Another Lake Michigan shipwreck has made the State Register of Historic Places, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. The Arctic Shipwreck, located near Manitowoc, is a tug that was built in 1881 and sank in 1930.
The Arctic is now protected by state law; divers may not remove artifacts or pieces of the wreck, or deface or displace items at the site.
The Wisconsin Historical Society says it believed the Arctic was a unique tug, doing tasks typically reserved for both harbor and lake tugs.
In a press release the Society says: “Whether this suggests that the Arctic was a hybrid harbor tug-lake tug vessel, or that the Arctic was built unusually strong for a harbor tug, or that the strength of the Arctic that allowed her to serve as both a harbor and lake tug was not unusual at the time — the answers to these questions are unknown because we simply do not have the comparative data from historic period Wisconsin harbor tugs. These are questions future archaeological study may answer.”
Learn more about this and other shipwrecks in Wisconsin at wisconsinshipwrecks.org.
[Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Society.]
