SS Choctaw
Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).
Key facts
| Name | SS Choctaw | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Ship type | shipwreck | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Nationality / flag | United States | Wikidata P8047 country of registry |
| Nearest coast | United States | Natural Earth (public domain) |
| Position | 45.5343, -83.5093 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
SS Choctaw was a steel-hulled American freighter in service between 1892 and 1915, on the Great Lakes of North America. She was a so-called monitor vessel, containing elements of traditional lake freighters and the whaleback ships designed by Alexander McDougall. Choctaw was built in 1892 by the Cleveland Shipbuilding Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was originally owned by the Lake Superior Iron Company. She was sold to the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in 1894 and spent the rest of her working life with it. On her regular route between Detroit, Escanaba, Marquette (all in Michigan), and Cleveland, she carried iron ore downbound, and coal upbound.
On July 11, 1915, in foggy conditions, Choctaw was upbound for Marquette on Lake Huron with a cargo of coal from Cleveland. East of Presque Isle Light, the freighter was rammed by the downbound Canadian canaller Wahcondah. Although Choctaw sank in only 17 minutes, her crew of 22 escaped, and was picked up by Wahcondah.
For a long time, shipwreck hunters searched for the wreck of Choctaw due to her unique design. The wreck was located by a team from the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary on May 23, 2017, almost 102 years after she sank.
Diving & visiting
Between April and July 2017, Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary collaborated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research to test new equipment including unmanned aircraft systems and autonomous underwater vehicles that were designed to search for missing shipwrecks. On May 23, 2017, researchers from Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary discovered two shipwrecks in the deep waters of Lake Huron, off the coast of Presque Isle. The researchers carried out several investigations between June and August; these investigations confirmed the identities of Choctaw and the early wooden-hulled freighter Ohio.
The remains of Choctaw rest under 300 feet (91 m) of cold, fresh water. The wreck rests on her starboard side, nearly upside down, with the exposed section of her hull rising at an angle from the lake bottom. The upper level of her stern cabins broke away when she sank, leaving only the weather deck level cabins intact. The wreckage of her pilothouse lies beside her hull. The entire bow, including the section between the first and the second hatch where the collision occurred, is completely buried and only the last three of her seven cargo hatches remain exposed. There is a sizeable debris field surrounding her wreck, with most of the visible artefacts located near her stern.
The wreck of Choctaw was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 10, 2018, for its state-level significance in engineering and maritime history.
Location
- Recorded position: 45.5343, -83.5093 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Nearest coast: United States
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article SS Choctaw (revision 1380628943), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Discovery”, “Choctaw today”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- Kyle Spangler 18 km
- F. T. Barney 1868 · 27 km
- Norman 31 km
- SS Etruria 37 km
- Defiance 38 km
- MV Nordmeer 1966 · 52 km
Browse more: North America wrecks · wrecks off United States