The Wreck

by Landon Beach

  “What about the ship that marooned La Rousseau?” Mickey asked.

  40

  “Finding out about some noble and his fortune stolen from the government is all fine and dandy, but what really has my juices flowin’ is the ship I believe he was on,” Hutch said and then gulped from his thermos. “And King Louis leads us right to the name.”

  “King Louis the Fourteenth was involved in multiple wars in Europe, most notably with Spain. A bit ironic, since his mother, Queen Anne, was King Philip the Fourth of Spain’s sister. Queen Anne had sent and received correspondence that had her nailed to the wall as a traitor. The birth of Louis ended up saving her from prosecution, since the mother of the next king couldn’t be tried for treason. Strange way of life back then,” Hutch shook his head.

  “That aside, Louis was not only interested in fighting his neighbors, but also in exploring the New World. His most notable explorer was Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. Now, La Salle was not a pleasant man to work for and he struggled to keep a crew. There are said to be over sixty desertions, which is a fact we need to keep close at hand as I continue. To adequately explore and expand the fur trade, La Salle needed a sailing vessel. So, he borrowed money at a high interest rate and had the Great Lakes’ first sailing vessel, Griffon, constructed in 1679. It was named to honor a French Governor whose coat of arms had a griffin. A griffin has the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle,” said Hutch leaning back and scratching his cropped hair.

  “You think the ship La Rousseau was on was the Griffon?” Nate said.

  “Before I go any further, let me say this. I read numerous accounts last night of people who have claimed to have found the Griffon. In fact, there is a vessel on the bottom of Lake Michigan right now that seems to fit the description, but no one’s diving on her because of various lawsuits. It seems like our account from Jean La Rousseau would disprove that ship as a candidate, but who knows. Hell, the literature I’ve read can’t even agree on how long the ship was, how many cannons she carried, who was on her when she supposedly went down, and who was the last person to see her. So, what I’m going to present to you is my best guess from what I’ve been able to piece together. After all, the only people who know what really happened aren’t around anymore are they?” Hutch took a deep breath, held it for a moment before continuing.

  “A griffin was placed on the bow and the stern, and the ship was probably made of white pine and iron. She was a sixty to seventy foot long Barque armed with five to seven cannons. Her hull was rather square—had a high stern—and could have had two or three masts. Minus what La Rousseau’s letter said, the only chronicled events come from the diary of Friar Louis Hennepin. Hennepin claims that when the ship was completed, it sailed Lake Huron, made a stop at Ft. Michilmackinac, and then continued on to its destination, Green Bay. At Green Bay, they loaded the ship with beaver pelts. La Salle was in debt from building the Griffon and the cost of his voyage, so he had his pilot, ‘Luke the Dane,’ and five other crewmembers set sail for Niagara with the pelts to pay off his loans. Hennepin wrote that Luke ignored what the natives said about an upcoming storm, and the Griffon left Green Bay in September of 1679 and was never seen again.”

  “Now, enter all the scholarly theories of what could have happened to her. The overriding generalization has been that the first vessel to sail on our beloved Great Lakes, the Griffon, is also our first shipwreck. Now, the possibilities. Let’s start with La Salle. He believed that either Griffon went down in a storm or that Luke ordered the crew to help him steal the pelts, sell them, and then sunk the Griffon on purpose to hide any evidence. Where that would have happened, is anyone’s guess. If it happened in Lake Michigan, then the wreck I talked about earlier that may really be the Griffon is just waiting to be confirmed because of the lawsuits. If it went down somewhere else, then she’s still out there waiting to be found. Now, Luke was close to seven feet tall and a brutal man, who had no respect for superiors. I led similar scoundrels in the Coast Guard.”

  “I’ve taught a few like him,” Nate said.

  “Hutch, isn’t your nephew coming out for his annual visit soon?” Mickey said.

  “Yeah, the little shit is so full of himself that sometimes I could break him in half,” said Hutch. “But he’s family, so I’ll keep tryin’ to bring him around.”

  Nate said. “Sorry to get us off track. You were talking about La Salle’s pilot Luke.”

  “I think back to La Rousseau’s letter. Remember when he named the captain, but all Tyee could make out was the ‘L’? It could be Luke; he would have been in charge so La Rousseau would have considered him the captain,” Hutch said and took another pull on his coffee.

  “But, before we get on that, let me finish the possibilities of the Griffon being in Lake Michigan. One year after the disappearance, La Salle starts to get reports as to what happened to his ship and crew. Some Potawatomi Indians tell him that they saw the Griffon moored in the northern part of Lake Michigan a couple of days after she had left Green Bay. Then, a few years after that, a man tells La Salle about five white men paddling down the Mississippi in canoes carrying furs. They were captured and all but one was killed. The one who got away could have been Luke the Dane.” Hutch stood up and stretched. “And those are the theories that support Lake Michigan as the final resting place of the Griffon. The Lake Huron theories are less concrete.”

  41

  “Three possible theories argue for the wreck to be in Lake Huron,” said Hutch. “One: A wreck near Russell Island fits the size and shape of Griffon. In 1955, some experts saw it and found hand-made bolts that were old enough to be the Griffon. The other two possibilities are on Manitoulin Island. There was a wreck on a rocky beach but it was striped by settlers and not much was left for identification. Experts were brought in again and they decided that the wood and caulking left matched the period the Griffon was built. Naturally, the wreck sunk back into the water,” Hutch grinned.

  “Lots of mysteries around Manitoulin,” Mickey added.

  “Right where I’m headed, Mick. The last clue to where Griffon might be is from the late eighteen hundreds. A lightkeeper and his assistant found a cave with the skeletons of six men. I guess local residents kept the skulls as souvenirs, but rumor has it that one skull was a lot larger than the others. Some guy said it was so large, he could easily fit the jawbone over his own. The larger skull could have been Luke the Dane’s. Naturally—” Hutch’s smile widened again “—the skulls have disappeared.”

  Nate and Mickey sat in silence, trying to piece together the pieces of information that Hutch had provided. A few times, Nate went to speak, but then returned to his thoughts, shaking his head and rubbing his temples.

  Hutch broke the silence. “Now, let’s look at our old friend, Jean La Rousseau. I think wherever the Griffon may have ended up Luke and the other five crew members were never coming back for La Salle. One account I read says Luke and the crew of the Griffon were owed an entire year of pay, which seems to fit La Salle’s character. As a side note, his treatment of subordinates eventually did catch up with him and he was shot in the back of his head by his own crew. It happened in Texas of all places. It makes perfect sense that Luke would pull in at St. Ignace on his way to Niagara, sell the beaver pelts, re-supply, take on this man La Rousseau—who I think had had enough of the New World and was headed back to France—finds out he’s a noble with chests loaded with gold and dumps him off on an island in Lake Huron. Then, Luke’s overconfidence gets the better of him and instead of waiting out the storm, heads full into it. This theory is supported by Hennepin’s report of Luke throwing caution to the wind when leaving Green Bay. Hennepin also says that on the way from Niagara to Green Bay, Griffon almost sunk off of Long Point, but Luke was able to steer her through fog without any navigational aids. That’d be like trying to drive blind today,” said Hutch. “You guys followin’ me so far?”

  Nate and Mickey nodded that they were.

  “Well, gentl
eman, unless there was another sailing vessel that left St. Ignace in September 1679, or Jean La Rousseau is a liar, or he was seeing things after he got marooned, I believe Griffon went down somewhere between Hampstead and Big Sanisstey. What do you think?”

  Nate spoke up. “I wonder why no one in St. Ignace ever recorded seeing the Griffon.”

  “I thought about the same thing last night, but it is what it is. No one did. Maybe they got bought off by Luke. Also, La Rousseau said they picked him up in the morning. Maybe there weren’t many people around when he came in, or he anchored down the coast—rowed in, traded the pelts, picked up La Rousseau and got out,” Hutch said.

  “What happens if we find the rest of La Rousseau’s chests?” Mickey said.

  Hutch scratched his beard. “Well, I did a little looking into that too. The concept of paying money for money is as strange as it sounds. If we were French citizens and found treasure, we’d have to declare it and would only be reimbursed for our expenses, while the whole lot would go to the French government. If we didn’t declare it, we could go to prison for theft and fraud. However, we’re not French citizens and are in a unique position. The gold we have found—and maybe will find—belongs to the descendants of Jean La Rousseau. But taking into account that it was illegally acquired from the French government over three-hundred and fifty years ago, that it was found on U.S. soil, that La Rousseau had left his country and possibly tried to establish himself in the New World, it’s anybody’s guess who it belongs to or when they would be able to cash in on it.”

  “Should we report any of this before we start to look for the ship?” Nate said.

  “I’m against that for two reasons. One: just look at how slow the lawsuit over the wreck in Lake Michigan is going—and that’s just to establish who gets to try and identify the wreck. Two: nobody’s gonna tell me when or where I can take my boat and dive.”

  “Let’s say you do find the ship and the chests,” Mickey said. “Are you going to get a cut?”

  Hutch stood up. “Ultimately, I can’t see how anyone could keep us out of some of the kitty. We’ll have as much right to it as anyone else, and as for the one chest we already have from the cave—we found it.”

  He walked over and opened the door to a rectangular cabinet in the wall. The inside looked like a mailroom with twenty evenly cut out square slots. Hutch moved along the slots, looking at the labels he had on each one. When he found the one he wanted, he pulled out a rolled up nautical chart. He closed the cabinet drawer and unrolled the chart on the desk, using the heavy-duty rum glasses from the previous night to hold the corners down. He took out a pencil from the coffee can and a sliding ruler from the drawer and waved everyone over.

  Nate noticed that it was a large scale chart that showed the Hampstead coastline, including the bight and Hampstead Point near the bottom. A quarter of the way up from the lower edge was Diamond Crag and near the top were the Sanisstey Islands.

  “What are you doing?” Nate said.

  Mickey motioned quiet, let him finish.

  When he was done, Hutch had drawn a large box, which equated to a small area of water—no more than a few square miles.

  He put his pencil back in the coffee can and used the ruler to outline the box. “That’s our search area for today,” he said.

  42

  It was five o’clock and Nate and Mickey sat on the deck in Queen’s stern finishing a quick snack of fish sandwiches Hutch had put together for them. Mickey walked over and took a can of coke out of the cooler. Hutch was in the wheelhouse steering the boat and watching the side scan sonar display on the laptop. The four-foot towfish was deployed and being pulled one hundred and fifty feet behind the boat at a depth of twenty feet.

  Nate entered the wheelhouse and looked at the laptop’s screen. “Anything?” he asked.

  Hutch shook his head ‘no’. “You both finished with the sandwiches?”

  “Yeah. How much longer do you think we’ll be out here?”

  They had eaten lunch after looking at the chart in Hutch’s library. Then they’d loaded the rest of the gear and started at the NW corner of the box Hutch had laid out. Since then it had been the monotonous routine of traveling up the box, turning around at the far edge, and traveling down the box—steadily covering the area from north to south.

  “You know how to plot a fix?” Hutch said.

  “I do,” Nate said.

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Taught myself a few summers ago.”

  “You’re provin’ useful,” said Hutch. “Mark our spot so we’ll know where to start tomorrow.”

  Nate looked at the GPS coordinates and then plotted their position on the chart.

  “Got it?” Hutch said. “Take the wheel.”

  Hutch slipped out of the way and walked to the chart. He rolled it up and put a rubber band around it, and then slid it underneath his chart table. Positioning himself in front of the GPS console, he brought up the waypoint function. Nate had remembered the latitude and longitude of the point where they had stopped and started to call out the coordinates to Hutch when Hutch raised his hand to silence him.

  Hutch pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and then started punching in coordinates. When he was finished, the machine gave a bearing and range to the waypoint.

  “Drive to that,” Hutch said. “I want to see something before we head in.”

  ✽✽✽

  They approached the waypoint and Hutch watched for an image to appear on the laptop’s screen. Nate was still at the helm. They were at the drop-off Hutch had told him about earlier, where the depth changed from thirty feet to three-hundred feet and then back up to fifty.

  Hutch had showed Nate the piece of paper that had decided the course. It was a sheet from the plotter showing the faint outline of what could be a ship’s bow close to the right edge of the image. The printout was from the hull-mounted wide-scan beam that Hutch had turned on when they were coming back from their first trip out to Sanisstey Island. Nate recalled Hutch writing down the latitude and longitude of the spot—it seemed like that day was months ago.

  The boat passed over the waypoint and Hutch froze the screen with the push of a button. A much clearer picture confirmed what Hutch had seen in the first.

  “Whatever it is, it doesn’t look too big,” Hutch said to Nate. He turned toward the stern. “Winch in the fish, Mickey. We’re gettin’ wet.”

  Nate went forward to drop the anchor. Hutch took the wheel and turned Queen around, going over the waypoint in the opposite direction. Twenty seconds past the waypoint, Hutch pounded on the wheelhouse’s front windows for Nate to drop the hook.

  The sound of the engine lowered and then stopped. After setting the anchor, Nate walked back and hopped down into the stern.

  “Who’s divin’?” Mickey said.

  Hutch came out of the wheelhouse with a load of gear and a Styrofoam cup. “Nate and I will head down and see if this is anything. If it is, then I’ll send up this cup. If you see it, Mick, come down and join us.”

  Nate looked over the side. Two seagulls floated on the blue-green water, which was not as clear as it had seemed when they were in the box using the towfish. He swiveled his head to the right. Fifty yards past the bow, the water turned to navy. His attention returned to the seagulls, which after a minute shook their wings and lifted into the sky. A shadow covering the water crept toward the boat and engulfed it as the sun disappeared behind a wall of clouds. All the water turned to gray.

  Hutch emerged from the cabin in his wetsuit and Mickey lifted a tank from a metal rack that Hutch had installed against Queen’s port gunwale.

  “Ever dived a wreck, Nate?” Hutch asked.

  “No.”

  “Then follow me and do exactly as I do,” Hutch said.

  They sat on the starboard gunwale and strapped their fins on over their booties and then secured their dive knives. Mickey brought over three dive lights. One was the size of a household flashlight with a drawst
ring on the end to attach around the wrist. He handed it to Nate. The second light was exactly like the one Hutch had used in the cave, which looked like a radar gun. Hutch took it in his left hand and then opened his right hand as Mickey lifted the third, which was the size of a watermelon cut in half. The light face was flat and the rounded half-sphere was made of yellow plastic. A semi-circular metal handle came out from the sides of the light and joined in a rubber handgrip. There was a molded eye on either side with around three feet of wire clipped between the eyes. Hutch grabbed the rubber handle.

  “We’ll follow the anchor line down, Nate. When we reach the bottom, I’ll secure this light to the anchor line and turn her on. This will be our safety spot in case of any hiccups. We’ll also come here before we ascend. I know it’s still daylight out and we’ll only be down around thirty feet,” said Hutch anticipating Nate’s question, “but with cloud cover like today, it can get dark down there in a hurry. Just remember, always swim to the light and follow the anchor line up to safety.”

  “Where’s the wreck?” Nate said.

  Hutch stood up and looked at the direction the anchor line was tending and then used the Sanisstey Islands as a visual marker, which were a few points off the bow to port. “We don’t know it’s a wreck yet, but the object of interest is almost directly in front of the bow, maybe twenty, thirty yards away,” said Hutch. “Meet me up forward.” He put the regulator in his mouth and holding it and his mask in place, flipped back into the water.

  Nate followed Hutch. His drop had taken him no more than ten feet under. The clouds were still blocking out the sun and it was darker than he thought it would be. He switched on his underwater light and followed Queen’s hull toward the anchor line. The wooden hull was spotless. He saw a light up ahead and was soon at the line with Hutch. They began their descent and reached the bottom in less than thirty seconds. Hutch secured the safety light to the anchor line and turned it on. A beacon of light rose toward the surface. Hutch studied his compass and then directed Nate to follow him.