What gets found? What washes up?
[Bruce] There was nothing.
It was as if those vessels just vanished
off the face of the Earth.
[Josh] Why have these two ships been so hard to find?
[Bruce] The weather can change here dramatically, very quickly.
When that ugly witch rears her head out there,
all hell breaks loose.
[Josh] Tell me you found a piece of wreckage.
We did better than that. We have a body.
What?
This completely alters the search zone for this investigation.
[Tom] It does.
-[Josh] Ready to fly? -Ready to roll, man.
[Josh] Let's do it.
-[dramatic music playing] -[engine whirring]
Lake Superior never gives up her dead.
Look at this wreck!
Where has this document been hiding?
Have you been keeping this a secret?
Nobody asked me.
Holy hell. What is that?
[Tom] This is dive-able.
[Josh speaking over radio]
[dramatic music playing]
During the First World War,
Germany attempts to choke off France and Britain
by setting tens of thousands of mines in the English Channel,
sinking more than 700 ships and killing thousands.
Desperate to stop the attacks,
the French Navy commissions a factory in Thunder Bay, Canada,
to build a fleet of minesweepers
to remove these deadly bombs one by one.
The last three minesweepers to be completed
sail into Lake Superior in November of 1918.
But only one survives the journey.
The ships are caught in a massive, raging storm,
and two of them vanish without a trace
taking 79 French and Canadian heroes with them.
No wreckage was ever found, no bodies recovered.
The disappearance of the ships, Cerisoles andInkerman,
stands as Lake Superior's largest loss of life
and its greatest mystery.
A century of searches have proven fruitless.
But now, relentless investigators
have found new leads to pursue.
A recently unearthed eyewitness account
has radically changed the search zone.
And a newly found report from a remote Canadian island
suggests that not every sailor went down with the ships.
So, join me on a great adventure in the Great Lakes
as we attempt to write one of the final chapters of the First World War.
Where are the missing minesweepers?
My name is Josh Gates.
Hello!
Explorer...
Here goes nothing.
...adventurer...
Hoo-hoo-hoo!
Oh, that's a long way down.
...and a guy who ends up in some very strange situations.
[screams]
I'm alive. For now.
With a degree in archeology and a passion for the unexplained,
I travel to the ends of the Earth
investigating the greatest legends in history.
Ready to rock and roll.
This isExpedition Unknown.
[dramatic music playing]
[Josh] My search for the deadliest wrecks in Lake Superior's history
begins here, in the City of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
Or more accurately, just offshore.
[dramatic music playing]
I am traveling through the Soo Locks,
a critical gateway between Lake Superior up ahead
and Lake Huron, where I am.
Now, these locks don't just sit between lakes,
they also sit between nations.
And the City of Sault Ste. Marie has an American side to my left
and a Canadian side over to the right.
Oh, hey there, Canada!
Thanks for all the movie stars named Ryan, eh?
Getting from one lake to another
isn't quite as simple as just sailing through.
That's because Lake Superior is actually 21 feet higher than Lake Huron.
So, these locks, they're not just gates,
they act as a kind of water elevator.
10,000 vessels a year pass through one of five locks
to get from one lake to the other,
though most are significantly bigger than mine.
We are now entering the locks.
You know,
little nerve-racking.
There's about a billion tonnes of water behind that gate, but...
I'm sure it'll hold.
Right, guys?
To equalize the levels,
they pump more that two million gallons of water into the lock
using only gravity, and it takes about 15 minutes.
-And go. -[timer beeps]
[dramatic orchestral music playing]
We should probably cut to a time-lapse.
[orchestral music soars]
And done.
Fifteen minutes later and 21 feet higher,
I'm free to carry on.
All right, we are through.
It is beautiful over here.
I got to say, this lake is definitely 'superior'.
What?
Ah.
Oh, Great Lakes humor.
In November 1918,
three French minesweepers set out
on a remarkable journey,
starting where they were built in the Canadian port city of Thunder Bay.
They intended to sail what's known as Hwy H20,
a 2,000-mile watery maze that extends
from Lake Superior
through the Soo Locks into lakes Huron,
Erie, and Ontario,
and out to the Atlantic Ocean.
To learn why only one of the ships made it,
I trade in my paddle for a set of keys
and ride down the coast of Lake Superior.
I'm driving through the Upper Peninsula
or the U.P. of Michigan.
This area takes up about 30% of the state's landmass
but only three percent of the population.
[cheerful music playing]
The people who do live here call themselves "Yoopers".
U.P., Yoopers. Get it?
It's kind of a different world up here, but in a good way.
There's a lot of cheese curds.
♪ Well, it's 7 a.m. on 285
♪ Just got on I feel so alive In this pickup truck ♪
[Josh] The cholesterol capital of the Midwest
may not be a bustling metropolis,
but it does have a hell of a view.
I steer my way to Whitefish Point,
into the sprawling campus of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum,
where I'm meeting with Executive Director Bruce Lynn.
-Bruce. -Josh.
-Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you as well.
-Welcome to Whitefish Point. -Thank you so much.
I have to say, I'm blown away by this place.
Look, for people who aren't from the Great Lakes, who aren't from around here,
they might be saying to themselves,
"An entire museum devoted to shipwrecks? Really?
Aren't these just beautiful, scenic lakes?"
And people might believe that if they come here on a sunny day.
But certainly, the weather can change here dramatically, very quickly.
-Yeah. -Uh, we've had 90-mile-per-hour winds
clocked up here, 35-foot waves.
People find it hard to believe that we have 550 shipwrecks in Lake Superior alone.
And in the Great Lakes total?
-6,000. -6,000 shipwrecks.
6,000 shipwrecks across the Great Lakes.
And this is more than a museum here to these shipwrecks.
You're also actively searching for wrecks, right?
That's absolutely true. We have a research vessel that we go out.
-When the weather cooperates... -[Josh chuckles]
...we can go out and search for these shipwrecks.
Since 1978 alone, we've found dozens of shipwrecks.
[Josh] Wow.
And as I look around at the displays here,
this has to be the most famous wreck
in the history of the Great Lakes, the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Absolutely. This is the one that everybody knows about.
This is one of the main reasons
people come up and visit the museum.
As a matter of fact, we've got a nice model of the Fitzgerald
you can see right here.
[Josh] Immortalized in song by Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot,
theEdmund Fitzgerald was a 700-foot-long freighter
which sank in a massive storm in 1975,
tragically taking 29 souls with her.
What was so surprising to me
is that for as famous as this wreck is,
it's not the greatest loss of life on Lake Superior.
It's not at all. No. That would be the minesweepers.
The minesweepers. So, let's talk about these minesweepers.
First of all, these ships are built to do
a very particular, a very dangerous job, right?
Absolutely, yeah.
So, during World War I, there were thousands of mines
that were put around ports and shipping lanes.
-Over 43,000 by the Germans alone. -Wow.
[Bruce] So, the French Naval Commission
needed to build more minesweepers.
[Josh] Desperate to clear the English Channel of explosives
and protect Allied vessels,
the French commissioned a small fleet of steel-hulled ships
over 140 feet long.
They were able to clear bombs from the water
by trawling beneath them to sever their anchors.
Once detached from the bottom, the mines would float to the surface,
where they could be destroyed by guns mounted fore and aft.
[loud explosion]
[Josh] And so, why not build them in France?
So, the French shipyards were overrun,
they were overwhelmed.
So, at that point, uh,
they looked at the Canadian Car and Foundry Company in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
They don't sound like a ship company.
-No, they built railroad boxcars. -[Josh chuckles] Okay.
They had to transition.
[Josh] Indeed, the Canadian Car Company had never built ships before.
Yet they agreed to deliver 12 brand-new minesweepers in just six months.
Nine of the vessels launched from the shipyards in Thunder Bay
made it to the Atlantic uneventfully,
and it seemed like the last three would follow
when they left port midday on November 23rd, 1918.
So, the three ships are...
Inkerman, Cerisoles, and Sebastopol.
And under the command of a man by the name of Marcel Leclerc.
So, under his command, those three left, uh, Thunder Bay,
and it was just beautiful conditions.
[Josh] So, they left, not a cloud in the sky, everything's fine.
[Bruce] Exactly. And some of the people on the port said,
"You're going to have smooth sailing
-all the way to Sault Ste. Marie." -[Josh] Hmm.
-So, Leclerc is on the Sebastopol. -[Bruce] Correct.
[Josh] This is the only ship that will make it, of the three.
[Bruce] That's absolutely correct.
And at what point do things start to turn?
Probably around 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock at night on the 23rd.
And now, the waves are getting bigger,
he's noticing the wind is picking up.
And then soon after that, now they have waves that are crashing
over the... the bowels of the vessel.
Now he knows he's getting into some weather.
[Josh] Forget whatever image you have of a day at the lake.
The Great Lakes are more like inland seas
with weather that is notoriously unpredictable.
And for thousands of ships caught in her grip, un-survivable.
But he can see the other two ships.
He can see Inkerman and Cerisoles,right?
[Bruce] He could, yeah. They were all three still together at that point.
Around 11 o'clock at night on the 23rd, then things really started to get bad.
[Josh] According to Captain Leclerc,
50-mile-an-hour winds generating 18-foot waves
are threatening to roll the ships over.
Water is getting to theSebastopol's engine room,
and steering is undependable.
Right around 1 a.m., Leclerc loses sight of Inkermanand Cerisoles.
And that's the last time anybody ever saw those ships again.
[Josh] Eventually, the weather breaks,
and theSebastopol limps onward through the Great Lakes.
Leclerc makes the disastrous assumption
that the other two ships and their 79 crewmen are sailing behind him.
How long does it take before Leclerc realizes something's wrong?
It was nearly two weeks.
-Wow. -[Bruce] And after that two-week period,
I think they knew that there was a real problem.
And at that point, he had to organize a search,
and that would encompass the north shore, the southern shore.
Quite an undertaking that time of the year.
And so, what gets found? What... What washes up?
I think this is one of the most surprising parts of this whole story.
These two 143-foot-long vessels, 80 men, nearly, on board,
there was nothing.
Nothing. Not a trail of wreckage,
there wasn't anything floating.
It was as if those vessels just vanished off the face of the Earth.
[Josh] In fact, all that was left behind
was a mystery that remains unsolved.
Why have these two ships been so hard to find?
That's a really good question.
And part of the reason for that is, Lake Superior is huge.
-Yeah. -[Bruce] It's big, it's deep.
There's a lot of areas where those wrecks could hide.
[Josh] But there are some logical places to look.
When the storm gathered,
instead of continuing through the middle of the lake,
Leclerc tried to stay close to the southern shoreline.
It's here, along the Keweenaw Peninsula,
that they likely became separated.
Almost all of the searches forInkerman andCerisoles have been in this zone,
and they've all turned up nothing.
So, how are you going to find them?
So, we still have a lot of work to do.
But we also have to rely on some clues
that might come out of the blue.
And we have one that's really exciting,
that I think is probably going to take this search in a whole different direction.
-A new piece of evidence? -A new piece of evidence.
We may have a potential witness.
-A witness? -Yes.
[Josh] While I'm not sure how Bruce could have an eyewitness
to a 105-year-old shipwreck,
I rush from Whitefish Point to meet him
30 miles to the west along the southern shore of the lake.
Though getting there is going to be a challenge.
[hard rock music playing]
[Josh] Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
[music intensifies]
[dramatic music playing]
All right, I am headed along the southern shore of the lake
to a place known as Deer Park.
I'm on the hunt for evidence of two World War I minesweepers
that sank just over a century ago.
Bruce Lynn from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum
has directed me to a historic location a few miles ahead.
There used to be an old life-saving station there
to help stranded ships see.
And Bruce has asked me to meet a guy named Jack Hubbard,
who apparently has a story that I've just got to hear.
[dramatic music playing]
[exclaims in excitement]
Little squirrelly.
I pull up at the edge of the lakeshore,
where I discover a lone figure,
lifelong Yooper, Jack Hubbard,
who waits to tell me a first-hand account of the minesweepers' demise.
[dramatic music playing]
Jack?
-Yes, sir. -[Josh chuckles]
I'm Josh.
-Nice to meet you, man. -Nice to meet you, too. Sit down. Have a seat with me.
You got a great spot here. Look at this.
-A beautiful day. -Yeah. It's an absolutely gorgeous day.
[Josh] All right, Bruce at the museum said
that there may be an eyewitness to the minesweepers.
-Yes. -Now, either you've aged really well...
-[Jack] And I have. -[Josh] ...and you have,
-or it's not you. -No, it's not me.
Who's the eyewitness?
My great-grandfather, Richard Chilson.
Your great-grandfather?
Yeah, he worked out of the Deer Park Life-Saving Station.
And that was, like, right around here, right?
-Like, right here? -[Jack] Right here.
Here's a picture of him here. He would be the one in the middle.
-[Josh] This is him, right here. -[Jack] Right there.
-Is this the station behind them? -[Jack] Yes.
-[Josh] Okay. -[Jack] Yeah.
And this is, like, the precursor to the Coast Guard.
-Right? -Yes, yes.
[Josh] The US Life-Saving Service
operated full-time stations along the coast,
where treacherous weather threatened sailors
crossing the Great Lakes.
Brave volunteer crews would attempt to row out in storms
to administer aid to those in distress.
So, he's stationed here. And what's the story? What did he see?
Back in those days, men would have to walk the beach
-a certain amount of miles every night... -Hmm.
[Jack] ...and, uh, patrol the beach.
He was walking the beach,
he saw the ships out there in the storm coming in close to shore.
And he wanted to get them back out onto the,
you know, into deeper water again.
So, what does he do?
Yeah, he took two oil lanterns and he was trying to wave them off...
-[dramatic music playing] -[thunder rumbling]
[Jack] ...trying to make them understand
-that this is the shoreline here. -[Josh] Right.
[Jack] But he waved them so much,
they had those old lanterns back then,
that they actually burned his arms.
They were scarred forever after that.
Wow. So, this isn't just some old rumor.
-This is like he bore the scars of this event. -Oh, yes.
-And he talked about it? -Yeah.
So, why is this story just coming out now?
Have you been keeping this a secret?
[both chuckle]
Nobody asked me.
[Josh] The fact is, this information could be a game-changer.
It represents something that wreck hunters never knew existed.
A credible eyewitness report of the minesweepers
on the night of their disappearance.
So, if you were a betting man, where are those minesweepers?
They're somewhere out here.
That's where I would be looking for them.
[Josh] The account from Jack's great-grandfather places the ships
100 miles east of where they were separated during the storm.
It's a long way from where everybody else has been looking.
Thanks for asking, eh?
-You got it. -[laughs]
As we sit here, I'm struck by the fact that this lake today
-is dead calm. -Yeah.
If you'd never been here, you might think
-it doesn't look dangerous at all. -[scoffs]
You look out there right now.
That is the most beautiful place to be in the world out there.
It's so serene.
But I'll tell you what.
When that ugly witch rears her head out there,
all hell breaks loose.
And it's the most godforsaken place in the world you ever want to be.
Hmm.
It's an ominous warning with a lot of tragic history to back it up.
But it's also where I need to go.
[dramatic music playing]
[Josh] Returning to Whitefish Point,
I head to the research vessel from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Society.
In command is Captain Darryl Ertel.
I hear you're a man looking for some minesweepers.
[Darryl] Yes, we are.
-Should we go find them? -[Darryl] Let's go.
Come on. [claps]
[music soars]
[Josh] Darryl is a master of Lake Superior,
having discovered dozens of shipwrecks over 40 years of exploration.
This ship is really kitted out.
I mean, tell me... tell me what we've got here. Obviously, we've got,
-um, some sonar systems aboard, yeah? -[Darryl] Yeah.
We got five plotters,
um, we got infrared cameras for night vision,
and we got the side-scan sonar from Marine Sonic. It's the Explorer II.
And we got a couple of ROVs on board.
I mean, you could do it all from right here.
Yeah, we got the lake covered.
What would it mean to you to find the minesweepers?
[Darryl] It is a great loss of life,
and when we try to find the shipwrecks, document them,
and it gives families,
even though it's two, three, four generations down the road,
-closure. -Right.
This is, in a way, a sacred mission
with which the Shipwreck Society
is tasked
to settle the ghosts of history
by searching far from where most people have looked.
Okay, so now we have this new lead,
that Jack Hubbard saying his great-grandfather,
this guy out of this life-saving station,
sees these ships offshore much further to the east, over here in Deer Park.
-Do you think he could have seen the minesweepers? -[Darryl] Definitely possible.
We went back and checked
-the Coast Guard life-saving records. -Right.
[Jack] And sure enough, there was a record
of him waving off two ships off the shoreline.
-So, could have been the minesweepers. -Could have been.
[Josh] Darryl has done a preliminary sonar scan of Jack's new search zone
and found some potential anomalies almost 300 feet down.
Luckily, we have a diver aboard
who can easily reach that depth.
This state-of-the-art remote-operated vehicle
has precision thrusters to reach the targets
and real-time video cameras to relay images from the bottom.
We use a crane to carefully lift the robot out over the water to deploy.
Okay, ROV's in.
And with that splash, the ROV powers up,
and we're ready to begin exploring
the unforgiving depths of Lake Superior.
All right, so we are headed down.
[tense music playing]
Looks like we're passing 50 feet.
-Conditions look pretty clear, yeah? -[Darryl] Yeah.
Coming up on 120 feet now.
[Josh] The ROV descends along our anchor line.
At the other end is an unknown target waiting in the darkness.
-And this is on-board sonar on the ROV? -[Darryl] Yes.
[Josh] The ROV's sonar should guide it to whatever's down there,
which we're hoping is a pair of 140-foot steel-hulled minesweepers.
[Darryl] Our target should be down at 250 feet or so.
We are passing 200 feet.
240.
All right, so we're... Could be ten feet from glory here.
-[Josh] Oh. -Starting to see something on the sonar.
[Josh] There's something ahead of us here for sure.
[Darry] So, we want to go straight ahead.
[Josh] Oh, oh, oh. Is that a wreck?
-We got a wreck. [chuckles] -Look at that!
Oh, my word! Look at this wreck!
Are you kidding me? We're underneath it.
Look at this wreck!
Nearly 300 feet under the surface of Lake Superior,
a remove-operated vehicle is hunting for a pair of lost World War I minesweepers,
and it just bumped into something massive.
[Josh] Is it just sitting there?
[Darryl] Yeah. That's the rudder right there.
Get out of here! That's the back of a shipwreck.
This is the rudder, right in here.
Unbelievable.
It is pitch-black, and we're relying on the ROV's on-board lights
to illuminate the stern of the ship.
Could this be one of our ships?
The size looks like it could be, right? This is a large vessel.
Let's get up close to it.
So, we see white paint.
-This is wood. -[Darryl] That's wood.
-It's not the minesweeper. -[Darryl] Not a minesweeper.
But who cares? Wha-- Like, look at this thing.
The minesweepers were steel-plated warships,
so the wooden hull we see here
is proof that this wreck is not one of them.
It is, however, a remarkable discovery.
This is not on any chart?
-This is not charted, right? -No, there's nothing charted here.
[Josh] Look at this, there's a cabin here.
-[Darryl] It's an upper deck. -Right.
-[Darryl] The spindles. -[Josh] Look at the woodwork!
We fly the ROV over the length of the wreck.
Every foot that we travel
offers an incredible new detail to savor.
[Darryl] There's the boiler,
so it's steam-powered.
Is it, like, a tug, is it, like, a cargo ship? What is it, you think?
[Darryl] That's a tug.
[Josh] This is a tug.
How old do you think this is?
Gotta be over 100 years.
[Josh] Darryl believes the wreck is a steam tug,
vital vessels used to support and tow
other ships and barges
operating on the Great Lakes.
This one appears to have been retired rather suddenly,
almost certainly in a storm.
This is literally the first time
people are seeing this
in a century.
Like, that's unbelievable.
It's just been sitting down there, waiting.
-Oh, there is the compass. -What was that?
-That's a compass? -[Darryl] That's a compass.
-[Josh] Right here? -[Darryl] Right there.
-[Josh] That's a brass compass? -[Darryl] Yeah.
This is completely insane.
-[Darryl] There's the bow. -[Josh] There's an anchor.
It's just sitting in place, look at that!
I just cannot believe the preservation here,
like, if this wooden wreck was in the ocean,
there'd be, like, nothing left.
Lake Superior preserves our shipwrecks very well.
And it may be that these minesweepers
are like this, just kind of frozen in time, right?
Oh, they would definitely be,
if they're in Lake Superior, they're gonna be...
perfectly preserved.
[Josh] So, what do you think, what is this?
Can we identify this ship?
Oh, we'll identify it.
-For sure? -Oh, yeah.
You think you could put a name with the face?
Oh, I'm certain we can.
[Josh] This wreck is historic.
One of the lost stories of Lake Superior
that has just been rediscovered.
After surveying the ship from all sides,
we make the long steam back to the dock,
thrilled at the prospect
that Darryl may eventually be able to ID the vessel
by pouring over old records.
Meanwhile, I'm back on the road
to pursue another hot, new lead
from researchers who have discovered a long-lost document
that could change the search zone even further.
The southern shore of Lake Superior
isn't the only place that people are hunting for the minesweepers.
In fact, right now,
another group is getting underway
with a search on a remote island along the northern shore.
And to reach them, I'm gonna have to cross the border, into Canada.
I start by driving back through Sault Ste. Marie
through the most polite checkpoint on the planet.
-Thanks, buddy. -Thank you. Well, that was easy.
Cheers.
From there, I keep on driving north.
Way north.
To the remote city of Wawa, Ontario.
Population, 2,900,
all of whom appear to have some sort of goose fetish.
They're in restaurants,
-they're in hotels. -[goose honks]
[Josh] Roving gangs of them
-terrorize the parks. -[geese honk]
Then there's this.
This here is the "Wawa Goose".
At 28 feet tall,
it is the largest goose statue in the world.
-[woman] It's not. -What? Seriously?
[woman] There's a bigger one in Missouri.
[Josh] This is the Wava Goose.
It is a large goose statue.
I'm about to go meet the next team of minesweeper hunters
in one of the most remote corners of Canada.
So I make sure to stop at Young's General Store
for a few wilderness essentials,
like genuine maple syrup.
That should do it.
Rule number one of camping in Canada,
stay warm.
Even if it means making some moral compromises.
Remember, fur is murder.
Warm, soft murder.
No, it's murder, it's murder!
But this
feels so good. [laughs]
Oh, and be careful,
Young's General Store does not take shoplifting lightly.
-[metal clangs] -[screams]
Son of a...
Once the swelling in my fingers goes down,
I'm ready to go find the new team that's hunting the minesweepers.
To make things as difficult as possible,
they're staging their search on Michipicoten,
a desolate island 50 miles off-shore from here.
It means I need to trade in my wheels.
I step on board a trustee Cessna Caravan.
Fun fact, in 2022,
a passenger with no flight experience
was able to land one of these
when the pilot became incapacitated.
This guy looks healthy, though.
Okay, Kurt, let's do it.
-[Kurt] How are you doing? -[Josh] Good.
All right, ready to fly?
-Ready to roll, man. -Let's do it.
[engine whirring]
[Josh] On the stick for my trip over the lake
is Canadian Bush pilot, Kurt Brassard.
Look at that, look at this still, beautiful.
We take off toward Michipicoten,
and as the land peels away behind us,
it takes with it the last traces of civilization.
It's not until you get up in the air
that you realize just how remote this place is.
Forget the island,
you look down at the coast,
there's no roads, there's no houses, there's no electricity.
Everything below us is just pure wilderness.
It's a short flight, I don't even get any peanuts.
So the island is really coming in to view now,
and the thing that jumps out at me is
it's really mysterious.
This huge place, it's, like, 17 miles across,
and you got no permanent human population there,
just wild animals,
and according to native legend,
maybe a monster.
The Anishinaabe people of the Canadian First Nations
called the monster Mishipeshu,
a powerful and dangerous god
depicted as an underwater panther.
Legend holds that Mishipeshu could cause dangerous storms,
a reminder that this lake was famously lethal
long before modern minesweepers disappeared here.
The island, blanketed in fog,
rises up as we approach.
If Mishipeshu does live here,
he doesn't get many visitors.
Okay, coming in, here we go.
[engine whirring]
[Josh] Okay, we're down.
We gently touch down in a protected bay
that is, at least so far, free of water panthers.
All right, well, welcome to the middle of nowhere.
A skiff comes out to meet us
and ferries me the rest of the way to Michipicoten,
where, amidst abandoned buildings,
I finally see a familiar face.
-Tom Crossman. -[Tom] Josh Gates, how are ya?
-[Josh] Good to see you, man. How you been? -[Tom] Nice to see you.
-Good, how are you? -[Josh] I'm great.
Search and rescue expert Tom Crossman
is anExpedition Unknown regular by now.
I worked with him, along with his partner Dave Phillips
on two other Great Lakes adventures,
exploring the history of the lost ship,The Griffin,
and investigating the legend of John Dillinger's loot.
But now, he's looking for two minesweepers
in what appears to be the location of a '70s slasher flick.
-This was a, like, a fishing camp? -It was.
-How many buildings are out here? -There's, like, a dozen.
-[Josh] Spooky. You're sleeping out here? -[Tom] Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Why have you dragged me up here?
I mean, we are...
We are very far from the point last seen of these minesweepers.
-We are. -Tell me you found a piece of wreckage.
We did better than that.
We have a body.
What?
-You found a body? -[Tom] Yes.
-What do you mean? -Well, I'll show you what I mean.
[Josh] Search and rescue expert Tom Crossman
has been looking for two French minesweepers
lost in Lake Superior for the last 100 years,
and he may have recently found the clue he needs to locate them.
What is this?
This is a report that was submitted from a lighthouse keeper
here on the island.
[Josh] And this is from
-1919? -[Tom] 1919.
"To whom it may concern,
one Charles McDonald,"
-that's the lighthouse keeper? -[Tom] Yes.
[Josh] "On the 3rd, found a dead man
on the shore of Michipicoten Island,
about two miles west
of Quebec Harbour."
-This is Quebec Harbour? -[Tom] Yes. It is.
So two miles west of here
-is down here? -Yes.
West Sand Bay.
"Upon examination, found that it was
that of a sailor officer off some vessel.
He had on a blue uniform,
with a stripe on each wrist of his coat,
also a red anchor mark
on each side of his coat collar,
brass buttons on which there were marked,
'Equipages de la flotte'."
-In French? -Yes. Correct.
-This guy found a French sailor? -[Tom] Yes.
And if you go to the last page...
-[Josh] Okay. -...there's an example of a button
from a French naval officer from that era.
Get out of here, look at this.
A brass button with an anchor,
and what does it say on the rim?
Equipages de la flotte.
This is incredible!
The report shows that only months
after the disappearance of the two minesweepers,
the body of a French sailor was found here
on Michipicoten.
So this body must have been from the minesweepers.
There's no question.
Where has this document been hiding?
We worked on a tip from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum,
and buried in the archives, we discovered this document.
-Just sitting in there the whole time? -Yes.
For years, there's been rumors that two other French sailors
were found in West Sand Bay in the 1930s.
-Which would mean three bodies found there, total. -[Tom] Correct.
But with this, it feels like this is real.
[Josh] Oh, I mean, no question.
This... This is a guy giving a very detailed, specific report
and describing the uniform in detail.
-So even if all three... -Yeah.
-...of these bodies are from the minesweepers... -[Tom] Yeah.
...dumb question, couldn't they have floated here
from anywhere in Lake Superior?
-Very unlikely... -[Josh] Okay.
...that they would all land in the same bay.
Josh, we have an expression here,
"Lake Superior never gives up her dead."
The reason for that
-is it's so deep and so cold... -[Josh] Yeah.
...that if it's beyond 150 feet,
those bodies are likely not coming back up.
Wow, okay. Because of what, pressure?
Pressure and the cold temperatures.
So we've got these three bodies washing up in one bay.
Maybe that wreck
isn't in deep water out in the middle of Lake Superior,
-maybe it's close by. -That's right.
This completely alters the search zone for this investigation.
-[Tom] It does. -Because this is really
the most compelling piece of evidence
-in this case. -Yes.
[Josh] So,
-how're you gonna find these wrecks? -Come on, I'll show ya.
[Josh] What have you got, Tom?
Tom leads me to a nearby dock
where he has a vessel waiting to hunt the minesweepers.
At the helm is my old friend, David Phillips.
-Josh, you remember Dave. -Hey, how are you, man?
-Great to see you, Josh. -Good to see you as well.
-How you been? -Oh, wonderful.
-[Josh] Shall we do it? -Let's go.
Let's go, come on, man.
Dave pilots us in to the lake,
and I quickly see that no matter what,
we are guaranteed to encounter shipwrecks.
Known wrecks litter the sheltered harbor here,
a testament to how dangerous Lake Superior truly is.
Mishipeshu has certainly been busy over the years.
Let's talk strategy here.
I know your lethal weapon is sonar.
-Absolutely, yes. -[Josh] Right, we got
-our big towfish back here. -Yes.
[Josh] How powerful is this thing?
-[Tom] Really powerful. -Okay.
You can literally look out, um, 3,000 feet per side in that sonar.
-[Josh] Six thousand feet across? -[Tom] Six thousand feet.
-That's insane. -[Tom] It is.
-[Josh] Over a mile in one pass? -Yeah. Yes.
So, let's talk about where you wanna point this thing.
Like, we know these bodies washed up
-on West Sand beach. -[Tom] Yes.
[Josh] Does them washing up give us any forensic clues?
Where do you think the ships could be?
-We're thinking we'll work to the southwest. -[Josh] Okay.
The very wind that night was from the southwest.
The idea being that maybe the wind blew the bodies
-northeast into the bay. -That's exactly right.
-So we go to where the wind was blowing. -That's right.
All right.
-Dave? -Yes, sir?
[Josh] Southwest.
Away we go.
We cruise around the shoreline of Michipicoten
toward the southwestern edge of the island.
It's in this area,
near where the bodies reportedly washed up in 1919,
that Tom hopes the minesweepers might be hiding.
The boat maneuvers into position.
[machine sputtering]
[Josh] Now it's time to deploy the sonar towfish
that will scan for the wrecks.
Okay, keep going out.
It's clear.
-Sonar in the water. -It's in the water.
-[Josh] And we got our image. -[Tom] We do.
Now let's just mow the lawn.
That's it.
The scanning begins,
as the towfish sends us a real time image of the lake bed.
It's a long and tedious process,
one with which I am intimately familiar.
It means a lot of watching
and a lot of waiting.
I don't see anything yet.
[Josh] And then, after hours of scanning,
we get a hit.
-What is that? -What the hell is that?
[Tom] That... That's really interesting.
[Josh] We got a huge shadow here.
[Tom] Look at that.
Holy hell, what is that?
-This looks like something's broken up in here. -[Tom] It does.
-Can you measure the length of that? -Yes.
Hard to say,
it's at least 160.
-Hundred-and-sixty? -Yep.
-Minesweepers are 140-some-odd feet. -Yeah.
-If it's broken up in a debris field... -[Tom] Yeah.
-...that's exactly what it should be. -[Tom] Yeah.
-That looks like a shipwreck. -It absolutely is.
Come on,
-get out of here, look at it! -[chuckles] Look at that!
This is dive-able.
-We're only in 50 feet of water here? -Yes.
-[Josh] We can dive this? -We can dive this.
[Josh] Okay.
We need tanks and we need a dive boat.
Anybody in Wawa?
Yeah, I can make some phone calls.
-Dave, we... Mark that position for us, yeah? -Got it.
[Josh] We've discovered a debris field big enough
to be one of the minesweepers,
and miraculously, it's in water
that's shallow enough for us to dive.
While Tom starts arranging for scuba support,
we return to Michipicoten Island,
where we'll be camping for the night
with temperatures in the low 30s.
On second glance,
this little island paradise isn't just spooky,
it's terrifying.
So, this place is super creepy.
We are literally making our camp on the edge of a ghost town.
There was copper mining here at one point,
which is why a lot of this was built.
But the late 1800s, the mines gave out.
Some local fishermen came in and turned this into kind of a fishing camp.
But other than that,
these buildings are just abandoned and rotting here,
and the whole place has a really ghostly vibe.
The buildings are in various stages of decomposition,
both outside and in.
It's enough to let a person's imagination run away with them.
I unfortunately have read
every novel that Stephen King has ever written.
So I will not be sleeping tonight.
But that's fine.
[crickets chirping]
[Josh exhales sharply]
I had this terrible nightmare that I was
sleeping in an abandoned village on a remote island
guarded by a mythical sea creature.
Oh, right.
Okay.
Look at this, it is beautiful.
And absolutely freezing!
[exhales sharply]
We're in Canada.
Is there a Timmy Hortons here?
Some coffee?
There is no coffee.
There is, however, dive support,
which has just arrived from the mainland.
We're finally going to be able to dive
on the anomaly we found yesterday.
We race back out to the coordinates where we got the sonar hit.
For much of the year,
the water temperature here hovers just above freezing.
So my underwater camera operator and I
gear up for a dive into the frigid
and turbulent depths of the lake.
Tom will stay top-side to guide me.
The wait is over.
Let's see what's down there.
[Josh speaking]
What kind of visibility do you have?
[Josh speaking]
[Josh] Crossing into Canada is easy.
That is if you can ever reach the border.
Okay.
They've one lane open.
It's a good start.
The country that gave us John Candy,
Martin Short, Eugene Levy
can't give me a second guy
working this checkpoint? What?
Where... Where are they? Where is everybody?
This is what happens when you legalize weed
and give away Viagra at discount prices.
Nobody comes to work.
It's also a national holiday today probably.
Maple Syrup Remembrance Day.
Once hockey season starts,
nothing gets done.
Oh, my God, it's barely moving.
For the love of Ryan Gosling,
come on!
Shouldn't this border just be some guy
on a horse and a funny hat?
This is how it ends.
On a bridge,
halfway to Canada.
Tell you one thing,
Justin Trudeau's office
is gonna get a very strongly-worded email from me.
[Josh] I'm in the middle of Lake Superior,
diving dangerous waters
for the wrecks of two World War I minesweepers.
So far, so good.
[Tom speaking]
Are you seeing, is there, uh, metal or is it just wood?
[Josh speaking]
[Tom speaking]
Pretty busted up.
[Josh speaking]
[Tom speaking]
There should be one on the stern and one on the bow.
[Josh speaking]
You know, of course, we're looking for something
that's 140 feet long.
[Josh speaking]
[Tom speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Tom speaking]
[Josh speaking]
With the wreck's coordinates recorded,
I return to the surface to review with Tom.
Whoo!
Oh, man, what a wreck.
Absolutely beautiful.
-Not our minesweeper, but... -Yeah.
[Josh] ...a beauty of a wreck.
Massive boilers,
machinery everywhere, I mean, just stunning.
-[Tom] Wow, beautiful. -Absolutely stunning wreck.
If it would've been the minesweepers,
-you would've seen those big guns. -[Josh] Yeah.
You know what, man? Those minesweepers are out here, though.
-[Tom] Yeah. -Don't stop looking for 'em.
[Tom] No, we won't.
-I'm not gonna give up. -[Josh] Good.
-Nothing's gonna hide from that sonar forever. -[Tom] That's right.
-You'll find 'em. -[Tom] Yes.
-You wanna get warm? -[Josh] Yeah, let's get out of here.
Let's do this.
The next day, I return to the mainland,
still buzzing with excitement
at having dived on such a magnificent shipwreck.
Tom's research uncovers
that the boat we dived on is a seldom seen vessel
recorded by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Society.
It isThe Chicago,
a 325-foot package freighter
that became stranded on the rocks off Michipicoten
in October of 1929,
and then slipped into deeper waters, where she broke apart.
Due to its remote location,
The Chicago has been visited by very few divers.
A sadly faded chapter
from the long, tragic maritime history
of the greatest Great Lake.
Largely forgotten,
until now.
But, of course,The Chicago wasn't the only wreck
seen on this expedition.
And the other vessel
was a genuinely uncatalogued anomaly.
The ship Darryl and I found with the ROV
is a brand-new discovery.
Using the footage that we took,
the vessel has now been positively IDed
asThe Satellite,
a tugboat that went down in 1879.
We just solved a 150-year-old mystery,
and I'm even happier to report
that records indicate the crew ofThe Satellite survived.
The 79 men aboard theInkerman andCerisoles
were not so lucky.
They lie not alongside their comrades
in a field of poppies,
but in the deep waters of a country that was not their own,
and there they stay.
For now.
Lake Superior may not give up her dead,
but she has given us an incredible new discovery,
a hopeful sign that makes me even more convinced
that one day, one day soon,
the minesweepers will be found.