The George A. Marsh Mystery: A Family Lost on Lake Ontario

In August 1917, the old wooden schooner George A. Marsh was crossing Lake Ontario with a heavy load of coal, a captain’s family, friends, crew, and seven children aboard. Caught in a violent summer gale, the aging ship began to leak badly. Captain John Wesley Smith fought to keep her afloat just long enough to reach Amherst Island. Safety was close. Shore lights were ahead. Fishermen and homes were within sight. But the Marsh needed only a little more time. At five o’clock in the morning, just two miles from Amherst Island, the schooner sank in about 85 feet of water. Of the fourteen people aboard, only two survived. The tragedy left Belleville grieving, children orphaned, and Lake Ontario holding one of its most haunting wrecks. But the story of the George A. Marsh did not end there. Decades later, divers found the schooner still upright and remarkably intact on the lake bottom. Then came an even stranger mystery: rumors that Captain Smith may not have died in the wreck at all — and may have started a new life far from the Great Lakes. This is the story of the George A. Marsh, a family voyage turned disaster, a shipwreck preserved beneath Lake Ontario, and a captain whose fate remains one of the strangest mysteries in Great Lakes history. #GeorgeAMarsh #shipwreck #shipwreckhistory #shipwreckmystery #shipwrecks #lakeontario Music: “Storm Warnings (Mariner’s Mix)” by Gary Aho    • Storm Warnings (Wreck of the Edmund Fitzge...   Photographs: https://shipwrecksofthegreatlakes.ca/... https://canadiangeographic.ca/article... https://3dshipwrecks.org/shipwreck-ge...