West Michigan Underwater Preserve would feature Lake Michigan shipwrecks
April 21, 08 by TheFleetIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
by By Eric Gaertner | Source: Gazette News Service/mlive.com
About 8,000 ships have become wrecked in the Great Lakes, according to researchers, and the cold, fresh water keeps them better preserved than those found in oceans.
In West Michigan, the shipwrecks mainly came from the local traffic of lumber schooners or small passenger steamers and vessels in transit from Milwaukee or Chicago to the Straits of Mackinac, shipwreck historian and researcher Brendon Baillod said.
“Storms would tend to blow vessels ashore on the area’s stretch of beach,” Baillod said.
All of these shipwrecks could be part of a proposed underwater preserve, if a local group is successful in its attempt to get the area established as the West Michigan Underwater Preserve. There are 11 such preserves in Michigan.
A West Michigan preserve, if approved, would extend from a point between Grand Haven and Holland north to Pentwater.
