DULUTH, MN (WHTC-AM/FM) – Crews organized by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum have been on Lake Superior trying to find out why two mine sweepers sank in Lake Superior in 1918.
The mine sweepers named the Cerisoles and Inkerman were paid for by the French and set sail for Europe on November 23, 1918. On November 23, 1918, the ships vanished as gale winds, snow and spray on Lake Superior struck the ships. 78 men lost their lives that day.
A third ship called the Sebastopol survived.
For more than a month the crews organized by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum have been using modern technology to locate the nearly century-old wrecks.
Craig Rich is Director of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association says it’s a long tedious project especially in Lake Superior.
” When Michigan Shipwreck Research Association goes out to discover shipwrecks, we tow a side scan sonar from the rear of a boat and typically you tow that quite deep, usually 70 feet off the bottom or so to get it on the tomography. Things are much much different up in Lake Superior than in Lake Michgan”
If the ships are found, there will more than likely be several issues such as federal, state or provincial restrictions. The ships still belong to the French Navy and would most likely be considered a French war grave site.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is located in Paradise, Michigan in the Upper Penisula 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point where the Edmond Ftizgerald was lost with her entire crew of 29 men on Lake Superior November 10, 1975,
