July 15, 2025
Shipwreck hunter Chris Thuss is presently exploring a number of underwater websites on Lake Michigan. Here is the way it all started.
Spending afternoons fishing for smallmouth bass on Lake Michigan and off of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, is a routine a part of Chris’ week. So, it’s not unusual for him to reel in a pair smallies or encounter a couple of recognized shipwrecks within the course of.
But on the afternoon of May 13, 2025, Chris seen one thing 9’ beneath the present seem on his Garmin LiveScope™ sonar. It was a 100-year-old piece of historical past known as the J.C. Ames.
“It was so foggy, I used to be simply following the financial institution, and I seen what seemed like both a board or a pair items of wooden on my LiveScope,” Chris mentioned. “So, I type of simply angled my boat out to the correct and as quickly as I went over to that space, I noticed the entire ribbing and every thing of the ship.”
Built in 1881, the J.C. Ames was initially named the J.C. Perrett. It was one of many greatest tugboats constructed on the Great Lakes at 160’ and was used to haul giant quantities of lumber to port.
After roughly 50 years of service and on the peak of the Great Depression, the J.C. Ames was scuttled, thrown into Maritime Bay and set on hearth for onlookers to witness.
Until now, the ship had but to be documented.
Chris credit his LiveScope™ LVS32 sonar1 with discovering the wreckage, though he initially bought it to seek out fish, not shipwrecks.
“If you need to be within the sport, tournament-wise, you just about must have some form of forward-facing sonar on the boat at this level,” Chris mentioned.
When Chris was following the financial institution, he was operating LiveScope LVS32 in ahead mode. He usually solely makes use of it on this mode since he doesn’t have a perspective mount. To see what’s occurring beneath him, he has Garmin GPSMAP® 1222.
Once Chris recognized the wreck, he acquired in touch with a diver from the Wisconsin Historical Society. Without being within the water and seeing it together with his personal eyes, Chris was in a position to establish key options of the boat and cross them alongside to the diver, who then was in a position to dig by way of information to determine what shipwreck this will need to have been. Records can embrace ship logs, journals, wreck lists, newspapers, and so on.
“I may give her an estimated size and an estimated width of the vessel simply going backwards and forwards on LiveScope and ranging my ahead vary,” Chris mentioned.
When taking a better look, Chris was additionally in a position to establish what kind of boat the J.C. Ames was.
“There’s a handful of steamers that that they had sunk within the space. So, a steamer had a facet wheel on it, there was no propeller,” Chris mentioned. “This boat, I may truly see the propeller on my LiveScope, in order that type of eradicated a few the potential boats that would have been within the space.”
Just by having a look on the measurement of the propeller, it was clear that the boat was a tugboat.
While Chris lives on the water, he admits he’s not a lot of swimmer, so having the ability to view the J.C. Ames with LiveScope allowed him an in-depth, 3D have a look at the main points of the tugboat with out ever having to go beneath the present.
“To have the ability to have a look at every thing intimately from topside on the entrance deck of my bass boat was fairly cool,” he mentioned.
Once a shipwreck has been coated with sand, the additional layer helps to protect the wreck by appearing as a bodily barrier and slows the method of decomposition. So, when the water ranges are low and extra stress is placed on the sand, waves grow to be extra intense and begin to wash the sand out of wreckages, leaving the ship completely preserved and simple to view.
“It’s type of like a time capsule,” Chris mentioned.
Finding shipwrecks is approach for historians and anglers to, as Chris places it, “unveil a chunk of historical past.” And fortunately, a Garmin LiveScope sonar permits the legacy and intrigue of sunken vessels to stay on.
1Garmin supplied Chris with the LiveScope Plus LVS34 sonar that he used to take the pictures on this story