Underwater Archaeologists Were Looking for a Lost Shipwreck in Wisconsin. They Stumbled Upon a Different Vessel Instead
Researchers think they have located the final resting place of the “L.W. Crane,” a wooden side-wheel steam ship that caught fire and sank in the Fox River in 1880
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Archaeologists think they may have identified the final resting place of the L.W. Crane, a steamer ship that caught fire and sank in Wisconsin’s Fox River in 1880.
Researchers with the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association stumbled upon the L.W. Crane while searching for a different ship earlier this year, the historical society announced in a Facebook post.
“Sometimes you find the shipwreck you weren’t looking for,” says Jordan Ciesielczyk, a maritime archaeologist with the historical society, to WGBA-TV’s Claire Peterson. “[These are] the kind of discoveries that we live for.”
Quick fact: Where is the Fox River?
Located in the city of Oshkosh in eastern Wisconsin, the river is a tributary of Lake Winnebago.
Researchers were using high-resolution side-scan sonar to map a 2.5-mile stretch of the riverbed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. According to the Facebook post, they were hoping to locate all of the “potential cultural sites” in the waterway, including the wreck of the Berlin City, a steamer that sank in 1870. They also wanted to relocate a separate shipwreck that had been surveyed in 2016.
The sonar imagery showed lots of rocks, trees and other debris, reports CBS News’ Kerry Breen. But it also appeared to have captured a partially buried ship’s hull, measuring roughly 23 feet wide by 90 feet long. The size and shape were not a match for the Berlin City, but the archaeologists were still intrigued.
Further investigations revealed the mysterious vessel had a boxy shape, with a bow that looked similar to those found on Great Lakes scow schooners. These were flat-bottomed ships that could dock in the shallow harbors of small, lakeshore communities, according to a 2020 report by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
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However, they’ve concluded the vessel is probably the L.W. Crane, a wooden side-wheel steamer built in Berlin, Wisconsin, in 1865. Over the course of its career, the L.W. Crane transported freight and passengers on various waterways, including the Illinois River, the Mississippi River and the Wisconsin River, according to the Wisconsin Shipwrecks database.
“It was used, like many [vessels] of that era, to move cargo, bulk commodities, up and down the river to the port towns so that the hardware stores and the mercantile stores can be well-stocked—kind of like the Amazon warehouses of today,” says Kevin Cullen, executive director of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, to WLUK’s David Go.
In 1880, it caught fire and burned to the waterline in the Fox River. The cause of the accident is unclear. The location of the newly discovered shipwreck is “directly opposite” from where historical records indicate the L.W. Crane sank more than a century ago, according to Wisconsin Shipwrecks.
As technology improves, maritime archaeologists expect to find even more shipwrecks. In the meantime, the surprise discovery of the L.W. Crane is generating excitement among local historians, who are now digging into the ship’s backstory.
“These [vessels] are kind of a forgotten piece of Wisconsin history,” Ciesielczyk tells WGBA-TV. “Most people look at the Wolf and Fox Rivers, and it’s kind of hard to imagine that there was a 100-foot steam ship going up and down it regularly.”
