Nellie Lyon

[Tiny Bubbles]

Does good news travel slow, or what? The wreck of a ~150' wood steamer, believed to be the sandsucker Nellie Lyon, was found in Clay Twp., Michigan, last year. The Nellie Lyon caught fire and sunk in the area in 1911. The discovery has been announced in an August 2005 US Fish & Wildlife publication about lake sturgeon, but I still haven't seen any discussion about it anywhere on the net.

More Shipwrecks found During Side-Scan Sonar Work in the North Channel of the St. Clair River
While mapping the North Channel of the St. Clair River, Biologist from Alpena FRO and USGS Great Lakes Science Center (GLSC) in Ann Arbor Michigan discovered a Great Lakes shipwreck....
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/Alpena/documents/accomp-aug05.pdf

The wreck is sitting upright and the hull and deck are mostly intact. It has a steam engine and a scotch boiler with a smoke stack, 2 firebox doors, and a conspicuously tall steam dome. There are some places where you can get in under the deck. Max depth: 45 ft. The shore is all private property, so it is a boat dive.

GPS: N42°37.847' W82°38.148'

Dive photos & more info are on my web page.

-Ray

 

[Gamehunter]

Hi Ray
Thanks for the info to the wreck. We will be in the area in the next 2 weeks for some diving, I'll have to check it out. Your web site looks great keep up the good work.
Tim

 

[bladephotog]

I dove this with Ray a few weeks ago and it's a fun, challenging dive. Hopefully we'll get on it tonight!

 

[bladephotog]

And we did get to dive it tonight. Despite the terrible viz it was a great dive. Saw the propeller and rudder, as well as the boiler and steam engine. Very cool. Thanks Ray!

 

[Tiny Bubbles]

The viz looked good, until we got down into the channel. We've had north winds all day and the current was strong, and the viz was about 10 feet at best down there. Better to go when there are south winds. It was a good productive dive, though. Every time I dive on it I see something new that I missed before, and this dive was no exception. There's some plumbing on the boiler that's easy to miss because the zebras are so thick all over everything. And we saw the prop & rudder this time, and we have a better idea of the layout of the stern. The very end of the stern is broken off of the ship and sitting on the bottom. Don't go looking for a prop or rudder below the stern... It's in front of it. The rudder is turned sideways and you have to look around it to see a couple of propeller blades sticking up out of the bottom. But the biggest find of all... Andy found a fishing pole!!! It must have snagged the wreck while trolling and got yanked right out of some poor fisherman's rod holder before he could catch it. We left it down there for the next divers to find. There was a ton of fish hanging out on the wreck, including one monster that kind of scared me it was so big, and this area is heavily fished. There is fishing tackle all over this thing everywhere you look. You could really bag up on lures if you wanted to.

Very few photos came out, due to the poor viz, but I've added photos from this trip to my page.
-Ray