When Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates (MSRA), nationally acclaimed author Clive Cussler, and his organization the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), teamed up to search for Northwest Flight 2501, a DC-4 airliner that crashed on Lake Michigan in 1950, they made a surprising discovery. In 160 feet of water eight miles off South Haven lay the remains of a huge steel ship seemingly impaled into the lake bottom. Two immense props flanking the rudder at the stern seemed suspended in the water column.
After several dives on the newly discovered site, MSRA was able to determine that the wreck had been a car ferry used to transport railroad cars across Lake Michigan. The problem with that conclusion was that the only car ferry used in that region of the lake had been cut up and scrapped after outliving its' usefulness. No other car ferries were reported lost in that vicinity.
Just how this vessel, the Ann Arbor No 5, ended up embedded on the lake bottom of after ferrying rail cars across Lake Michigan for six decades proved as much a mystery as the plane crash itself.
Join MSRA as they dive the wreck, revisit the magnificent history of railroad car ferry service on the Great Lakes, and ultimately meet the man who was on the Ann Arbor No 5 when it sank!
This program will be presented by Valerie Van Heest.
We hope to see you there next year, The Ford Seahorses.