15m shipwreck intact after 150 years at the bottom of an American lake

The wreck of a 144-year-old sailing ship was found by two divers deep at the bottom of Lake Ontario in New York, USA.

The bow of the ship has a rather square design. Photo: YouTube.

Explorers Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski have announced the discovery of the wreck of the schooner Black Duck on ShipwreckWorld.com. The team of divers identified the ship three years after they discovered the wreckage using sonar scans at a depth of 107 meters (350 feet) below the surface of Lake Ontario.

The 15-meter-long ship sank in a gale while carrying cargo along the eastern side of the lake in August 1872. The captain, his wife, and a sailor survived by climbing into a small boat and making it to shore eight hours later.

According to Kennard, shipping records show that only a dozen or so schooner ships were built in the area. The Black Duck is believed to be the only intact schooner in the Great Lakes region. "This is definitely a rare find," said Carrie Sowden, director of archaeology at the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio.

The ship was a simple design, with a square bow and stern and a flat bottom, allowing it to run up the beach to load and unload cargo. “Sloops were not meant to move quickly in the water, but to carry a lot of cargo,” Kennard said. Typically used on rivers or for short trips in the Great Lakes, the structure of a sloop was not designed to withstand the strong winds and big waves of open water.

According to VNE