The F.J. King: Lake Michigan’s Elusive Ghost Ship

In September 1886, the three-masted schooner F.J. King left Escanaba, Michigan, carrying 600 tons of iron ore toward Chicago. When a violent gale struck Lake Michigan near Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, the aging wooden ship began leaking faster than her exhausted crew could pump out the water. Captain William Griffin desperately tried to reach the protection of North Bay, but the heavily loaded schooner was becoming impossible to control. When the F.J. King finally disappeared beneath the waves, conflicting reports left one question unanswered: Where had the ship actually gone down? For nearly 139 years, divers and shipwreck hunters searched for the elusive schooner. Fishermen claimed to have caught pieces of her in their nets, a Wisconsin diving club offered a $1,000 reward, and the missing vessel became known as one of Lake Michigan’s great “ghost ships.” This Great Lakes shipwreck documentary follows the remarkable history of the F.J. King and her terrifying final voyage. #LakeMichigan #GreatLakesShipwrecks #FJKing Photographs: Escanaba Postcard Museum John S. Rochon Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association Brendon Baillod Zach Whitrock Wisconsin Historical Society Music: “Storm Warnings (Mariner’s Mix)” by Gary Aho    • Storm Warnings (Wreck of the Edmund Fitzge...