Shipwreck Found in Lake Michigan 130 Years After Sinking With Captain’s ‘Intelligent and Faithful’ Dog Onboard

On the morning of September 30, 1893, a 130-foot schooner called the Margaret A. Muir was sailing across Lake Michigan when a storm rolled in. Before the ship reached the safety of the nearest port, it sank—taking the captain’s beloved dog with it.

Now, more than 130 years later, researchers have located the Margaret A. Muir on the bottom of the lake bed. Maritime historians with the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association used historical records and a homemade side-scan sonar device to find the lost ship earlier this year, according to an announcement this week.

Their efforts began with maritime historian Brendon Baillod, who started compiling a database of Wisconsin’s lost shipwrecks about two decades ago. Based on his research, he thought underwater archaeologists would have a good chance of finding the Margaret A. Muir. Last year, he approached the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association, which launched a search for the ship.

After narrowing the search area to a five-square-mile grid, researchers set sail in a 16-foot motorboat on May 12, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Caitlin Looby. They were close to wrapping up for the day when they noticed something unusual on the lake floor. It turned out to be the Margaret A. Muir, submerged under 50 feet of water and located just a few miles from the harbor of Algoma, Wisconsin.

The team contacted Tamara Thomsen, Wisconsin’s state maritime archaeologist, who organized an expedition to take high-resolution photographs of the wreck. Using these images, researchers created a 3D model of the ship.

Margaret A. Muir (1872)

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The photos and model show that the vessel is in rough shape, with a collapsed deck and unattached sides. The pieces of its deck gear—including “two giant anchors, hand pumps, its bow windlass and its capstan,” according to the announcement—are still intact.

Moving forward, the association plans to work with the Wisconsin Historical Society to nominate the shipwreck for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. A vessel the team found last summer, the Trinidad, is already listed on the register.

Protection of shipwrecks is important because “the artifacts on them are like pages of a history book,” Kevin Cullen, executive director of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Margaret A. Muir was built in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, in 1872. Throughout the ship’s 21-year career, it carried various kinds of cargo across all five Great Lakes.

When it sank, the vessel was transporting 4,375 barrels of salt from Bay City, Michigan, to South Chicago, Illinois. It had made it through the Straits of Mackinac, the waterway connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, when a storm rolled in with wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour. At first, the Margaret A. Muir appeared to endure the bad weather. But around 7:30 a.m., the surf got rougher, and huge waves began crashing over the deck.

Captain David Clow started sailing toward the nearest port. The ship had almost made it to Ahnapee (now Algoma), Wisconsin, when the captain discovered several feet of water in the hold. He ordered his crew to abandon ship. However, before they could do so, “the ship lurched violently and plunged for the bottom, taking Captain Clow’s faithful dog and ship’s mascot with it,” according to the announcement.

The seven human crew members managed to deploy the lifeboat, which quickly began filling with water. They bailed furiously to keep the small vessel afloat through 15-foot waves.

Eventually, they made it to the beach, where residents spotted them and took them to the St. Charles Hotel to warm up and dry off. A few days later, the Chicago Tribune reported that Clow was so shaken by the incident that he vowed to quit sailing.

But he was even more distraught over losing his dog in the wreck. The unnamed companion was “an intelligent and faithful animal, and a great favorite with the captain and crew,” as the Door County Advocate wrote soon after the disaster.

The captain added that he “would rather lose any sum of money than to have the brute perish as he did.”

While researching the wreck, Baillod searched for additional information about the dog, but found nothing. This was the team’s second shipwreck discovery in Lake Michigan with a lost dog: The Trinidad also had a four-legged mascot, a large Newfoundland, who had been asleep by the stove when the vessel began sinking. It plunged so quickly that the pup didn’t have time to escape.

“Many Great Lakes vessels had a ship mascot, usually the captain’s personal pet,” Baillod, author of Fathoms Deep But Not Forgotten: Wisconsin’s Lost Ships, tells Smithsonian magazine. “They were often large breed dogs, such as the Newfoundland on the Trinidad.”

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.