A shipwreck lost for 128 years was found in June in the depths of a North American lake, with the team behind the discovery finally revealing it to the public.
Filmmakers Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick were in the middle of making a documentary about an invasive species of mussels taking over the Great Lakes region when they came upon The Africa, which sank beneath the surface of Lake Huron in October 1895, according to Fox Weather.
It’s believed The Africa went down during an early snowstorm and a severe fog, Fox Weather noted. The 11 crew members aboard were blinded as they hauled coal from Ohio to Ontario, and the ship sank down into the freezing waters, claiming the lives of all those aboard.
“Just like when the Africa went down in 1895 early season storms, it was getting rough,” Drebert said of the discovery, per Fox Weather. “When we went out to check it out, it was supposed to be nice and calm, but of course, the wind kept coming up. We actually brought some friends with us. We thought we were just going to see a pile of rocks, so why not? But it got pretty rough, and they were feeling a little seasick. So we had to call it a day.”
If you missed us last night on @CBCTheNational talking about our discovery of the #shipreck the “Africa”, you can watch the replay here: https://t.co/o4mIfJ8Xnv
— All Too Clear Film (@AllTooClearFilm) October 12, 2023
They were just about to wrap for the day and bring their robotic camera up from the lake floor, some 28- feet down. Then they noticed a giant shadow emerging on the screen, according to Fox Weather. (RELATED: Mystery Surrounds Daytona Beach Shores, Where The Waves Are Revealing A Lost Story)
“And so we got closer and closer, and the ship just sort of appeared out of the mists of time, and it was really pretty incredible. It got more and more definition as we got closer and closer, and all of a sudden, we could see, ‘Wow! This is a steamship, a wooden steamship.’ So this is old, and it is incredibly well intact,” Drebert noted.
It turns out the mussels are the main reason the waters of the Great Lakes are clear enough to see the wreck so far down. But they also coat the entire vessel, and make identifying things like wrecks a lot more complicated, according to Drebert.