‘Lucky’ dive leads to elusive ghost ship lost after sinking 139 years ago in WI
Roughly around 2 a.m. Sept. 15, 1886, a ship known as the F.J. King became a gift to the dark waters of Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin, after meeting a storm its seams couldn’t withstand. A century later, the schooner had become one of the most elusive wrecks in America’s Dairyland, often evading those who dedicated their lives to finding it.
Until recently.
The Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association (WUAA) led by principle investigator Brendon Baillod, announced that he, along with 20 citizen scientists and Midwest historians, finally found the wreckage of the so-called ghost ship.
“Area commercial fisherman claimed to bring up pieces of her in their nets and the local lighthouse keeper claimed to have seen her masts breaking the surface, but when wreckhunters scoured the area, they continually came up empty-handed,” a news release about the discovery said.
“The WUAA group consequently considered the discovery a long shot and were mostly focused on learning about sidescan sonar and remote operated vehicle (ROV) technology when they left the dock on Saturday, June 28th, 2025.”
It took two hours for the group to find it.
“A few of us had to pinch each other,” Baillod said. “After all the previous searches, we couldn’t believe we had actually found it, and so quickly.”
The release noted that while the find was “lucky, (it) wasn’t accidental.” Baillod had researched the ship and had done former searches that ended in subtle heartbreak. Baillod figured the crew didn’t exactly know where on the lake they were due to the cover of night.
“We reasoned that the captain may not have known where he was in the 2AM darkness, but the lighthouse keeper’s course and distance to the masts were probably accurate,” Baillod said in the release.
Baillod had mapped out a probable course from where parts of the ship had been spotted along with accounts by those who had also been on the sunken ship’s trail. When the group came upon the wreckage, they marveled at the fact that it was still “remarkably intact,” Baillod noted.
The three-masted wooden ship sank when it was hauling iron to Chicago, so the group figured that might have impacted the ship’s body, prompting it to break apart. But that wasn’t the case.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, another aspect that made the find historical was that it was the first time community historians and citizen scientists from parts of the Midwest had been able to witness the hunt.
This was the fifth shipwreck found by the WUAA in three years, according to the release.
This story was originally published September 16, 2025 at 11:45 AM with the headline "‘Lucky’ dive leads to elusive ghost ship lost after sinking 139 years ago in WI."