Ghost Fleet of the St. Clair River

Ghost Fleet

On the very foggy, early morning of August 26, 1911, the huge, 301-foot (91-metre)-long wooden steamer named the City of Genoa sank, while at anchor, at the mouth of the St. Clair River between Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, when another ship named the W. H. Gilbert collided with it. This accident permanently ended the career of the City of Genoa. However, when early scuba divers in the 1950’s went looking for this shipwreck, they found nothing.

The large, wooden steamship, Yakima, became stranded with a heavy cargo of iron ore at the head of Stag Island in the St. Clair River on June 10, 1905, and, a few days later, caught on fire and burned to a total loss. But years later, after divers researched this well-documented accident and then searched this clear-cut location, they found no shipwreck.

The wooden freighter named the Aztec, built in 1889 at Marine City, Michigan, on the western shore of the St. Clair River, burned to a total loss at the same location on November 9, 1923. But 30 years after this ship’s loss, scuba divers exploring these waters found no trace of it.

On September 27, 1923, the Canadian barge named the Province capsized and sank in the St. Clair River with the highly-publicized, tragic loss of two of the eleven sailors who were on board. But well into the 1950’s, divers were unable to locate this shipwreck.

The 39-year-old, wooden steamer, Sachem, caught on fire on October 8, 1928, and burned itself out just off the Canadian shoreline of the St. Clair River where the Chenal Écarte (also known as the Snye Channel) branches off from the main stream. But not so much as a single plank from the Sachem could be found by divers a mere 25 years later. This shipwreck had simply vanished.

These are but five of the more than two dozen shipwrecks that seem to have disappeared completely and inexplicably from