WHITEHALL — Author and self-described shipwreck hunter Ross Richardson is a big fan of Lake Michigan maritime history and maritime mystery. He even has a website - michiganmysteries.com - dedicated to shipwrecks, both discovered and undiscovered.
Wednesday night, March 19, he presented some findings to an eager audience at White Lake Community Library, one of dozens of libraries in the state he's visited over the years (including Montague a few years ago).
Included in that presentation was some firsthand exploring he did with the founder of Mammoth Distilling, Chad Munger, and his chief whiskey maker Ari Sussman at the wreck of the James R. Bentley ship, which sank in Lake Huron in 1878. The ship went down with a healthy amount of grain on board, and the trio was able to retrieve much of it. (State law generally prohibits retrieving items from shipwrecks, but the Bentley, according to a 2024 MLive article, is privately owned and not bound by that law.) The distillers are working to plant the grain and infuse their whiskey with a deep bit of Michigan history. The 'shipwreck whiskey' is even available for pre-order on Mammoth's website - for over $500 a bottle.
However, Richardson's diving hasn't been limited to commercial opportunities. He shared a video of his dive to the wreck of the Westmoreland, which sank in 1854 and wasn't found for over a century and a half - until Richardson came across it in 2010 after researching the wreck. After years of jumping through regulatory hoops, he was able to explore the wreck on a dive in 2020. (He wrote a book about it - The Search for the Westmoreland.)
He discussed a number of other shipwrecks, including the Western Reserve and the Gilcher, sister ships that went down in the late 19th century, both believed to be caused by fatigue to the metal used in their construction. The Gilcher, which disappeared in the Manitou Passage near the Sleeping Bear Dunes, has never been found.
Richardson is also fascinated with missing planes in Michigan history. Among other mystery flights, he discussed a Cessna flown by John and Jean Block on the Fourth of July, 1977, that went down on a flight from Detroit to Luzerne (in northeast Michigan) and has never been found, despite never going over a large body of water and despite near-ideal flying conditions that day. Other planes that have disappeared have been uncovered over the years - and are still there in many cases, having crashed into deep forests from which retrieval is impractical.
In all, Richardson said, over 6,000 shipwrecks exist in the Great Lakes, many of them still undiscovered. However, he shared that due to improvements in technology, discoveries have become more and more common. It helps, ironically, that an invasive species of mussel called the quagga mussel has become insanely common in the Great Lakes - Richardson said scientists estimate over a trillion are in the lakes. While the mussels are an issue for many environmental reasons - their rapid water filtration removes plankton that serves as food supply for fish - a byproduct of the filtration is that deep water visibility is quite good in the lakes, facilitating some shipwreck discoveries. He's hopeful that as time goes on, many of the mysteries chronicled on his website will be solved.
