IRON CHIEF

By: Capt. Ron Burkhard

Over the years, many ships have passed by the Pt. Aux Barques Lighthouse. Its powerful light reaching out over Lake Huron’s waters to guide their ship may have comforted some.  Judy and I live by the water just South of the lighthouse and have grown used to its light shining in our windows at night.  We also find it comforting.

For a number of ships passing by, it was their last look at the light.  Within sight of the lighthouse, rest at least 10 discovered shipwrecks and maybe a few undiscovered ones.  Pt Aux Barques became known as a treacherous place for passing ships and a final resting place for many.  The steamer Iron Chief knew this as it passed by the light on October 3, 1904, but did it know that it was about to join these other shipwrecks in their final resting place on the lake bottom?

The Iron Chief was built by the Detroit Dry Dock Company as a wooden schooner ( Hull # 51 ) and her first enrollment was issued on July 19, 1881, with Official Number 100287.  Her dimensions were 212.33 ft. long, 35 ft. wide, and 17.5 ft. high.  By April 22, 1882, she was one of the few schooners converted to a propeller.  During the conversion, her gross tonnage increased slightly to 1154.08.  Her picture shows a single stack vessel with fore and aft masts. A small forward pilothouse and aft-cabins complete the common wooden steamer silhouette.

Researching this vessel was difficult because of the lack of information I could find about this shipwreck.  I reviewed the October, 1904, issues of the Harbor Beach Times and did not find a mention of this event. Other research stated that the Iron Chief broke a stern pipe during heavy seas, filled, and sank 10 miles NE of  Point Aux Barques, Mi. on October 3, 1904. Her crew was rescued by the steamer Andrew Carnegie.  Her schooner consort, Iron Cliff, sailed safely on to Alpena.  Both vessels were unbound for Fort William, Ontario, with a cargo of coal. These are the details I have available about the sinking of the Iron Chief. 

I have made only one dive to the wreck of this ship and that was on August 21, 1999.  I came down on the stern and restricted my dive to this area.  To find out more about this shipwreck, I also talked to four divers who have been on this wreck. None of them could remember specific details about the shipwreck resting on the bottom.  My wife, Judy, dove it in 1994 and could only recall that it was broken up. I can provide details about the area I dove because I have the advantage of reviewing the pictures I took during the dive.

The wreck of the Iron Chief is located 9.55 miles from the Grindstone City harbor on an 82-degree true bearing.  Last Fall, I left the wreck of the Philadelphia after some friends had made a dive on it. I wanted to dive the Albany so we were motoring slowly along on a straight line for it.  Suddenly a large bottom profile appeared on the depth finder.  Excitedly I turned the boat around while another diver ran for the grappling line.  Everyone was talking at once about our discovery of a new shipwreck.  Finally, common sense prevailed and someone asked, “Isn’t the Iron Chief in this area?”  Yes, I said, but I think the three wrecks form a triangle on the Thumb Bottomland Preserve Map.  We checked the Lat/Lon coordinates and it was the Iron Chief.  She lies almost on a straight course line between the Albany and the Philadelphia.  She’s 1.75 miles from the Philly and .89 miles from the Albany.

For my dive, we grappled into the wreck on a calm sunny day.  Apprehension gripped me as I descended alone down the grappling line.  You never know what you’re going to encounter when you hook into a new wreck.  I didn’t know the condition of the wreck or where I would come down on the shipwreck.  The bottom was at 135 ft and as I neared it, shipwreck debris appeared out of the gloom.  After stabilizing myself and adjusting the camera, I looked around to orientate myself.  The grappling hook was snagged by one point under a timber, but appeared to be holding well. 

A broken mess surrounded me.  I could see upright sections of hull with gaping holes, splintered beams, twisted pipes, and metal debris.  It became apparent that I was at the stern area of the wreck between the boiler and stern frame.  Looking forward, the boiler blocked my vision. I saw a small steam radiator lying on the wooden bottom near the boiler.  There were also round vent covers lying about, some with grid openings. Turning toward the stern, I saw a round-headed capstan with a square timber and an iron bar resting on top of it.  Off by itself was a big-geared drum with what looked like steel cable wrapped around it.  One end of a wooden grate poked up from the bottom.  Parts of a wooded barrel lay near it. I thought that this wreck looks like a huge, broken, jumbled, pile of lumber.  I looked for some big reference points, but did not see a rudder or propeller.  That doesn’t mean they are not there.  I may have missed seeing them because of the poor visibility or an inadequate search.

 However, I did find some items of interest.  For me, as a diver, I always experience a sudden thrill when I spot a personal item or a dish the crew used on the doomed ship.  First to appear among the bits of coal and debris was a small white bowl.  On closer examination, I saw it was round shaped with a lip and may have been the top of a pitcher or bowl.   The next item to come into view was even cooler.  It was a five-pound hand-iron with a wire wrapped metal handle.  This was the kind of iron your grandmother heated on the stovetop to iron clothes with.  These ships were like floating homes to the sailors and probably contained most things a normal household would use.  What was strange about this was that I had found a similar iron on the Port Austin reef years ago.  Then, I was digging in a reef crevice about 100 ft. NW of the lighthouse when I fanned thru some iron-ore flakes and uncovered the hand-iron.  Wouldn’t it be great if that hand-iron could tell us how it ended up on the Port Austin Reef?

After placing the hand-iron back on the wreck, I decided to end the dive.  My dive computer was malfunctioning and the safe thing to do was to ascend immediately.  While making my decompression stop at 15 ft., the grappling hook came loose from the wreck.  With the tension gone from the line, I fought to stay down but floated to the surface.  I tried to descend again but was to buoyant.  Therefore, I swam over to the boat.  This was not easy as the wind was blowing the boat down the lake.  I needed to get back down to 15 ft. to avoid the possibility of getting the bends. I quickly pulled myself along the line to the boat and yelled to my wife that we were loose and I was going down the stern line to deco.  (We keep a 15 ft. line with a chain and anchor attached hanging over the stern.  Tied to the anchor are two regulators with 100 percent oxygen.  We do this for safety purposes and for situations like I now was in.)  My wife yelled back that the two divers that came out with us were still in the water.  Great, I thought.  We are drifting down the lake, I have to stay down for 30 minutes of deco, and we are missing two divers.  As I hung on the oxygen line, I thought about the many possible ways this situation could turn out badly.  Then, I noticed the 150ft of grappling line which was attached to the front of our boat.  It was acting strangely.  First, it would hang almost straight down; then, it would come up to about a 30-degree angle with the surface. Finally, I realized that the other two divers had started up the line before it had unhooked from the wreck.  They were having trouble controlling their buoyancy on a slack line.

Within a short time, their bubbles came into view. From 15 ft. down, I watched as they made their way over to the back of the boat, which was above me.  I was so relieved they were safe I relaxed and started to daydream away my remaining deco time.  I like to kill time by closing my eyes and hanging motionless while neutrally buoyant.  At one point, I opened my eyes just in time to see something dropping down by my right side.  What! It was a set of double scuba tanks with vest, regulators, and gages, heading for the bottom. I lunged for the unit and just snagged a trailing gage hose.  Wow, that was close.  Later, back on the boat, I found out one of the divers had taken his gear off in the water.  Before he let go off it, he inflated the vest.  He didn’t know he had a bad inflator valve.  As it sank out of sight from a drifting boat in 140 ft. of water, my wife heard him say, “I hope Ron gets that”.

An October 23, 1984 article from The Saginaw News tells the story of an anchor recovery from the Iron Chief by six Saginaw area divers.  Jim Moore, lead diver for the expedition, recently was kind enough to take the time to talk about the recovery, the permit process, and presenting the anchor to the Grice Museum of Harbor Beach.  The divers used 250 gallon tanks pumped full of air to lift the 3,000 pound anchor to the surface.  But, first they had to hacksaw thru the heavy anchor chain at a depth of 135 ft!  Jim said he doesn’t remember much about the shipwreck because he concentrated their efforts in the bow area during the anchor recovery.  He said there was another anchor on the wreck and they took the anchor that was less visible to divers.

Dale Purchase of Saginaw was another member of the recovery team.  While diving off our boat this fall, I asked him about the Iron Chief.  He, too, didn’t remember much about the wreck except that it was pretty broken up.  Dale is an accomplished wreck and cave diver and also an exceptional underwater photographer with over 3,000 dives.  I can understand him not recalling a few dives made over 17 years ago.  However, as we were coming into Grindstone Harbor he remembered that they had pulled the Iron Chief’s anchor into the same harbor.  Dale said that at that time the water was high enough to float the anchor right up to the DNR’s boat launch ramp.  He said the anchor hung up right at the harbor mouth where you pass through the narrow gap, but they just goosed the boats’ throttle and it pulled free.  What a difference from today’s shallow water depths.

The next shipwreck we will visit is truly a tale of heart-breaking tragedy.  The unexpected sinking of any ship is a tragedy.  However, this disaster seems much worse.  When this ships’ captain survived, while his wife and son, the ship-owners wife and six-year-old daughter, and a crewmember drowned, he was crazed with grief.  This ship is the Hunter Savidge!