LEILA FADEL, HOST:
One of the secrets of the Great Lakes has been uncovered - a ship that sank more than a century ago in Lake Huron.
BRENDON BAILLOD: The James Carruthers is one of a small handful of Holy Grail shipwrecks on the Great Lakes.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Brendon Baillod is president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association.
BAILLOD: It was the largest ship still missing on the Great Lakes. It was less than six months old, I think, when it was lost. They say the paint in the state rooms was still tacky when the crew boarded it for its last voyage.
FADEL: He says, back then, the Great Lakes were an industrial highway dense with ships. He's made a list of about 800 still missing there. There aren't many in Lake Huron.
BAILLOD: Lake Huron has fewer because of one reason - Dave Trotter.
DAVID TROTTER: I'm David Trotter, and I am retired from Ford Motor Company.
MARTIN: For 45 years, Trotter has hunted shipwrecks and found nearly 100.
TROTTER: Because I work at it, put it bluntly. I work very hard at it along with a good team of people.
MARTIN: Every spring, the 84-year-old scans the bottom of Lake Huron with long-range sonar.
FADEL: This year, Trotter and his crew found the James Carruthers, more than 500 feet long, belly up in the lake bed.
TROTTER: When I measured the length, I knew we had it and I was really excited about the situation. We realized it was the last of the missing freighters from the Great Storm in 1913.
FADEL: Also known as the White Hurricane, a whiteout blizzard with hurricane-force winds.
MARTIN: The ship was loaded with wheat, and Trotter says it probably became top heavy with ice from the storm and rolled over.
TROTTER: The wheat itself is still contained inside the hull, and it has a very peculiar orange color around the shipwreck as it ferments.
FADEL: Twenty-two people died with the ship. Trotter says every wreck tells a story about the rigors of life at sea.
TROTTER: Really, it's a chance to swim back and touch history, to see history, to find it for the first time and be able to understand what happened to the ship in her last moments.
FADEL: He plans to make a short film about the James Carruthers. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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