Wreckage of ‘Ghost Ship’ F.J. King, Which Sank 139 Years Ago, Is Found (Exclusive)

In 1886, the captain of the F.J. King ordered his crew to abandon ship after a gale started causing the 144-foot, three-masted wooden schooner to sink in the middle of the night during its journey from Michigan to Chicago.

Captain William Griffin and his crew escaped, hopping on the ship’s yawl boat, in time to see the ship and its iron ore cargo vanish underwater. They survived. The ship, however, disappeared, never to be seen again. It became known as a “ghost ship” for somehow evading ever being found. 

“The schooner has been missing for 139 years and has been one of the most highly sought after shipwrecks on Lake Michigan,” Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, tells PEOPLE.

“It was the subject of countless search efforts since the 1970s … but when shipwreck hunters scoured the area, they continually came up empty-handed — until now,” Thomsen continues of the ship’s dramatic discovery.

Nearly 14 decades later, a citizen-science project led by principal investigator Brendon Baillod put an end to the F.J. King’s perplexing disappearance earlier this summer. The project involved 20 eager citizen scientists and community historians from around the Midwest.

“We chartered a local tour vessel for the search in order to bring a large group of community historians and scientists out on the lake to experience what it’s like to search for a lost ship and to learn about remote sensing technology,” Baillod, president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association (WUAA), tells PEOPLE of the day they discovered the ship.

“Most had very low expectations, given the ship’s reputation,” Baillod adds. “As such, the moment of discovery was particularly dramatic for them, and they were the first people to lay eyes on the ship since 1886 as they piloted our Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) down to the wreck.”

WUAA announced on Sept. 14, a day before the F.J. King sinking’s 139th anniversary, that the group, using new DeepVision sidescan sonar, found the wreck in Lake Michigan within two hours on June 28. 

Baillod says his team “couldn’t believe” they found the elusive F.J. King “so quickly” — and he’s impressed by the condition of the long-lost ship.

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“The King is also exceptionally well-preserved due to the cold fresh water of the Great Lakes. She is essentially a nautical time capsule, still containing all the articles she was lost with in 1886,” Baillod explains.

“Unlike ocean wrecks that are often broken down by marine worms, the King appears much as she did the day she sank, showing only the damage incurred by striking the lake bottom,” Baillod continues.

“Due to her historical significance and her excellent state of preservation, she is being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places this fall,” he adds, noting that the F.J. King’s 19-year career before sinking “spans an important period of American growth and industrialization and is emblematic of the role the Great Lakes played in this period of our history.”