The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum uses a sonar system from their research vessel to locate the remains of sunken ships.
Shipwreck Hunter
Bruce Lynn takes his love of history to the depths of Lake Superior
Some people scale mountains. Bruce Lynn (MS98) explores the depths.
As executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, Lynn’s chief mission is underwater research. That means that every so often, he gets to go out on Lake Superior in the organization’s research vessel and look for shipwrecks. That’s when a great job becomes a dream job.
“I came to this work already having an interest in shipwrecks and their history, so I’ve been very lucky,” says Lynn, who had previously worked at several historic sites in northern Michigan. “We’ve actually found 12 shipwrecks in the last two-and-a-half years. It’s exciting to be part of it.” When their craft’s side-scan sonar system locates a possible wreck, the crew sends a remotely operated vehicle into the water to see what’s what, using high-intensity lighting and high-definition cameras.
“We search in the older shipping lanes, which should actually have wrecks within them,” Lynn says. “These wrecks weren’t too far from where they were expected to be, but it doesn’t always work out that way.”
Which is also important to learn from a historical standpoint.
Lynn, who earned a master’s degree in Historic Preservation (now Preservation Studies) from EMU, worked for various historical sites in Michigan before joining the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in 2011.
“When we locate a shipwreck, we can often set the record straight,” Lynn says. “Maybe it was reported to have broken apart and gone down seven miles northwest of Whitefish Point (near the society’s museum in Paradise, Michigan) and we find it 30 miles out and it’s intact. Or we might find the wreck of a ship that was supposed to have disappeared.
“Most museum people don’t have the opportunity to get on a research vessel and go out and see things that no human has seen in decades or a century. It’s a thrill to do that and turn around and share that history with others.”
The rest of the society’s enterprises serve that mission. In addition to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, they include Whitefish Point itself—a National Historic Landmark and home to the 1849 Whitefish Point Light Station. The society’s administrative offices are in another historic structure it operates: the 1899 Weather Bureau Building in nearby Sault Ste. Marie.
Affinity with the Past
Lynn grew up in rural Ohio, but his family summered at their cabin near–you can’t make this up–Whitefish Point, where he first discovered the thrill of, literally, touching the past.
“There are approximately 200 shipwrecks in that area,” Lynn says. “Back in the day, you could find little bits of wreckage in the sand, something buried for years that got uncovered.”
The seeds of his zeal to share history and keep it alive and growing were sown when he started taking history courses as a history/criminal justice major at Ohio State and found he couldn’t stop, eventually earning degrees in both disciplines. Several college summers spent working at historic sites on Mackinac Island sealed the deal.
“It made me think in terms of working in museums and the area of history as something I could actually do,” Lynn says. The counsel of his co-workers led him to Eastern’s historic preservation program, which he found both a boon and “really, really enjoyed.”
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is one of Michigan’s most popular cultural tourism destinations. Lynn says it welcomed around 80,000 visitors during the 2023 season.
Bruce Lynn, far left, wears a vintage cork life vest while presenting to a group of museum visitors. Nearly 80,000 visited the site in 2023.
“Most museum people don’t have the opportunity to get on a research vessel and go out and see things that no human has seen in decades or a century.”
Bruce Lynn
Legendary singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot (left, with Lynn) visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum numerous times. His hit song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” memorialized the crew of the freighter, which sank off Whitefish Point in 1975.
So what is it about shipwrecks? Why do they enthrall so many of us?
“People try to put themselves in the story,” Lynn says. “What would I do, man against the elements? And there are so many aspects of these stories that don’t seem possible yet are true, like ships plowing into each other in broad daylight. They’re full of heroics or the opposite, they happened on our doorstep, and they boggle people’s minds.”
None more so than the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank off Whitefish Point in a horrific storm on November 10, 1975, taking the lives of all 29 crew members. Gordon Lightfoot’s classic ballad of the tragedy was released less than a year later, embedding the tale in the minds of millions. The doomed steamer’s 200-pound bronze bell, retrieved in 1995 on the last of the society’s three research expeditions to the wreck, is now on display in the museum as a memorial to her lost crew.
“There’s no question the Edmund Fitzgerald is the shipwreck people know about,” Lynn says, or that its renown helps draw people to the museum. The society showed its appreciation for Lightfoot, who passed away last spring, by making him an honorary board member.
“He visited the museum a number of times,” Lynn says. “He was a very down-to-earth kind of person. He even asked us how we got into museum work. Here was this world-famous person and musical talent asking us about our jobs!”
Maybe it wasn’t that strange. They were all working to keep history alive.
By Jeff Mortimer
Photos courtesy of The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum