The Almanac · Shipwrecks
Great Lakes Shipwrecks
219 wrecks with a documented history, from 1679 to 1989. Schooners, package freighters, whalebacks and thousand-ton ore boats, each with the record of what she was and how she was lost. 164 wreck sites are charted.
Wrecks
219
Sites charted
164
National Register
55
Lakes
5
By lake
Five lakes, five wreck fields
Lake Superior
59 charted · 29 on the National Register
Lake Michigan
45 charted · 22 on the National Register
Lake Huron
40 charted · 3 on the National Register
Lake Erie
11 charted · 1 on the National Register
Lake Ontario
9 charted · 0 on the National Register
Lake St. Clair has no wreck with a documented record in our source yet.
The one everyone knows
SS Edmund Fitzgerald
Lost with all 29 crew on Lake Superior on 10 November 1975, seventeen miles from the shelter of Whitefish Bay. She is the largest ship ever lost on the lakes and the last great loss most people can name. Her bell, raised in 1995, hangs in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point.
- Length
- 729 ft
- Built
- 1958
- Lost
- 1975
The toll by decade
When the lakes took them
Every wreck in this directory with a year of loss. Traffic peaked when the fleet was still wood and sail and there was no forecast worth the name; the bars follow.
Earlier: Le Griffon (1679), HMS Ontario (1780).
How they were lost
Five ways down
- Foundered 124
- Went down in open water: swamped, holed, broken up by the sea, or simply lost.
- Collision 38
- Sunk after striking or being struck by another vessel.
- Fire 15
- Burned, then sank or was abandoned as a hulk.
- Stranded 9
- Driven ashore or onto a reef or shoal and pounded apart.
- Scuttled 1
- Sunk on purpose, usually as a hulk, a breakwater or a dive site.
Counted only where the record says so in plain words. The rest stand as written on each page.
November 7–10, 1913
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913
Two weather systems met over the lakes and held for four days. Winds ran past hurricane force, seas built to thirty-five feet, and snow cut visibility to nothing. When it cleared, more than 250 sailors were dead and 19 ships had been destroyed, the worst of it on Lake Huron. Several were never found; one, the Charles S. Price, was found floating upside down.
The 9 storm losses below have a documented record in this directory.
- SS Charles S. PriceHuron
- SS Isaac M. ScottHuron
- SS James CarruthersHuron
- SS John A. McGeanHuron
- SS ReginaHuron
- SS WexfordHuron
- PlymouthMichigan · site unpublished
- SS Henry B. SmithSuperior
- SS LeafieldSuperior · site unpublished
Before you go
Visiting a Great Lakes wreck
Fresh water has no shipworm and the deep water stays cold, so wooden hulls a century and a half old still stand with masts up. That is what draws divers, and it is why the rules are strict. Why Lake Huron keeps its wrecks goes deeper.
Look, don't take
Abandoned wrecks in U.S. state waters belong to the state under the federal Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987, and the Great Lakes states forbid removing artifacts or disturbing a wreck without a permit. Ontario protects its wrecks under its own heritage law. Photographs only. Many wrecks are also graves.
Where to see them without a dry suit
Glass-bottom boat tours run in summer out of Alpena, in NOAA's Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and out of Munising on Lake Superior. Some shallow wrecks in Thunder Bay can be seen from a kayak on a calm, clear day. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point holds the Edmund Fitzgerald's bell. NOAA's Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary covers the Lake Michigan shore from Port Washington to Two Rivers.
Diving them
Most charted wrecks sit in water that stays in the 30s and 40s °F at depth all summer, with visibility that changes by the day. Treat them as cold-water technical dives, use the mooring buoys where a sanctuary or preserve sets them rather than anchoring into the wreck, and check the rules of the park, sanctuary or preserve before you go. The positions on these pages are the published ones, not survey-grade; charts here are not for navigation.
About this directory
The list is every article in English Wikipedia's “Shipwrecks of Lake …” categories that describes a single vessel and carries a ship infobox, 219 in all, retrieved 2026-10-11. We print the infobox fields as recorded and link each wreck to its article for the full history and sources. Wreck positions are the ones published with the article and are kept only if they fall in or beside the right lake. The lakes hold thousands more losses than this; these are the ones with a documented record. Something wrong or missing? Write to contact@greatamericanlakes.com.