The Western Reserve was once considered a marvel of inland shipping. Launched in 1890 from the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company, it was the first steel freighter to sail the Great Lakes, stretching more than 300 feet long with a 41-foot beam and a 21-foot draft. Its owner, Captain Peter G. Minch, believed the steel hull would make the vessel stronger and safer than its wooden predecessors.

In late August 1892, Minch, his family, and several close relatives boarded the Western Reserve for what was supposed to be a routine voyage across Lake Superior. Instead, a violent squall struck north of Whitefish Point, splitting the ship in two and sending it to the bottom in less than ten minutes. Twenty-seven people perished, including Minch and his family, leaving only one survivor, engineer Harry W. Stewart.

For more than a century, the fate of the Western Reserve lingered as one of the Great Lakes’ greatest mysteries. Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, covering more than 31,000 square miles. It plunges to depths exceeding 1,300 feet, which made locating the wreck extraordinarily difficult and led to countless unsuccessful expeditions. It was not until the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society undertook a sustained, technology-driven search effort that real progress was made.

The Society, founded in 1978 and headquartered at Whitefish Point, Michigan, is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the maritime history of the Great Lakes. Operating the research vessel David Boyd, the group has located dozens of historic wrecks over the past four decades using a combination of sonar and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), otherwise known as submersible drones. Led by Executive Director Bruce Lynn and Director of Marine Operations Darryl Ertel, the team narrowed their search grid to a section of Lake Superior northwest of Whitefish Point. After years of scanning, in 2024 their sonar finally detected a shadow lying 600 feet below the surface. To verify what they had found, the team recently turned to drone technology.

The drone deployed for this mission was the Phantom S4, manufactured by Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc., a company headquartered in San Jose, California. Founded in 1982, Deep Ocean Engineering has been a pioneer in the field of underwater robotics, supplying ROVs for scientific research, law enforcement, and environmental monitoring. The Phantom S4 is a rugged machine, measuring about five feet in length and two feet in width, and weighing close to 200 pounds.

It is depth-rated to approximately 1,000 meters and comes equipped with high-resolution cameras, sonar, and lighting systems designed to cut through complete darkness. As the company describes on its website, “The Phantom S4 offers robust maneuverability, crisp imaging, and depth capability suitable for search and forensic-grade documentation.” These capabilities proved essential in identifying the wreck, as sonar alone had only provided the first clue.

On the day of the dive, the Phantom S4 descended through 600 feet of icy water, piloted in real time from the deck of the David Boyd. Its cameras illuminated the lakebed until the unmistakable shape of a steel hull appeared on screen. The drone maneuvered along the wreck, revealing the ship’s broken midsection and capturing the intact port-side running light that perfectly matched an artifact recovered onshore decades earlier. “Without the Phantom S4, we would still be staring at sonar images and guessing,” said Darryl Ertel, who piloted the drone and has overseen many of the Society’s underwater operations. “Seeing the wreck in high-definition video gave us certainty, and it gave us details sonar could never provide.”

The Phantom’s ability to hover in place and capture close-up imagery was equally critical. “We could approach within just a few feet of the wreck, control our angle, and document the ship in a way that feels almost like being there,” Bruce Lynn explained. “That kind of precision is only possible with this class of drone, and it is what finally allowed us to say beyond doubt that we had found the Western Reserve.”

Lake Superior’s immense size and depth had frustrated previous searches, but the combination of sonar and advanced drone systems finally gave explorers the tools to uncover the truth. In the process, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society demonstrated how technology can illuminate the past. What began as a tragedy of the Gilded Age has now become a story of innovation, perseverance, and the vital role that underwater drones play in connecting us with history.

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