A shipwreck found in Algoma earlier this month may have taken them only five minutes to find, but the hard work of Brendon Baillod and Bob Jaeck began weeks before they ever put their boat into the water. The duo, which discovered the shipwrecks of the Trinidad and Margaret A. Muir the last two years, uncovered the John Evenson on September 13th. In 1895, the 54-foot-long tug boat was assisting the I. Watson Stephenson just a few miles northeast of Algoma when it came across the bow of the large steamer and got crushed. There were previous attempts to find the Evenson with dive crews in the 1980s, but there was no luck to be found. Baillod says finding it so quickly was a stroke of luck, but a lot goes into their process to increase their chances of finding shipwrecks like the Evenson.

Within a day or two of their discovery, Baillod said representatives from the Wisconsin State Underwater Archaeology Department traveled to Algoma to take hundreds of photographs of the site to create a 3D photogrammetry model of the John Evenson. The shipwreck will now be nominated for the National and State Registers of Historic Places. Baillod teased that they plan to release a book on the three recent Algoma shipwreck discoveries to generate even more interest in the stories of what they found.

Photo by Brendon Baillod