[music]
NARRATOR: Chicago,
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Shamelessly ambitious totally uncompromising.
a giant machine, for satisfying appetites.
And making Money.
DONALD: Growth is God in Chicago.
This thing ain't ever going to stop.
NARRATOR: Exploding out of nowhere in the mid-19th century
Chicago owes its success to its location right on the shore of Lake Michigan,
America's original superhighway.
DONALD: No one thinks of Chicago as a maritime city,
but if you don't have the lake you don't have Chicago.
NARRATOR: Hidden in this vast body of water the secret history
of a remarkable city
Tragic wrecks.
NARRATOR: and mysterious structures.
What can draining Lake Michigan, tell us
about the extraordinary risks engineering marvels
and superhuman endeavour.
That create an American icon?
1860, and Chicago is booming.
It's all thanks to its location at America's sweet-spot,
where the Great Lakes meet the waterways that stretch across the country
and down to the Gulf of Mexico.
Lake Michigan is teeming with ships.
Packed with goods and people including ever expanding numbers
of commercial travellers, who rely upon transport across the Lake.
What can some tangled wreckage on the lakebed reveal about boom time
Chicago where success comes with a side order of risk?
A survey team, led by maritime archaeologist Mallory Haas,
is heading out onto the lake to take a look.
They're aiming for an area 16 miles north of the city:
the last known location of a luxury paddle steamer the Lady Elgin.
Known as the 'Queen of the Lakes', she's popular with Chicago's business travellers,
thanks to her reputation as one of the fastest ships on the Lake.
She sails from Chicago on the evening of September 7th, 1860,
heading back to Milwaukee.
VALERIE: So many of the excursionists had had a long day,
they looked forward to returning home to Milwaukee, to business.
This was supposed to be just an overnight trip.
NARRATOR: But less than halfway into her journey
she sinks with 400 passengers on board.
It's one of the worst maritime disasters in American History.
So what happens?
Mallory and her team are looking for clues.
MALLORY: I'm hoping we'll be able to find some material that's easily identifiable.
Parts of the ship structure maybe and even some personal items.
NARRATOR: Fragments of the Lady Elgin were first discovered
by diver Harry Zych in 1989.
Today the expedition is using sonar to scan the entire site.
MALLORY: Uh hah. Oh, oh, oh.
Can we have a closer look at this?
That to me looks like an anchor.
REGAN: Right now it's just an anomaly that matches the parameters of our target.
MALLORY: This is really exciting.
NARRATOR: This should be the wreck but to make certain they need to dive.
The waters of Lake Michigan are notoriously cold.
Ideal for the preservation of shipwrecks but Mallory must wear a dry suit
to cope with the freezing conditions.
As she descends, she spots a snakelike trail of what looks like a rope or chain.
NARRATOR: It leads her to a dramatic sight
the remnants of the Lady Elgin.
NARRATOR: Just a few feet away, the Lady Elgin's anchor upright on the lakebed.
And now by draining away the waters of Lake Michigan we can see it in perfect detail.
1.3 Quadrillion gallons of lake water. Icy cold and crystal clear, drains away.
For the first time in 160 years the Queen of the Lakes emerges into the daylight
Her anchor chain is firmly snagged around a boulder.
Lying on the sand is a remarkably well-preserved wooden structure
but careful examination reveals that this is the bow section only.
So where is the rest of the ship?
The team sets out to find more.
MALLORY: This is an ongoing search.
I would love to know where all of the material from the shipwreck is.
NARRATOR: Scanning expert Regan Lipinski widens the search,
exploring ever further from the main wreck site.
Nearly a mile away he detects something new.
REGAN: I can see a lot of debris that appears to be man-made.
We are seeing a kind of jigsaw puzzle of pieces.
NARRATOR: The drained lakebed is strewn with numerous wooden
and metal fragments from all parts of the ship.
And poignant glimpses into daily life on board.
A hand-truck used to load cargo A washbasin,
And one of the distinctive chandeliers from the Lady Elgin's saloon
REGAN: When I see these different pieces,
it looks like the ship was falling apart as it was moving through the water.
NARRATOR: Analysis of the wreck reveals that the Lady Elgin suffers massive damage.
But her bow section sits nearly a mile away,
having come to a stop when the anchor chain became snagged.
What's still missing, is any clue to what causes her to go down.
Then, as they follow the debris trail a new and unexpected discovery.
REGAN: Alright, so we have something here. MALLORY: Okay.
REGAN: Now we definitely have a manmade structure here.
MALLORY: Yes.
REGAN: If we zoom in on them, we can see it looks like it's cylindrical.
MALLORY: Yes, it does.
NARRATOR: What they find stands out clearly on the drained lakebed
The Lady Elgin's distinctive 25 foot boilers.
Importantly they're intact with only minor damage.
So, although many steamships of this era are destroyed
by boiler explosions. Lady Elgin clearly wasn't one of them.
Still hunting for an answer, the team turns to the historical archives.
Historian Valerie Van Heest studies newspapers from September 1860
and discovers some important information.
VALERIE: We know from survivor accounts that the seas were building
all through that journey.
[lightening sound]
The weather here on the Great Lakes can change on a dime.
This is a dangerous body of water.
NARRATOR: And eyewitness statements reveal
that bad weather's not the only problem:
at 2.20 in the morning the captain of the Lady Elgin spies the light
of another vessel heading straight towards them.
VALERIE: Both ships were on a collision course for each other.
NARRATOR: Combining data from scanning Lake Michigan with historical research,
the archaeological team can now piece together the final journey of the Lady Elgin.
It's 11pm on the 7th September 1860 and the notoriously
unpredictable Lake Michigan weather is going from bad to worse.
The Lady Elgin's experienced Captain, Jack Wilson,
considers delaying his departure
But according to newspaper reports he's under pressure from his passengers.
They have businesses to attend to, and meetings the next day.
VALERIE: They encourage Captain Wilson to speed on ahead
and against his better judgement he headed into the open waters
of the lake and into a wild storm of unbelievable proportions.
NARRATOR: 16 miles out on the lake, with visibility getting worse by the minute
the crew suddenly spies another ship sailing towards them:
a lumber carrying schooner called the Augusta.
Eyewitness reports show that the two Captains try to take evasive action
but it's too late. Augusta's jib boom punctures the Lady Elgin's hull like a bayonet.
VALERIE: There were screams as people realised that the Lady Elgin would go down.
And back then people didn't know how to swim.
Drowning was an imminent peril for so many of these people.
NARRATOR: The two ships are tossed apart, but the Lady Elgin has been ripped open.
People and their belongings spill into the lake as she fills with water.
Then the ship's boilers crash through the bottom of the hull.
She's fatally wounded, breaking apart but the bow section remains afloat
blowing south for a quarter of a mile before her trailing anchor chain
catches on a boulder.
It's here that the Queen of the Lakes finally sinks to the bottom.
VALERIE: The real tragedy here is so many people survived the night.
They reached near shore only to encounter the pounding surf where they lost their lives.
NARRATOR: 300 lives are lost.
It's one of the worst ever tragedies on the Great Lakes.
In the aftermath, fingers are pointed at the captains of both ships,
but blame is shared with the businessmen and women
who urge the Captain to sail into the building storm.
VALERIE: Time was money and they took risks that they shouldn't have taken.
NARRATOR: In Chicago nothing is allowed to get in the way of progress and making money.
What can a strange underwater structure in the Lake tell us
about an ingenious plan to overcome a deadly threat to the city's success?
Author, Ben Sells, is investigating an unusual building
3 and a-half miles out from the Chicago shoreline.
BEN: I mean, you look at it it's hard to know what it is.
It almost looks like somebody could live in it, but you never see anybody there.
There's a lighthouse there's a horn and now all that's there are the birds.
And it's just this mysterious enigma all alone out here on the lake
and yet so beautiful. It makes you wonder what it could possibly be.
NARRATOR: It's clearly much more than a lighthouse
and it doesn't have the battlements associated with a military fort.
What is this strange cathedral like structure?
And what can peeling back the waters of Lake Michigan reveal
the true role of this mysterious building?
As the Lake water spirals away it exposes a massive column reaching
38 feet below the waterline.
A steel frame filled with 24,000 tons of concrete weighing it securely
to the bottom of the lake.
Inside a large pipe that disappears underground.
The construction techniques clearly date the building to the 19th century.
This is a boom time for Chicago but a dangerous one too.
In the 1850s, thousands of immigrants arrive in the city every month.
By 1860, there are more than a hundred thousand people living here.
DONALD: They had more Germans in Chicago than they had in Hamburg,
there's more Jews than in Jerusalem, more Irish than are in Dublin.
NARRATOR: And they use the lake on their doorstep
with little thought for the consequences.
DONALD: Chicago stunk to high hell; it really did.
There was no control over the pollution from the factories,
although the biggest pollution was the water pollution.
NARRATOR: Chicago dumps all its sewage and industrial waste straight into its river
from where it flows directly into Lake Michigan.
The city's only supply of drinking water.
It's a recipe for disaster:
A single cholera outbreak in 1854
kills more than 1 in 50 of the city's population.
DONALD: You're healthy at breakfast and you're dead by dinner.
It's like somebody hitting you in the back with an axe.
Chicago became, by the 1850s, almost uninhabitable.
NARRATOR: To learn more about how the early city fathers solve this problem,
Ben Sells turns to historic maps of the lakeshore from the city archive.
BEN: What you can see is tunnel after tunnel,
almost like arteries coming from the lake to shore and the question is,
what were they feeding, what were they for?
NARRATOR: Removing the earth from the drained lakebed uncovers
this series of tunnels.
And exploration of the oldest of these structures exposes a brick-lined shaft
almost tall enough to walk through.
It runs all the way back to the shore, and it doesn't stop there.
The tunnel continues straight on into the heart of the city,
finally emerging on downtown Chicago's main artery,
Michigan Avenue from where it runs directly to this grand stone building.
So, what is it for?
NARRATOR: Author, Ben Sells is investigating an extraordinary tunnel
under Lake Michigan
and City records reveal that it is designed by one of Chicago's forgotten
heroes: engineering genius Ellis Chesbrough.
The blueprints of Chesbrough's system
make its purpose crystal clear
Pumping clean water into the city.
Several engineering wonders are interconnected in Chesbrough's ingenious system
The ornate downtown building is a massive pumping station,
sucking water in through the 2 mile long tunnel.
And the circular fort out on the lake turns out to be a 'crib',
a giant reinforced structure housing and protecting a huge intake pipe.
Chesbrough's plan is to bring in fresh, clean water from the middle of the lake
far away from Chicago's lakeshore pollution.
Nothing like this has ever been built before in America.
When completed this awe-inspiring structure has a capacity to pump
10 million gallons of fresh water a day into the city.
BEN: Without Ellis Chesbrough's vision, without his courage,
it's hard to imagine that we would have seen the growth
and that we would have the Chicago that we have today.
NARRATOR: Chesbrough solves the city's clean water crisis
but that's only half of his achievement.
Chicago is drowning in dirt and disease,
and desperately needs a new sewer system but there's a problem.
The city is only 2 feet above water level there's not a steep enough gradient
to drain the waste away.
Chesbrough's radical solution is to create the gradient
by building the sewers above ground.
Then to make it work Chesbrough comes up with a mind-blowing plan
to raise an entire city, every street and every building.
DONALD: I'm talking about fire hydrants, street lights, hotels, houses, the works.
They would dig under these hotels and they would put these platforms
underneath it and you get these jacks, maybe 600 guys
and then each person would turn the screw a little like this,
eek, goes up an eighth of an inch, eek, eek, eek till it's 12 feet high.
NARRATOR: A massive section of city block measuring 320 feet long
and weighing 35,000 tons is raised in one go.
It takes 600 men and 6000 jackscrews to get the job done.
Raising the city out of the mud, installing a modern sewer system
and providing clean water turns Chicago into a modern metropolis,
and a wonder of the age.
By the dawn of the 20th century, it's become the fifth largest city
in the world home to two million people.
But in a city growing so fast, not everyone can keep up.
What does this wreck of an ageing sailboat reveal about the struggle
to keep pace with change in the early 20th century?
Maritime archaeologist, Tamara Thomsen,
is setting out to investigate the wreck of the Rouse Simmons.
She's a schooner that spends 44 years transporting grain
and timber up and down the lake.
But in November 1912, she goes down along with her entire crew.
The wreck location is already known to local divers,
so Tamara and her team head straight there.
Diving to a depth of 170 feet they come face to face with an awe-inspiring sight.
TAMARA: When I dropped down it, it's, it's beautiful.
It's absolutely intact so it looks almost like something Walt Disney
would put there in a shipwreck film.
NARRATOR: Invasive species of mussels coat the ship's timbers.
Billions of these filter-feeding creatures are responsible
for the extraordinary clarity of the Lake water even at these great depths.
But by covering every available surface of the wreck,
the mussels also mask many of the ship's details.
Using the latest sonar analysis it's now possible to drain the lake,
clear away the mussel shells and reveal the secrets of the Rouse Simmons.
As the waters recede the ship's hull emerges almost completely intact.
But strewn along the base of the ship
there's something odd Hundreds and hundreds of sticks.
Close analysis shows them to be the remnants of small fir trees
The nature of the remains discovered on the ship,
combined with the significance of the late November date,
can mean only one thing.
The Rouse Simmons must be carrying Christmas trees!
Researching in the archives Tamara makes a discovery.
Every November when similar ships are safely moored up
for the winter the Rouse Simmons is still on the lake.
Her captain, Herman Scheunemann, makes his last journey of the year
bringing fir trees from the far north of Lake Michigan
down to the city Just in time for Christmas.
PROF KARAMANSKI: The Rouse Simmons would come in, sometimes caked in ice,
literally like a floating iceberg but at the top of her top mast
would be tied a Christmas tree and that was a signal
to people in the city that she'd be open for business
and the holidays could begin.
NARRATOR: Scheunemann even earns himself the nickname 'Captain Santa',
thanks to his generosity, giving free trees to poor families.
But in November 1912 all is not well.
As Tamara digs further into the records, she unearths a very significant document.
TAMARA: One of the important discoveries that we found was the bankruptcy
proceedings of Herman Scheunemann so,
it was very important for him in 1912 to be profitable.
NARRATOR: Could this explain the fate of the Rouse Simmons?
NARRATOR: Evidence from the drained wreck of The Rouse Simmons,
reveals that many of her deck planks are dislodged or missing.
The ship's remaining deck beams have V-shaped channels
grouted across their length
It's a vital clue.
Studying images from the dive Tamara realizes that the strange grooves
must be salt channels a 19th century technique intended
to protect the ship's timbers.
TAMARA: So, by laying these salt channels down they thought
that this would preserve the wood
and extend the longevity of the ship
but in fact what it did was break down the iron fasteners
that they were using to attach the decking
NARRATOR Over time, the salt completely corrodes the metal fasteners,
allowing deck planks to work loose.
Which could be why many of them are missing from the ship
and may well have been lost before she set sail on her final voyage.
The nearly bankrupt Captain Scheunemann appears
to be cutting corners on maintenance.
But while the missing planks would certainly weaken the ship,
are they enough on their own to cause her to sink?
Exploring the fore deck area, the team makes another discovery.
A coil of heavy anchor chain lying at the front of the boat.
And underneath the ship's bow, a large impact mark in the sand
It's critical evidence this vessel hits the lake-bed nose first.
Now, by combining all of this detail, Tamara can piece together
what happens on the Rouse Simmons' final, ill-fated voyage
She set sail from Thompson, Michigan.
Her hold and deck crammed with 10,000 trees,
more than she's ever carried before.
Eyewitnesses comment on the excessive load
saying she looks like 'A Floating forest'.
The following afternoon 120 miles further to the south,
the weather takes a turn for the worse, and the overladen ship gets into distress.
As the storm grows in strength, a huge wave smashes down on her foredeck.
The missing deck planks mean she's soon swamped
and the heavy anchor and chain only make make things worse.
Their weight forces her prow underwater and the rest of the ship follows.
It's the likeliest explanation
for the ship's tragic descent to the bottom of the lake.
TAMARA: We know from the reports of the lifesaving station
that they saw the vessel coming south on the lake just before
3 o'clock and that she had been flying an American flag upside down
from her main mast which was a sign of distress.
NARRATOR: A lifeboat races to help but too late.
TAMARA: They saw no sign of the Rouse Simmons
and they saw no sign of wreckage on the surface.
NARRATOR: It's only when Christmas trees start washing ashore along the lake
that the crew's families begin to fear the worst.
Captain Scheunemann's debt-driven gamble sailing dangerously
late in the season in his overloaded
and badly maintained ship ends in tragedy.
There are no survivors.
And this is no isolated incident.
The storms that blow up out of nowhere on the Great Lakes take over 200 ships
and over 1,300 lives in the decade following the Christmas tree disaster.
Scheunemann is clearly not the only Chicagoan running risks to turn a profit
DONALD: Chicago is all about risk.
Failure doesn't bother people, it seems, in this town.
They risk things, they fail,
they come back and smack at it again.
NARRATOR: Never is this combination of enterprise
and risk-taking more evident than in time of war.
December 1941 and the USA is dramatically drawn into World War Two.
For Chicago, America's industrial powerhouse, this presents a huge opportunity.
DONALD: Wars have always been good for Chicago.
Chicago made everything from toothbrushes to harvesters
and almost everything that was needed by the army is made in Chicago.
NARRATOR: But this is not the city's only wartime contribution.
What can draining a mysterious wreck in the lake reveal
about how Chicago helps America prepare
for a totally new kind of warfare?
Maritime archaeologists from the US Navy,
working alongside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
are surveying an area of Lake Michigan.
They're in search of Chicago's wartime secrets.
The team uses the latest scanning technology to scour the lakebed.
After several days of painstaking work,
they pinpoint an object of interest and send a dive team down for a closer look.
DR NEYLAND: Well we've got 2 divers down looking at a possible wreck.
We don't know for sure what it is, but it's definitely manmade,
it's really exciting.
NARRATOR: Around 100 feet down, the divers discover not a boat, but an aircraft.
The plane has at least two seats.
The fuselage has completely disappeared, but the wings are still perfectly intact.
It's an intriguing discovery but it's far from clear what type of plane this is
or what it's doing here.
Peeling back the waters, and draining Lake Michigan offer a better view
The full outline of a square-winged aircraft
becomes visible on the lakebed.
Using CGI to remove silt below the wings, uncovers a surprise.
The undercarriage has been engaged this plane appears
to be trying to land in the middle of the lake.
Why would it do this?
NARRATOR: Divers have discovered the wreck of an aircraft which appears
to have been trying to land in the middle of Lake Michigan.
Extraordinary US Navy footage from World War Two may shed light on this mystery.
It shows military aircraft training to land on aircraft carriers
on the waters of Lake Michigan.
But why train here, so far from the ocean?
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the US realizes that war in the Pacific
can only be won from the air.
Aircraft carriers will be the decisive weapon.
There's an urgent need for specially trained pilots
DR DELGADO: Now you can train men in airfields around the country
but what you're not able to train them in is something essential
particularly for the Pacific War and that's flying
off of and landing on an aircraft carrier.
NARRATOR: Safe from enemy attack, and with its massive lake,
Chicago is the perfect place to practice carrier landings.
But in 1942, America has only 7 carriers in commission and all are needed in combat.
So what's the answer?
Historical research into the US Navy archives reveals
an ingenious solution devised by Chicago engineers.
DR DELGADO: So what is decided is to take 2 steamers in the Great Lakes,
cut 'em down, put flight decks on them and turn them into aircraft carriers,
far away from the theatre of war.
NARRATOR: The navy gives the shipyards 120 days to deliver and in true Chicago
spirit the first ship is ready in just 59.
These 'steamer carriers' relaunch as the USS Wolverine and the USS Sable.
So what are the aircraft that train on these carriers
and why has this one crashed into the lake?
Careful analysis of the design details of the wreck enables
the team to close in on an identification.
The plane's cockpit is positioned distinctively
close to the front of the aircraft.
The final clue is the tell-tale aerodynamic design of the turret.
There's no doubt: this is a Grumman Avenger.
DR DELGADO: This big aircraft is a US Navy TBM Avenger of World War II.
These carrier based aircraft were used in large numbers in the Pacific War.
These craft in particular were designed to drop out of the sky, launch a torpedo,
and send it into the side of an enemy ship.
NARRATOR: With its long range and large bomb payload,
the Avenger plays a vital role in the destruction of the Japanese navy.
But landing an Avenger is no mean feat: pilots say it's like flying a truck.
DR DELGADO: Not every pilot can take off and land
on a tiny little piece of a ship out in the middle of the ocean
DR TROIANI: So it's a lot of coordination,
and a lot of calculation in your head, to make that landing on a postage stamp.
In a typical day, you would maybe have 100 pilots training.
It was constant.
As soon as that sun came out, pilots were landing and taking off.
NARRATOR: For the rookie pilot there are many challenges judging
the strength of a headwind and the speed of the carrier.
Vital for a successful landing is the pilot's ability to deploy
the tail hook, catching the cable on the carrier deck to bring the plane to a halt.
DR TROIANI: Catching that wire was critical, because if you missed a wire,
your aircraft was not going to stop,
and that's like going from 80 miles an hour to a complete stop.
NARRATOR: Not every attempt at landing is successful
The wartime evidence, and data from the drained wreck
proves this must be one of the casualties
of the World War Two training programme.
Further scanning of the lake by the naval search team
reveals that the drained Avenger is not alone.
ARCHAEOLOGIST: As you can see here pretty well preserved.
It's extraordinary Yeah pretty much intact.
NARRATOR: Second World War records show that between 1942 and 1945,
eight trainee pilots are lost on Lake Michigan
and more than 120 aircraft disappear beneath the water.
Fighter planes, dive bombers And 36 Avengers.
The identity and fate of the wrecked aircraft are now clear
but the identity of the pilot who crashed into the lake remains unknown.
It's a powerful reminder of a vital episode in the story of America's war
in the Pacific, and testimony to the courage
and innovation of the men who served and trained on Chicago's lake.
Today, Lake Michigan is busier than ever.
Now, it's mostly pleasure boats bought with the riches that Chicago has created.
Rail, road and air transport have largely replaced the water-borne
freight of the city's Golden Age.
But the story of that great era still lies
safely preserved in the ice-cold waters of the lake.
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