When I arrived at the office of James Hall, site administrator for the Erie Maritime Museum, on a cold January morning, he was excited to show me a map in his hallway. At its bottom, in blue capital letters, it read: GHOSTSHIPS OF THE SOUTH SHORE QUADRANGLE. Above the text, I saw our portion of Lake Erie, with Ohio on the left, New York on the right, and Presque Isle’s hook, dead center. Along the lake were dozens of little ship icons indicating sunken vessels – schooners, ferries, brigs, barges, steamboats, and more – peppered across the water with surprising regularity.
Upon seeing the sheer number of identified wrecks, I assumed (incorrectly) that travel by boat was extremely dangerous in the 19th century. Hall gently corrected me, “If you go back to the turn of the century or a little before that, you should imagine I-90 within five miles of the coast. Before trains, there was no way to get from point A to point B without being on the water.” Back then, Lake Erie was closer to the bayfront connector than the tranquil vacation spot we enjoy today.
At the top right of the museum’s map is a curious blank spot, one of the only places where this “graveyard of the Great Lakes” lacks any nautical remains. Was this area unusually safe? A road less traveled? Neither – it’s simply the part we’ve neglected to explore…