vessel, but unfortunately, it was built very narrow for how long it was. And although the vessel was known to be very fast and a very wonderful excursion, unfortunately, that narrowness ultimately led to the vessel sinking. When the vessel was overloaded or very heavily loaded, it did not respond very well. And also in heavy seas, it could be tossed about quite easily. And so unfortunately on the day of Vernon sinking, it was overfilled to the point where all of the cargo was basically falling out of the cargo holds and they could not keep the cargo doors closed. And so ultimately, this was one of the components that led to the vessel sinking, as the vessel was too unstable to really remain upright and the water was able to come in through those open cargo doors, ultimately leading to the loss of the Vernon and the loss of life on the vessel. Now, with this vessel, as you can see, under water, it is in remarkable condition, located about 160 feet under the surface of Lake Michigan.

And this vessel really shows a great example of this passenger steamer and freighter that was very popular at the time of its sinking. And it’s a vessel type that we don’t necessarily have a lot of examples of throughout the rest of the Great Lakes that are in this remarkable condition. And one of the really unique things about this vessel is that artifact assemblage that is still located inside the hold of the vessel. So really by looking at this and seeing what kinds of cargo they were carrying at that time, you can kind of understand and learn a little bit more about life in the late 1800s and kind of get a little bit of an idea of what this trade actually was. Between the cargo that’s still located in the hold and some artifacts that were unfortunately pulled out of the wreck in the very early age of diving in the state, we now have this ability to study these artifacts and really look at them and understand how they are and how they kind of tell this story of the Great Lakes’ history. Located in the sanctuary, we also have one of the most famous shipwrecks throughout the Great Lakes and potentially even the country, the schooner Rouse Simmons, otherwise known as the Christmas Tree Ship. It was built in 1886 and ultimately didn’t sink until 1912. So this vessel was originally built as a traditional schooner in the Great Lakes, and it had an incredibly long career sailing the Great Lakes in various different industries before it became known as the Christmas Tree Ship. And so by looking beyond just this kind of final story of its sinking and getting to know a little bit more about the schooner’s life, we really get an insight into just general Great Lakes cargo trade throughout the late 1800s, and kind of have this understanding of what was going on in its life. Of course, we do also have the story of its sinking.

And so it’s this story that has gone beyond just regional fame or statewide fame, regional fame. It’s on a national and even bigger than that level. And so really that brings this kind of idea of understanding what this shipwreck is. It pulls it kind of out of the state of Wisconsin and pulls us into this understanding on a more national level. And really this is a great example of what archeology can tell us about these vessels that the historical record might not necessarily show. So for those who don’t know the myth of the sinking of the Rouse Simmons, the vessel was captained by a man named Herman Schuenemann, also known as Captain Santa. He owned this vessel very late in its career. He would go up to Thompson, Michigan, get a load of Christmas trees, and take them down to Chicago, where he would sell the Christmas trees on the deck. And this became a tradition for many families of Chicago to go down to the docks and buy their Christmas tree. So ultimately in 1912, the vessel was making this trip.

It had gone up to Thompson, Michigan, grabbed a load of Christmas trees, and was making its way down to Chicago when the vessel was seen by Life-Saving Station in Kewaunee as being under distress. And ultimately, the myth goes on that the vessel then encountered a major storm and ultimately sank due to this storm, to much crying and wailing as the lifesavers attempted to rescue everyone from the vessel. One of the really great things about archeology is that we can dig a little bit deeper. And so by looking at both the shipwreck as it looks like on the bottom and then also looking at some more historical records from that time period, we can get a little bit better understanding of what actually happened that day and kind of learn a little bit more about what might have been the case. And so by looking through the Life-Saving Station records and also by looking at the vessel itself, we can not only learn potentially what happened to the vessel, but also what was happening onboard the ship right before it ultimately sank. And by looking at all of these, we can discover that the Life-Saving Station did notice that the ship was having some issues when it was much farther north, as it was sailing south in calm waters, well before the snowstorm set in. And then ultimately, once the wreck was found, being able to look at all the cargo, the Christmas trees still in the hold, but then also the anchor chain that had been laid out on the deck of the vessel in preparation for potentially setting anchor before the vessel ultimately sank. And so while the story is that the storm is the cause of the sinking for this vessel, by looking at this wreck and the archeology of this wreck, we can actually get to the idea of the fact that this was a 40-year-old vessel that was likely very little maintained and that the ultimate cause of the sinking was, unfortunately, a leaky boat. So while we have this ability to tell all these different stories, not just for famous wrecks like the Rouse Simmons, but we can also dig into the archeology of these other maybe lesser known vessels and get a better understanding of them. So another one of the really intact and historic shipwrecks that we have here in the sanctuary is the schooner Gallinipper.

The schooner Gallinipper was originally built in 1832 as the Nancy Dousman. And as Tammy mentioned a little bit earlier in the presentation, it is one of the two oldest wrecks that we have in the sanctuary. And actually, the Gallinipper is the oldest built vessel that we have here in the state of Wisconsin. This shipwreck really tells the story of Wisconsin’s early history and also the early history of the Great Lakes. Originally, its name is Nancy Dousman. If you know Wisconsin history, a lot of early Wisconsin history is littered with the name Dousman, because the Dousman family was very pronounced and were a large part of the development of Wisconsin in its early years, even before Wisconsin became a state. They had a very large role in the development of the cities of Green Bay and Milwaukee, and then also in Prairie du Chien. And so as the Nancy Dousman, the vessel plied the waters of Lake Michigan, mostly carrying fur out of Milwaukee for the John Jacob Astor Fur Trade Company. And this vessel continued to work for the Dousman family as it continued on for quite a few years. After a little while, the vessel was ultimately purchased by another new owner, and at that time, the vessel was lengthened.

It wasn’t widened, just lengthened, and it was ultimately changed to the name Gallinipper. It continued to work on for those owners for many, many years, but unfortunately, when the vessel was lengthened, but not widened, it made the vessel very unstable when it was light and very unstable in any kind of weather. And so when the vessel was continuing throughout its career, it ultimately was the cause for its sinking, was this instability. And so on the day of its sinking, the vessel was swamped with water, and ultimately, could not be righted and sank beneath the waters of Lake Michigan. Now, Gallinipper itself is one of the most intact wrecks we have here in the sanctuary and in this area. It’s got its mast still standing, and it really serves as an early example of a schooner built in the Great Lakes, which in many cases, we do not have examples of anymore. Any vessels that survived well into their later years ultimately deteriorated or were taken apart, whereas the Nancy Dousman or the Gallinipper, we do have this example that’s remarkably preserved on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and so that can really tell us a lot about early schooner construction. So I’ve talked a lot about these deep water intact wrecks that we have, but located in this region also, we have a lot of shallow water wrecks. They’re not just these deep, intact wrecks, but we do have a lot of examples of shallow water wrecks that are remarkably intact that we don’t see in a lot of other places in the state or even in the Great Lakes. And so you don’t necessarily have to be a diver to experience these wrecks.

You can be a boater, you can be a kayaker, canoer, an airplane pilot. Anything that you can be very close to the water, the surface of the water, you can see a lot of these vessels in shallow water and experience them. And so what we have in Wisconsin, especially in this area right around Rawley Point is the vessels in this area were lost very, very quickly and then covered up by sand. And now, that’s because of a relatively unique feature of this area. So there’s a large number of shipwrecks here because the weather is notoriously poor and notoriously changeable right off of this point. And so there are a lot of historic records of vessels sinking in this area. And a lot of them did run aground because this point sticks far out into the lake. Now, in many cases, when a vessel runs aground, they can be pulled off by other vessels, or they’re ultimately battered by the wind and the waves against the shoreline and they fall to complete pieces. That’s not the case here in Rawley Point, because there’s a very unique bottom substrate in the area that’s basically quicksand. And so these vessels would get stuck in the sand and basically suctioned into the bottom, so they couldn’t be pulled off.

And then because of the changeable weather in the area, the sand moves around a lot, and so they were very quickly buried by sand. And so the result of all of this is very intact shipwrecks very close to shore in very shallow water, which is something that is really unique and something very exciting for us to have here. And a great example of this is the scow schooner Alaska. So Alaska was built in 1869 and it sank in 1879. And the Alaska is what’s known as a scow schooner. And so these vessels were very unique to the Great Lakes area. They developed here because they had very flat bottoms and very flat sides and they could get into these very small, unimproved ports. And they were also very simple to build. There was an old adage that if you could build a barn, you could build a scow. And so you didn’t need these large shipbuilding facilities to be able to build one, and so you could basically build one in your backyard.

And so a lot of small-scale farmers, especially Norwegian immigrants, used these scow schooners to be able to get their goods to the larger cities like Milwaukee and Chicago to be able to sell their wares. And so they’re very unique to this area and they were used across the entire Great Lakes, but here in Wisconsin, we do have a very heavy concentration of this particular vessel type, and so we have a lot of really great examples of them. And so what we find with these vessels is that they’re very early pieces of this nearshore, kind of lake-shoring trade that was happening that primarily happened a lot in Lake Michigan and really kind of tells this smaller story that isn’t quite as broad-based as a lot of the more popular or well-known vessel types in the area. And so with Alaska, the wreck itself is located in about five feet of water. To our knowledge, it’s only really ever been uncovered the one time we were there to record it, but that also leads to its remarkable protection and preservation, because it has been buried beneath the sand and not been forced to be hit by wind and waves and ice action over the years. And so we still have this example in very shallow water. Another really great shallow water wreck we have is the sailing canaller La Salle. So La Salle, just like the Walter B. Allen, was this sailing canaller vessel type built for the Welland Canal. And what’s exciting about La Salle, it has a very similar story to Walter B.

Allen in terms of its life and career. But with the Walter B. Allen, it was lost off of Rawley Point, and today it only is located in about 15 feet of water. And the thing about shallow water wrecks, as I mentioned, is you normally don’t get this level of preservation, but as you can see from an image of La Salle, it is intact all the way up into its decks. And that’s something you just don’t get in a lot of other places. And so we were able to look at this as a great example of a sailing canaller, learn a lot about its life and its career just by looking at it on the bottom. And ultimately, it’s there in 15 feet of water for people to be able to access and see relatively easily as an example of a wreck that looks like a wreck. And so really, these are examples that these wrecks in the sanctuary, they’re not just for divers, they’re not just for archeologists, but anybody can have access to these and see them and learn about Wisconsin’s Great Lakes history through visiting these sites. So as we move forward with this sanctuary designation, and now that we’re kind of getting into having this really billed, we’re moving into our first summer of actually having the sanctuary designated, we kind of have to go through a couple of first steps, and one of those is the creation of advisory councils. So Tammy talked a lot about the process of this nomination process and how community-based it was, and how involved the local communities along the shoreline have been in the process.

And so that doesn’t just stop after designation; that continues on throughout the lifetime of the sanctuary, and one of the most important parts of that is the advisory council that’s created. It is kind of bringing together all these diverse interests of various members of the community to be able to kind of help steer ideas for the sanctuary and kind of be a discussion point for what the sanctuary is doing or what the sanctuary can do for the region. And so the focus is made up of different community members from all different walks of life, coming together to discuss conservation, education, research, diving, boating, all different components of the sanctuary, and have this community-based involvement. And so it really continues to be this community-driven process throughout the entire part and the development of the sanctuary as it continues on. So with the sanctuary coming in, there are a lot of different ideas behind, the main idea behind this is the resource protection and the resource that we are protecting is cultural resources. So not just shipwrecks, but any kind of cultural resources that are located within the sanctuary. And so because of this, there are a lot of activities that are still allowed within the sanctuary. So this is not in a way like a national park or in other places where you might be prohibited from doing certain things, most of the activities that already occur on Lake Michigan continue to occur in this particular part of Lake Michigan. Fishing, boating, diving, research, any of that may be continued throughout the region, unless it is specifically prohibited for any particular reason. There’s no restriction on access.

There’s no restriction on information or anything about how to get out there. Everything on that end continues to be the same. What is prohibited in the sanctuary, as I mentioned, is completely related to cultural resources. So in the state of Wisconsin, we have been very lucky and always had very good cultural resource protection laws in place. And so that is something that we are really proud of here in Wisconsin and is one of the reasons that we’ve really been able to protect and promote our shipwrecks quite as much as we have. So with the sanctuary coming in, it just kind of adds that extra layer of federal protection to these wrecks, a little bit beyond what was already covered by state protection as well. So one of the prohibited activities in the sanctuary is recovering, altering, destroying in any way, any part of a shipwreck or any of the artifacts located on a shipwreck. Now, this is something in the state of Wisconsin that has always been protected. But again, this sanctuary coming in is something that’s a little bit more of another agency that can actually help protect these resources and help enforce these rules in the area. And so as it is, all of the shipwrecks, as they are on the bottom of Lake Michigan, are to remain as they are along with all of the artifacts, and they can be enjoyed by divers, they can be visited by divers, but anything is left where it is.

Basically the adage, “Take only pictures, leave only bubbles,” really applies to this. The second prohibited activity in the sanctuary is using grappling hooks or anchors or any other kind of device to attach to a shipwreck. So one of the big parts of the sanctuary coming in is kind of expanding the buoy process, as Tammy mentioned, and expanding the number of buoys that we have in the sanctuary so that people can access these resources in a safe manner. And so continued grappling of wrecks can ultimately lead to their damage and have, in Wisconsin, led to the damage of some of these historic shipwrecks that can never be recovered. And so through this regulation, we’re basically trying to, it’s another step to protect these resources and to make sure that they remain pristine and remain protected and preserved for all to see. And so along with this does come this installation of all of these buoys, so that then you can safely anchor a boat or safely attach your boat to the buoy as opposed to the shipwreck, where you might potentially damage it. So as I’ve kind of talked about, we’ve both talked about this whole time, the implementation of this sanctuary in this area is an added resource protection, and it’s something that we are focused on here in the state and have been focused on for the last 30 years since our program has been around. And then also, now that we have the sanctuary here, just kind of continuing that on and really reinforcing that idea that we’re here to promote and protect resources and also to promote safe visitation of these resources. So this sanctuary, all sanctuaries, are meant to protect the resources that they’re there to protect, conduct research into additional things that you might not already know about and learn a little bit more, and then also to promote this education and outreach, and to kind of have everybody be able to enjoy these resources and they can be preserved for the future. And part of that is this safe tourism and safe visitation of these.

And so beyond just putting us on a national level for people to understand that there are shipwrecks and cultural resources in Lake Michigan, the implementation of the sanctuary really does bring in this kind of recreation and tourism to the area that just doubles those efforts to be able to do that. And it really is to promote the use of Lake Michigan and continue with the diving and the fishing charters and the boat operators and everything that’s already going on in the state, and just amplify that and put it on a national stage so more people know about the great resources that we have here in the state of Wisconsin. Similarly too, like in Thunder Bay at the national marine sanctuary, glass-bottom boat tours developed in that area. So people, if you’re not a diver, you don’t own a boat, you don’t want to kayak, you can still go out and be attached to these resources and get to enjoy them and see them. And so that’s something that’s really a big part of this sanctuary, and another great benefit that we have from it is now to get people to understand and know about the great and fantastic resources that we have here in the state of Wisconsin. With all of that, if you do wanna learn a little bit more about the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, or have any questions, or just wanna learn more about Wisconsin shipwrecks in general, you can feel free to contact either myself or Tamara. Our contact information is included here. We’re happy to answer any questions you have via email. Otherwise, we do have a website, wisconsinshipwrecks. org, and that’s where we post images of all the wrecks and we have information on all of the wrecks that we have here in the state of Wisconsin.

With that, I’d just like to say thank you to everybody. Thank you to Tom. Thank you to everyone who is watching us tonight. And I hope you enjoyed this presentation and learned a little bit tonight. And I do hope to see you guys in the future at another presentation. And I hope you have a great day.