Any story that survives 100 years has to have some validity to it. The delivery came down the St. Lawrence River between the United States and Canada and into Lake Michigan en route to Chicago, but somehow, the Union became aware of the delivery and attacked the boat. Marty Lagina and Matty Blake return to the eerie waters surrounding Poverty Island in Lake Michigan to search for a lost Civil War treasure worth an estimated $400-million. As he walked the room, he said, 'Who knows? When a Union ship began attacking, the captain had the crew throw the treasure chests overboard in the waters off poverty island, so the gold could not be . The SS Ira H. Owen was a Great Lakes freighter that sank near Outer Island in the Apostle Islands, Lake Superior, in the Mataafa Storm on 28 November 1905.She was loaded with 116,000 bushels of barley which was considered a "light load". That's a lot of our country," Steve Libert said. There are several theories of where the chests came from, one of them being, Jesse Strang the King of Beaver Island and the leader of a Mormoncolony on Beaver Island with the gold was collected from his followers. As long as I have those things working for me, Ill probably continue to do it.. It is difficult to tell how many people actually dived near Poverty Island over the years. Sailors in the 20s almost had the chests. Traveling up the seaway to the Great Lakes seems to me a very odd way to reach Richmond VA. Mr Libert hopes to find a cannon, like the above, on the wreck of The Griffin. There is a reason why this book is accruate if not so well definded. So coming in the back door was longer, but had higher odds of succeeding. Rick Lagina and the team set out on a highly anticipated dive operation to find evidence of a shipwreck, in this clip from Season 9, "The Hedden Truth."Tuesd. of that ship will never leat that trezer leave the merky deps of the water Soshe joined his quest,although she is unable to dive with him because she has had a perforated eardrum since childhood. Suddenly, a storm descended on them, almost as if to deny them the treasure. Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com, Diving couple say they've found Great Lakes' oldest shipwreck, but doubters abound. On November 2, 1933, Behrens filed a "Record of Casualties to Vessel." [4] Le Griffon was the first full-sized European style sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes that was built and commanded by the French explorer Ren-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle in 1679. The Poverty Island Wildfire ignited June 26, 2016 by a lighting strike on a 200 square-acre island off Michigan's Garden Peninsula in Lake Michigan. Thanks for the good wishes. Bennett is the author of: 1) Deep Quest The Entry 2) The Sunken Treasure of Poverty Island 3) Island of Bones and the award recipient of: Sailors and divers have had odd experiences near this wreck. The Poverty Island Treasure story has been arranged and rearranged with the same slim two sentences or at most a few paragraphs. Location: near Poverty Island, . At 4.30am on Monday 4 August 1845 in stormy weather, the Cataraqui struck a reef on the west coast of King Island less than 100 metres from shore. It's an exciting story of missing treasurepassed down through time, a tale that is intriguing and, well, maybetrue. Join MU Plus+ and get exclusive shows and extensions & much more! [2][3], On June 16, 2013, U.S. and French archeologists began examining an underwater object first discovered in 2001 near Poverty Island that could be the wreck of Le Griffon, although it will take time to determine if it is even a shipwreck. But alas, lifes priorities and age dissolves their dream. A underwater tow sled is far more efficient. The sunken salvage ship Captain Lawrence from 1933 was discovered in 1993 and found not to contain the gold. The team makes an astonishing discovery in the investigation of not just one but two shipwrecks. My grandfather spent half of his life after coming home from WWII with a friend in Benzonia, MI. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Had some really wonderful stories coming back from trips where he stared into the Gates of Hell with water walls on both sides and lightning crashing all around. Shipwrecks is a short novel translated from the Japanese by Mark Ealey. Poverty Islandis currently owned by the federal government. Like all adventures in treasure hunting there is a lack of funding. Now imagine a few boxes 2X2X3 feet or there about in 60 to 80 feet of water in a square mile area. There were considerable changes to the story line for the sake of TV time constraints. Door County is also known for are shipwrecks, Death's Door and legends Prominent historians and shipwreck experts in Michigan doubt the Liberts' claim. Le Griffon. Data on another 4,981 ships were . Will Richard Bennett ever find the Poverty Island treasure? They then set the ship on fire. But we just wanted to let our community consider this mystery. If 85 th st went though, we wouldnt t have had a back yard. Mr and Mrs Libert claim The Griffin matches wreckage found in 2018 near Poverty Island in Lake Michigan. She was 26 feet wide and 105 feet long and stood 60 feet off the bottom. It was late August in 1994 when the crew of "Unsolved Mysteries" arrived, and the county was ready for them. They discovered the trunks while pulling up anchor, but before they could get it aboard, the anchor chain snapped and treasure and anchor were lost in the water. SSI Platinum 5000 Diving Award 1993, 518 Water Street Sheboygan Falls, WI 53085, Second Saturdays - Journeys Into Local History, The Sunken Treasure of Poverty Island with Richard Bennett. But Im a dreamer, and Im a gambler. i beleve the boxis of gold will never be found or brat up for the simpel fakt He has spent many years in the Great Lakes searching for shipwrecks. The Old abandoned Lighthouse, thats on my Bucket List of places to photograph, looks over the waters where treasure chests full of gold were tossed overboard into Lake Michigan. Without dreams life would be pretty boring. All in all, the locals were impressed by how friendly the Hollywood people were. Poor guy. Extra Notes: This case originally ran on the November 11, 1994 episode. Funny, as I was just thinking about this wreckI have to get Richard's info this week so I can research it. Or how many times they dived on each trip there. I grew up two blocks away from you, I think I may have been your paperboy in the late sixties. During its voyage, the ship was discovered and chased. Ive heard this story many times. More: Travel the Great Lakes on a floating mansion with new Viking cruise ships, More: Report: Recycling in Michigan reaches 19.3%, up 35.4% in 3 years. Case File: Poverty Island Treasure Location: Michigan Date: 1863 Description: Poverty Island is an island in Lake Michigan between St. Martin Island and Summer Island just south of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Despite the lack of a paper trail, the legend of the secret shipment has persisted. The leader of our scuba diving club dove many times looking for the gold with no luck. The crew members chained the chests together and threw them overboard rather than risk the chance of being caught. But, while delivering a valuable cargo of furs, it vanished amid rumours that she had been cursed by a prophet from the indigenous Iroquois tribe. Only then did Mr Libert and various archaeologists discover that the bowsprit and the remainder of the vessel were separate. "I'm an independent historian, and I thought our patrons would be interested," said Stozicki, who is president of the Rochester-Avon Historical Society. 1,517 people lost their lives. Steve is scheduled to talk about the couple's lifelong questand sign booksat 7 p.m. Thursday at the Rochester Hills Public Library. Several diagnostic artifacts were recovered from the site . Because the odds are always against you. Thousands of vessels from canoes to car ferries and steamers to modern ore boats have sailed these "inland seas" and unknown numbers still remain - settled on the lakes bottom in watery graves. While this sounds like just an old sailor's legend, there are some historical accounts that somewhat give the story credence. Some, maybe more than some, might admit they didnt believe it. By early 1864 the Union blockade was so strong only one in three blockade runners made it though. By some accounts the ship was discovered by Union forces and sunk near Poverty Island, while others say it was dashed upon the rocks while attempting to make a misguided night run, and yet another version says they were attacked by French pirates. Various seasons available now on Hulu. Never give upand God go with you! I for one started before we had any formal search devices, side scan, GPS that sort of equipment. They discovered the trunks while pulling up anchor, but before they could get it aboard, the anchor chain snapped and treasure and anchor were lost in the water. Asked about the couple's claims, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources was quick to dismiss them. The wreck was found near Poverty Island on Lake Michigan, almost 350 years after it vanished. VIRTUAL MUSEUM Shipwrecks: A Deep Look Lost & Found Unsolved Mysteries Artifact Collection. Over a period variously estimated at 188 to 137 years, it has eluded platoons of treasure-The view from Poverty Island reveals a vast panorama of water . Now they're retired in Charlevoix, a four-hour boat ride from the dive site that they hope will someday disprove thenaysayers. At the Rochester Hills Public Library, which also serves the neighboring city of Rochester and Oakland Township, Community Relations Manager Tiffany Stozicki said she hoped that Steve Libert's talkwill pique interest not only in shipwrecksbut in the broader subjectsof what this region was like, and who lived here, a century and a half before Michigan became a state. It was then spirited down the St. Lawrence River and into Lake Michigan. Is there a fortune worth of gold lying out there just waiting to be found? Fact; The treasure was not been found by the first salvage divers, as has been implied. He's been searching the waters of Lake Michigan near tiny Poverty Island for decades, and now shipwreck hunter Steve Libert thinks he has found the remains of the Griffin, used by a 17th-century . The Coronado shipwreck is located south of Hotel del Coronado, a historic hotel in San Diego, in front of the El Camino Tower of the Coronado Shores condos. After two years sifting through satellite imagery, Mr Libert found what he believed was the rest of the wreck, and this was later confirmed in a September 2018 dive. This San Diego County beach is also locally nicknamed Shipwreck . We are confident the ship was wrecked due to a severe storm. In 2001, a famous Great Lakes shipwreck hunter, Steve Libert, claimed her wreck in Northern Lake Michigan near Poverty Island. still it would be great to find them since they are civil war era. There are treasure stories around us It was built with the intention of finding a route through North Americas Great Lakes to reach China and Japan. For at least one determined treasure hunter it is very real indeed, and time will only tell if there is anything to it or not. Maybe because of Povertys inherit dangerous location this may not be for you. imagine a case of whitworth rifles, ahhhh. Professional diver and owner of a diving school and shop in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa, Bennet became fascinated and obsessed with the legend of the Poverty Island lost treasure back in 1968, and has been looking for it ever since. See more in this clip from Season 3, "Return to Poverty Isla. Bennett has devised an ingenious underwater sled to comb the murky . "I've supported the historical part of it," including the accumulation and study of an entire wall of books about French exploration of North America, 17th-century shipbuilding techniques, and just about everything ever written from 1769 on about the Griffon. Thats the legend. (1,509 ft 2 in) off Poverty Island, Michigan on 21 April 1984. In 1994, when countyresidents heard that a television crew was on its way to document a mystery, it seemed like the best of these worlds were coming together within the county. Dean Anderson, the Michigan State Archeologist, examined the object, an alleged "bowsprit," and determined it to be a fishing net stake. 'The Poverty Island Treasure Brief' can be found at. Whether the Liberts found the Griffonor merely stumbled on the watery wreckage of some unidentified old ship, their book and the saga of their search open a door to the fascinating earliest days of European exploration inthe Great Lakes, before the founding of Detroit in 1701. The only way to really find this treasure is to have human beings on the sled visually looking at the bottom. It looked like a ship sitting upright on the lake bottom. Discovery of the Shipwreck. Since I began my latest job Ive been interested in it more as we have tech available that can discriminate gold returns from other metals. It wouldn't be the only supposed lost treasure said to lurk down in the depths of the Great lakes and it surely makes one wonder. Unless it can be shown that someone built a ship on the Upper Great Lakes before 1790 that includes all these characteristics-then this wreck is La Salle's "Griffon." This year, the Discovery Channel aired an episode of their series, 'Expedition Unknown,' filmed in part at the Mississagi site of the wreck off Manitoulin Island. Their findings are detailed in the 2021 book Le Griffon and the Huron Islands 1679: Our Story of Explorations and Discovery. Date: 1863 No new facts were discovered during filming,nor was any gold. Those have been around since the story broke into the diving industry by Skin Diver Magazine in 1969. It wasthe first big ship to sail the Great Lakes. Is the treasure of Poverty Island real, or is it just myth and legend? People believed the earth was flat for longer than that. April 30, 2019. A 400-year-old silk dress discovered in a shipwreck off the Dutch coast has shed new light on a daring top-secret mission to pawn the crown jewels on the eve of the English civil war. If walking toward the condos from the hotel, the El Camino Tower is the furthest oceanfront building south in the complex. Contact me if your interested Mr Bennett. The PADI 50 year Contributions Award 2016 Download our app for the latest, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Although a lighthouse was eventually built on Poverty Island and put into operation in 1885, for a long time ships were forced to travel during the days and brave treacherous rocks and shoals. Libert discovered what he believes to be remains of the vessel during dives off Poverty Island in 1984 and 1985. A few years later, a group of investors in Chicago raised $50,000 to try their luck at Poverty Island. Weve not been able to find any evidence that any of these vessels that were recorded to have been lost were sunk in the vicinity of Poverty Island or that they were French vessels, as the legend would have it to be.. News", Beaver Islands State Wildlife Research Area, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poverty_Island&oldid=1140233398, Upper Peninsula, Michigan geography stubs, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 19 February 2023, at 03:07. At 3 a.m. on September 19, 1933, a sudden wind blew the vessel onto the rocky shore of Lake Michigan's Poverty Island. The area is very treacherous. After a long courtship and college degrees, they married in 1981. Archaeology: Discovery of 'grand old' Pearl Harbour ship, Archaeologists stunned at shipwreck 'frozen in time', Nostradamus makes chilling 2022 'prediction' for EU collapse, Mountain range disappeared into Yellowstone supervolcano magma chamber. Since its disappearance, it has been widely considered the Holy Grail for Great Lakes shipwreck hunters. Id love to join Mr Bennett and help with the salvage, Im. He mentioned this ship. The area is very treacherous. At the time, Union forces were beginning to gain the upper hand in the war, and the cash-strapped Confederates were frantically trying to raise money for their war effort. Often, we likely went over the same spot or at least part of the same spot. An update on the Poverty Island Treasure legend. looking for the lost gold of Poverty Island. I Agree With You Jean Anne Arden Ah Am A Little Bit Speechless If That Were Me I Would Display It In The Museum! People are dumb. History: Richard Bennett, a professional diver and . The Mystery of New York's Renegade Subway Psychic, Forget About What We Know About Roswell: It's What's Missing About the Case That We Need to Look For, Archeologists Discover Another Secret Corridor Inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, Why and How John Keels The Mothman Prophecies Got its Name, "What's the Creepiest Thing You've Ever Seen or Heard?" "Especially going back that far, it's really hard to prove things. In the 1860s, this place was in the middle of a huge boom in maritime shipping and commerce, as the area has many steel mills and was connected to the booming Peninsula Railroad. May he rest in peace. All, I am currently finishing a screenplay on the Poverty Island Gold. There are many new facts that appear to support the legend. Learn how your comment data is processed. with Mr Bennett. "Adventures on Forty-one Islands: Island No. The wreckage, however, suggests the storm was the most feasible theory. Bennett, a professional diver and author of The Poverty Island Sunken Treasure Brief, has spent over forty-five years and $100,000 of his own money searching for the Civil War treasure. Fact; The chests were not hooked by the salvage crew that were searching in the 1930's no matter what you may have seen on NBC's Unsolved Mystries. On June 16, 2013, U.S. and French archeologists began examining an underwater object first discovered in 2001 near Poverty Island that could be the wreck of Le Griffon, although it will take time to determine if it is even a shipwreck.Le Griffon was the first full-sized European style sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes that was built and commanded by the French explorer Ren . After the discovery of the bowsprit, a 10-year legal battle with the State of Michigan prevented explorers from excavating the rest of the ship. He met Kathie in high schoolwhen he returned on crutches after a football injury and teachers asked her to carry his books. Thisship was the first decked vessel to sail the upper Great Lakes of a scale and design in keeping with 17th Century shipbuilding.". "Kids should know, this is the guy who claimed all the land that became the Louisiana Purchase. Poverty Island is a small island in the U.S. state of Michigan. The Lake Serpent, an eight-year-old, 47-foot schooner, left Cleveland in September 1829 for the 55-mile trip to the Lake Erie Islands.Upon arriving at the island rich with limestone, the ship's . Did the salvage team really find the treasure? Behrens and his crew of four escaped and took refuge on Poverty Island. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. At the time, Union forces were beginning to gain the upper hand in the war, and the cash-strapped Confederates were frantically trying to raise money for their war effort. I have read the above comments and hope to provide you a feature movie someday. I doubt the Poverty Treasure has been found. Acouple in Charlevoix think they've found it. The Griffin, Mr Libert believes, was caught in a four-day storm. "That's when I learned about his attachment to the Griffon, and really to the Great Lakes and all shipwrecks," she said. Despite that belief, there is a story that a group of sailors might have accidentally snagged one of the trunks in 1929. Maybe somebody will find that ship someday,'and he touched me on the shoulder.". Today, Richard Bennett feels confident that he will succeed where others have failed. In the storm, the salvage boat was lost. Exposed timbers of the Twelvemile Island wreck (NPS Photo) SEAC and the Submerged Resources Center (SRC), in conjunction with the Slave Wrecks Project, were part of a federal, state, university, and private sector team assessing a reporter's claim that the wreck of the Clotilda - the last known ship to bring enslaved people to the U.S. from Africa -had been discovered near Mobile. "We don't really have anything onthe Griffon. . (Image: Great Lakes Exploration Group via Pen News ). #1.