On this Thursday, May 15, 2025, a photo provided by the Wisconsin Historical Society, Tim Pranke, voluntary diver for the Wisconsin Historical Society, approaches the wreck of the Tugboat JC Ames which was scuttled in 1923 and was rediscovered on Tuesday May 13, 2025, right next to the company of Lake Michigan in Manitowoc, Wis. AP
A Wisconsin line fishing in the fog discovered this week that the wreckage of an abandoned tug overwhelmed in the waters of Lake Michigan for more than a century, state officials announced on Friday.
Tamara Thomsen, maritime archaeologist of the Wisconsin Historical Society, said that the company confirmed that Christopher Thuss had found the wreck of JC Ames. Thuss was fishing in Lake Michigan off the city of Manitowoc in misty conditions on Tuesday when he noticed the wreck in nine feet of water off a breakwater, she said in a message to the Associated Press.
The company said that according to the book “Green Bay Workghorses: The Nau Tug Line”, the Rand and Burger Shipbuilding Company in Manitowoc built JC Ames in 1881 to help move the wood of work. The tug was one of the largest and most powerful of the large lakes, with a 670 horsepower engine.
The tug was used for several purposes beyond moving wood, including the transport of railway cars. He finally fell into ruins and was scuttled in 1923, like practice, while ships survived their usefulness, Thomsen said.
The ship had been buried in the sand at the bottom of the lake for decades before the storms this winter apparently revealed it, Thomsen said. A lack of quagga molds attached to the ship indicates that it has only been exposed recently, she said.
Historians run to locate the shipwrecks and shot down planes in the big lakes before the Quagga mussels destroy them. The quagga have become the dominant invasive species in the lakes lower in the last 30 years, fixing with wooden shipwrecks and a planes sunk into such thick layers that they end up crushing the wreck.
“These types of discoveries are still as exciting because it allows a piece of lost history to resurface. He stayed there for more than a hundred years, then returned completely to our radar by chance,” said Thomsen in a press release. “We are grateful that Chris Thuss noticed the wreckage and reported it so that we can share this story with the communities of Wisconsin to which this story belongs.”
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Quote: Lake Michigan fishing fishing discovers the remains of abandoned tug remains JC Ames (2025, May 17) recovered on May 17, 2025 from https://phys.org/news/2025-05-angler-fishing-lake-michigan-fog.html
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