https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/09/22/griffon-shipwreck-great-lakes-lake-michigan-steve-kathie-libert/74956091007/

 
 
 
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MICHIGAN

Charlevoix couple running out of time to prove they found Great
Lakes' oldest shipwreck

Portrait of Bill Laytner Bill Laytner
Detroit Free Press
   
[7516204700]

In four decades of news work, I'd never reported from underwater.

Last month, I donned a wetsuit and dived under Lake Michigan, a few
miles off the Upper Peninsula. My guides took me to within inches of
what they claim is the Great Lakes' oldest shipwreck. I shared the
scene with fish and two experienced divers.

Skeptics beg to differ. They say what I saw can't be the French-built
Griffon, the first actual sailing ship ever to ply the Great Lakes.
But the skeptics haven't gone down to look. I have. Now I'm a
believer. But not just because I was close enough to touch the
wreckage ...

A lifelong quest

Steve and Kathie Libert, of Charlevoix, have devoted their lives to
seeking the Griffin; or, as the French named it, Le Griffon. During
careers near Washington, D.C., they used every vacation day and
traveled each summer to northern Michigan. Kathie studied
centuries-old documents. Steve led dive teams for more than four
decades in search of the long-lost ship. They say they expect no
riches, just the satisfaction of seeing the wreckage identified and
protected, so that these remnants of history won't be lost.

Years in court

After years diving around tiny islands where Le Griffon was last
seen, the Liberts and their lifelong dive pals from Ohio found
wreckage, then repeatedly went to court seeking permits to salvage
artifacts. They won just one lawsuit. That let them, in 2013, pull up
what they think was Le Griffon's front-mounted spar, called a
bowsprit. After seeing the spar, state officials said it was just an
old stake used to secure a fish net. The Liberts, and the French
divers who helped retrieve the piece, beg to differ.

 

Time growing short

Retired in Charlevoix, and fighting ailments of aging, the Liberts in
2021 published a 160-page book, documenting why they think they've
found the holy grail of Great Lakes shipwrecks. Bringing up artifacts
could form a museum to celebrate the Midwest's early history, when
French explorers were the first white people on the Great Lakes. A
state lawmaker from the U.P. this month asked state officials who
regulate shipwreck salvage to review the Liberts' claim. Last month,
unsure about how many more years he can dive, Steve Libert invited
the Free Press to dive with him, to see what he and Kathie Libert
think is the wreck of Le Griffon.

Much about the ship and its demise are unclear, "lost in the deep
echoes of time," author Richard Gebhart writes in "Ships and
Shipwrecks: Stories from the Great Lakes," a recent book from
Michigan State University Press. What's known is that Le Griffon was
the Great Lakes' first big sailing ship. It was commissioned by
explorer Robert La Salle, built in the woods above the falls at
Niagara, and from there yanked down a creek to Lake Erie. Less than
six weeks after launch, disaster struck. As the French explorers said
in their journals, preserved all these centuries, the ship went down
loaded with furs and with all hands. That was in 1679, so long ago
that it's tempting to believe the skeptics.

As a swimmer who'd never been diving, I considered the risk of
drowning. As a reporter, I considered the risk of accepting
first-person glimpses as reality. In 2022, from dry land, I wrote a
standard news story, as impartial as I could make it, about Steve and
Kathie Libert's lifelong quest. This time, I'll tell a story in
first-person. The Liberts can't prove they've found the Griffin -- in
French, spelled "Le Griffon." But after reading their book, hearing
their reasoning, and seeing up close what they've seen and
photographed -- the algae-covered beams and ribs of an ancient wooden
vessel -- I'm a believer.    

More:Doubters abound as Charlevoix couple think they found Great
Lakes' oldest shipwreck

The ship disappeared so long ago, so many winter storms and giant
waves ago, it's tempting to dismiss the Liberts' claims. Doubters
insist that wreckage that old had to be swept to oblivion. Others say
the Liberts must've found some other wreck, or more than one wreck,
when two decades ago they first located the wooden remains of a very
old ship, embedded in sand at several sites, near uninhabited islands
off tiny Fairport, Michigan, south of Manistique.

Still others accuse the Liberts of treasure hunting. But Le Griffon
wasn't known to contain any treasure. Its load of furs, its wood
furnishings, its sails and rigging have long since disintegrated. Le
Griffon is no treasure ship, "unless you consider history a treasure,
which I do," Steve Libert said on ABC's "Good Morning America," in
2008. The Liberts say the best treasure they could find would be what
historians call "an artifact," some piece of this ancient vessel that
would prove them right -- confirming their having found what some call
"the holy grail" of Great Lakes shipwrecks.

The Liberts have no children. As Kathie Libert once quipped to me,
"Finding the Griffon is our baby."

Nor are they well to do, although both worked steadily until
retirement -- Steve as a Navy intelligence analyst, Kathie as the
owner of a marketing communications firm. Early on, their quest was
literally a murky project, clouded by Lake Michigan's characteristic
silt. It darkened underwater viewing when Steve and his friends began
diving in the 1980s. Then, by the 2000s, invasive zebra mussels
followed by smaller quagga mussels filtered Lake Michigan to
crystal-clarity. Steve and his crew of dive pals, all from Dayton,
Ohio, began revisiting wreck sites they'd found years earlier,
shooting increasingly sharp underwater photos of what they, more and
more, began to believe was Le Griffon.

My first dive

Sunshine shimmered on Lake Michigan last month on the day of my first
dive. We motored out of Fairport on Steve's aging pontoon boat with a
crew of Steve's longtime dive pals. It took only 90 minutes of
bouncing over low swells to reach an uninhabited island a few miles
south of the Upper Peninsula's coast. Scanning the shoreline of Big
Summer Island (shown as just "Summer Island" on some maps), Steve
spotted a landmark and brought his boat right over a key site of
wreckage.

"Kathie was always saying, 'Steve, look in the shallow water,' and
here it is," he announced, idling his outboard. We peered down at the
sandy bottom, making out dark-brown shapes that Steve said had once
been a ship, just 10 feet down. Minutes later, I was swimming over
it, and then down to it.

A heavy beam ran straight and visible for 50 feet. That was the
keelson, a 12-by-12-inch timber that shipwrights placed atop the keel
to secure long rows of curving ribs running up the interior sides of
the ship. Parts of the ribs were there too, one after another. To the
ribs, also called frames, had been fastened the hull's planking,
although it was long since fallen away. Clearly visible were smooth
wrought-iron bolts, driven through planks as fasteners. They lacked
the threading of bolts used in ship-building a century later,
according to nautical historians. To the Liberts, finding
non-threaded iron fasteners signaled the remains of a truly aged
ship, built in the 1600s.

Sharing the scene with fish and fellow diver Tom Kucharsky, a
production worker at Crown Cork & Seal in Dayton, I got within inches
of what once had been tall North American trees, shaped by axes
centuries ago, now partly buried in sand. I didn't wear an air tank.
The setting was so shallow, I could grab air topside, then swim
easily down for viewing, pulled down by a weight belt that Steve lent
me. I was warm inside my own wet suit. When I ran short of air at the
wreck, Tom would swim over and hold out his backup breathing line,
known to divers as a "reserve regulator." I'd catch a breath to stay
down longer. We swam within inches of the wreckages but didn't touch
any part of this algae-covered history tableaux. Steve had given
strict orders.

"We don't bring anything up. We're doing everything legally," he
advised, before my dives. Without a government salvage permit,
nothing should be taken from a shipwreck, he said.

Keeping watch from a seat in the pontoon boat was Tom's brother, Jim
Kucharsky, retired from Delco and Delphi in Dayton. The brothers said
they'd been diving with Steve for more than four decades. Not diving
but assisting us was Sam Kingrey, also of Dayton, where the Liberts
lived early in their marriage. Kingrey, who owns SK Mold & Tool in
two factories near Dayton, designed and built an aluminum lift and
fitted it to Steve's boat, letting divers easily exit the water.

Also there was Brian Abbott, an underwater acoustics specialist from
Haslett, near Lansing. Abbott said he'd accompanied the Libert
expeditions for years, juggling his schedule of paying clients so he
could aid the quest for Le Griffon. In previous years, Abbott trained
his sonar equipment on the wreckage. Several of his "sub-bottom"
images appear in the Liberts' book, showing suggestive shapes that
may be parts of Le Griffon, or something else, actually under Lake
Michigan's sandy bottom. The Great Lakes are dotted with shipwrecks.
It's possible that other wrecks are scattered near the remains of Le
Griffon, Abbott said, as we motored to the second day's dive.

"I hear everything from 7,000 to 14,000 shipwrecks in the Great
Lakes. What I learned from Steve is, any good expedition starts in
the library," he said. By that he includes the Liberts' big
collection of books and research material, which fills many shelves
at their condominium in Charlevoix.

"This area is full of legends and history. It's just not obvious,"
Abbott said. Scanning the horizon, he said, "Al Capone had a hideout
over at Rock Island, right over there." He pointed southwest. In that
direction lay several islands. Their only residents these days?
Shorebirds.

Just then, we were 200 yards off Big Summer Island -- population: zero
-- where Steve and his crew said they'd camped many times, always with
the permission of the landowner, he was quick to say. For decades,
they explored the geography around Big Summer Island, underwater,
finding multiple sites of wreckage that Steve believes to be Le
Griffon. On Day One, we dived on the mid and aft sections of keel,
which Steve said he'd found by studying satellite images of Lake
Michigan. On Day Two, we swam down to the bow of what seemed to be
more of the same shipwreck, a quarter-mile away.

"I found that by swimming around the island," Steve told me, hinting
at the relentless spirit of his search. He and the others also found
yet more wreckage they think is from the Griffon, in deeper water, 50
feet down. That's where Steve thinks there might be a cannon, sure to
be a breakthrough for confirming that what they've found is, finally,
what they've all sought for so long. While camping near the wreck
sites many times over their 43-year quest, Steve and the others spent
time on nearby Poverty Island, also uninhabited. There they found
what could be more clues to the mystery of Le Griffon: remnants of
ancient Native American villages.

More:How deep are the Great Lakes? Here's how they stack up

As we approached, Steve told why these long-abandoned sites are a
link in his chain of evidence. These sites put Native Americans close
to where the Liberts think Le Griffon met its storm-tossed fate,
close enough that the inhabitants could've heard what they later
reported to La Salle, as recorded in his journal. They heard it after
dark, during heavy winds -- three cannon shots, likely a distress
signal. Le Griffon's last moments could well have been just out of
sight of these encampments, not far from where we dived on the
wreckage.

According to the journal of Father Hennepin, a Franciscan Recollect
friar who accompanied La Salle, the two explorers bid farewell to Le
Griffon on Sept. 18, 1679. The ship was to return to Niagara without
them, bearing a summer's load of furs. The two leaders would go on
exploring with their band of followers, paddling large canoes.

Hennepin's journal, as recapped in the Liberts' book, tells that the
ship set sail from the harbor of what's now called Washington Island,
a resort area on the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan, at the entrance
to Green Bay. It's an area so treacherous for shipping that the
French named it Porte des Morts -- Death's Door.

The next day, on Sept. 19, a tremendous storm struck the area,
according to the journals of both Hennepin and La Salle. The Liberts
think Le Griffon's end was fated by that storm -- not by a mutiny of
the crew nor by an attack of Native Americans, two opposing theories
for which there is no evidence. The storm could've shoved the ship
onto a sandy shoal, broken it into pieces, drowned the crew of just
six sailors, and washed the wreckage into the shallow water where,
the Liberts believe, it sat untouched for 31/2 centuries, awaiting
their discovery.

A believer

Another believer is Greg McMaster, the former state representative
for the Liberts' district, now running Eagle Eye Drone Services with
a dozen employees based in Traverse City, Florida and other sites.
McMaster recalled the many years that the Liberts struggled, in
negotiations and costly court fights, trying to get permission from
the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, to bring up
artifacts that would prove they'd found La Salle's ship. He also
recalled diving with them and, one time, supervising a special day of
diving.

"Probably the most important dive I was on was when the only permit
allowed by the DNR let Steve salvage the bowsprit. So I stepped out
of my role as a friend and I acted as the state's watchdog on that.
Being a state representative back then, I had to put the interests of
the state first," McMaster said.

He said: "I can tell you, everything was done properly" to preserve
the bowsprit, an old sailing ship's unique spar, which sticks out and
up from the bow. It was a crucial 20-foot piece of wreckage that the
Liberts thought would show it came from Le Griffon. To get it, the
DNR relented after years of denials.

"This was the first and only permit for salvage that was ever
approved for them," McMaster said. The bowsprit, or what believers
say is the bowsprit, was brought up from Lake Michigan's bottom in
2013 in a joint effort of the Liberts' team of divers -- which they
call the Great Lakes Exploration Group -- together with divers and
archeologists from DRASSM, the French acronym for Department of
Underwater Archeological Research. This happened only after Steve met
with French officials in Washington, and after his group won their
request to explore the wreck in federal appeals court, overruling
state officials, and after McMaster did what he could on the Liberts'
behalf as a member of the Michigan Underwater Salvage and Preserve
Committee, a branch of the DNR-controlled Michigan History Center.

During that salvage dive, three French maritime archeologists -- the
Liberts' book says -- examined the bowsprit "before it was completely
wrapped in a water-permeable fabric to assist in slowing down the
decaying process once at the surface" and then "rushed off in a
refrigerated truck to a climate-controlled storage facility," to be
viewed later by a state of Michigan archeologist. The French experts
wrote a report, saying they thought this spar was, indeed, a bowsprit
such as those affixed to French ships in the 1600s. A state
archeologist pooh-poohed that, saying the 20-foot length of
waterlogged wood was a stake used by fishermen to secure their nets
in the 1800s.

The Liberts devote Chapter 3 in their book, and Steve can talk
endlessly, about why the French are right and why the state's expert
isn't. McMaster sides with the Liberts, he said.

"The evidence they presented in that book really convinced me.
They've got measurements. They've got historical documents. Every
piece that they add is just filling in the argument," McMaster said.

"The bowsprit, to me, was conclusive. When the French came over and
looked at it, they felt very confident that this is the Griffon," he
said.

More:Lake Superior shipwreck Adella Shores, missing since 1909,
finally found

'Something good'

McMaster served in the state House from 2009 through 2015. While
there, he explained the Liberts' quest to Ed McBroom, also a House
member back then. McBroom is now a state senator, representing most
of the U.P. He owns a farm not far from where the Liberts moor their
dive boat.

When I called McBroom, he said he was glad that I liked his southwest
part of the U.P., studded with tidy farms and dune-side views of Lake
Michigan. He sounded hopeful that the wreckage I'd viewed through a
dive mask could someday, somehow, become the basis for a local
museum, a spot as interesting to tourists and historians as the Great
Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point, at the opposite end of the
U.P. A museum that showcased Le Griffon would be unlike any other,
partly because France says the wreckage is its property, according to
previous news reports. McBroom knows that.

"I'm not sure the state has any legs to stand on when it comes to
salvaging this, but they think they do, and they like to bully
people. They need to get over it," McBroom said. I called him when I
was a day out of the water, having left the isolated dive spot and
regained a cellphone signal. McBroom said he'd contact the DNR's
director, someone known to be sensible and nonpartisan, he said.

"He's new, and I hear he's a very practical man. I'm really hoping we
can get something going for these people," McBroom said. I said I'd
check back soon. In the interim, I sent McBroom a copy of the
Liberts' 2021 book ("Le Griffon and the Huron Islands: Our story of
exploration and discovery" by Steve and Kathie Libert: Mission Point
Press, Traverse City; $26.95 softcover, $34.95 hardcover). The
senator received it at his dairy farm, where he keeps 125 cows. When
I called him back two weeks later, McBroom said he thought the book
was impressive. And he had some news about hearing from the DNR:

"I chatted with the director about this. He was very interested. I
put him in touch with Greg McMaster. I'm hoping that something good
finally comes of this."

That "something good" needs to happen soon. The Liberts said they're
feeling their age. His dive pals are, too. They can't keep diving.
And the couple can't afford more court battles for salvage rights,
they said. They said they expect no treasure, no material benefits at
all from their find. They just want, in their lifetimes, to see the
wreckage identified and protected.

They'd like to be assured that this exciting and very early slice of
Michigan history doesn't stay lost in the sand under Lake Michigan.
I'm on board with that.

Contact Bill Laytner: blaitner@freepress.com

   
 
 
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