A Man Noticed a Strange Shape on Satellite Images. It Turned Out to Be a 138-Year-Old Shipwreck in Lake Michigan

While sailing through a heavy blanket of fog, the “Frank D. Barker” went off course and ran into a limestone outcropping in October 1887

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

August 27, 2025

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In the fall of 1887, the Frank D. Barker was sailing across Lake Michigan when the weather began to deteriorate. Cruising through a thick blanket of heavy fog, the two-masted wooden schooner went off course and ran into a limestone outcropping near Rowleys Bay in Wisconsin’s Door County Peninsula.

The captain and crew were able to abandon ship and take refuge on nearby Spider Island. But the Frank D. Barker succumbed to the waves and the wind, eventually sinking to the bottom of the lake.

Now, 138 years later, the lost vessel has been found. It’s submerged 24 feet deep in a shallow area known as Barker Shoal near the town of Liberty Grove, according to a statement from the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Matt Olson, a tour guide and the owner of Door County Adventure Rafting, discovered the shipwreck last month. While searching for new places to take his customers near Rowleys Bay, he spotted an unusual-looking shape on satellite images of the region. Olson grabbed his waterproof camera and sonar system and headed out onto the water to investigate.

Sure enough, he found the remains of a ship resting on the lakebed.

“I was surprised by how big it was,” Olson tells the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Christopher Clough. “A lot of it is still there today, which is pretty cool because a lot of these wrecks get destroyed by the wind and ice as time goes on.”

Olson had a hunch the wreck was the Frank D. Barker. After he reported the find to the State Historic Preservation Office, the Wisconsin Historical Society sent experts to the site. They confirmed the vessel’s identity.

“It’s like a football field filled with oak,” says Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society, to Wisconsin Public Radio’s Sarah Lehr. “The entire ship is sort of filleted open, and a lot of the deck machinery is still there. It’s just really amazing. It’s almost like looking at a puzzle, because, you know, everything is there. It’s laid out. The sides have split open but you can, in your mind, kind of put it back together.”

Olson was a bit surprised no one else had stumbled upon the Frank D. Barker, because the wreck was faintly visible from the surface. However, because of the same limestone outcropping that stranded the ship more than a century ago, many boaters prefer to avoid the area, reports Wisconsin Public Radio. Additionally, historic newspaper accounts suggested the vessel sank closer to Spider Island, which may have made its true location more difficult to find.

The Frank D. Barker was built in 1867 to haul grain and coal across the Great Lakes. The ship made its final voyage on October 1, 1887, as it sailed from Manistee to Escanaba, Michigan, to pick up a load of iron ore. The lack of cargo likely contributed to its demise.

“It was running light … so it was sitting very high in the water, and it got blown over this shoal that’s on the end of Spider Island,” Thomsen tells WLUK’s Ashley Kaster and Tony Langfellow.

Shipwreck discovered in Lake Michigan 138 years after the Frank D. Barker sank

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After the 137-foot-long ship became stranded, a tugboat showed up the next day and attempted to free it. But that initial recovery mission was unsuccessful, as were several subsequent salvage attempts over the following year. The vessel was worth around $8,000 at the time, which would be equivalent to more than $250,000 today, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Experts with the historical society hope to revisit the shipwreck during an upcoming archaeological survey in the spring. They hope to eventually get the vessel added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Olson is no stranger to discovering long-lost shipwrecks. He also helped locate the Grey Eagle and the Sunshine, two schooners that sank in 1869. But finding the Frank D. Barker, which went undetected for so many years, was an “incredible feeling,” he says in the statement. He was so excited that he took his wife and his 6-year-old son snorkeling above the wreck site, per Wisconsin Public Radio.

“There’s a lot of history around here in Door County and throughout the rest of the state, and a lot of this stuff has kind of been forgotten about—a lot of these shipwrecks and their locations,” Olson tells WLUK.

Sarah Kuta | Read More

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.