The wreck of a “ghost ship” cargo schooner that sank off a Wisconsin coastline during a ferocious storm has finally been uncovered 140 years later.
A team led by researcher Brandon Baillod found the remains of the “F.J. King” ship on June 28, the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association confirmed on Monday.
Baillod, who had been leading the search for the long-lost vessel, told The Associated Press in an email that the discovery came after decades of researchers scouring the depths of Lake Michigan.
The shipwreck was discovered off Bailey’s Harbor, a small community of 280 people on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula that stretches into Lake Michigan.
The F.J. King, a 144-foot, three-masted cargo schooner built in Toledo, Ohio, in 1867, was carrying iron ore from Escanaba, Michigan, to Chicago on Sept. 15, 1886, when a powerful “gale,” or strong gust of wind, tore into the vessel.
Waves of up to 10 feet then ruptured the ship’s seams.
Despite efforts by Captain William Griffin and his crew to pump water out of the ship, it sank around 2 a.m.
The vessel’s stern deckhouse was also blown away, sending Griffin’s papers flying 50 feet into the air. The crew was eventually rescued by another passing schooner and taken to Bailey’s Harbor.
Conflicting reports about the schooner’s location long thwarted researchers’ efforts to find the sunken boat.
Since the 1970s, shipwreck hunters combed the area but came up empty-handed, earning the F.J. King a reputation as a “ghost ship.”
Baillod, who long suspected Griffin may have been disoriented in the storm when he reported where the ship sank, decided to focus on a two-square-mile area based on a lighthouse keeper’s report. His team’s search ended when a side-scan radar revealed a large object, 140-feet long, located half a mile from the keeper’s reported sighting.
“A few of us had to pinch each other,” Baillod said in the announcement. “After all the previous searches, we couldn’t believe we had actually found it, and so quickly.”
He said the hull appears to be intact, surprising searchers who expected to find it in pieces due to the weight of the iron ore the schooner was carrying.
The Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association has now discovered five wrecks in the last three years.
Earlier in 2025, the group found the steamer L.W. Crane in the Fox River at Oshkosh, Wisconsin, as well as tugboat John Evenson and schooner Margaret A. Muir off Algoma, Wisconsin. Baillod discovered the schooner Trinidad off Algoma in 2023.
With Post wires.
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