Last stop Green Bay? The Holy Grail of shipwrecks

GREEN BAY – Sometimes referred to as the “Holy Grail of Great Lakes shipwrecks” or the “ghost ship of the Great Lakes,” Le Griffon is a mystery in many ways and has appealed to many writers and shipwreck hunters over the past three and a half centuries.

Dozens of claims have been made as to the location of its wreckage, but one has yet to be fully proven.

Le Griffon was constructed by French Explorer René-Robert Cavelier, who came to “New France” (Canada) in 1666.

Some claim that the ship was the first ship built in America; others claim that it was the first ship to sail the Upper Great Lakes; while some say it was the first shipwreck.

Le Griffon was launched on Aug. 3, 1679, with a crew of over 30 to explore Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River in search of a western passage to China.

The two-masted wooden brig had an estimated length of 70 feet and a width of 16 feet, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

And it seems that the location of its construction is another one of its mysteries.

“The enterprise of La Salle, in constructing a vessel above the Falls of Niagara, in 1679, to facilitate his voyage to Illinois and the Mississippi, is well known, but while the fact of his having thus been the pioneer of naval architecture on the Upper Lakes is familiar to historical readers, the particular place of its construction, has been a matter of various opinions,” wrote Cyrus Kingsbury Remington in The Shipyard of the Griffon, published in 1891.

But one thing is for certain, in September of 1679 Le Griffon went missing.

“The Griffon, departing from the Niagara shipyard upon the 7th of August, the first sailing vessel to plow the waters of the upper lakes, enjoyed a pleasant passage through Lake Erie, the strait of Detroit, and Lake St. Clair. Upon Lake Huron, however, a violent storm alarmed the travelers, so that they were glad to find peaceful anchorage off Point St. Ignace, in the straits of Mackinac,” wrote Father Louis Hennepin, who accompanied La Salle on the journey, in A New Discovery of a Vast Country in America in 1698.

“After a week in the Mackinac region, the Griffon entered Lake Michigan and ran over to Washington Island, off the mouth of Green Bay. Here La Salle found some of the advance party traders whom he had dispatched the year before; they had accumulated a goodly store of furs, which were promptly loaded into the vessel. Such were La Salle’s financial straits that he deemed it wise to hurry forward to his creditors this valuable cargo, thereby to secure the release of such of his property as they had seized at Fort Frontenac and elsewhere.”

An August 1887 Port Huron Times Herald states that the Griffon arrived at Green Bay on Sept. 2, as does a June 1892 edition of the Minneapolis Echo de’ L’ouest.

“On the 28th, they were at Michilimackinac, at the second settlement of the Natives and the French colony. (A number of men sent to Illinois had not gone beyond Michigan, so much had they been frightened by the dangers of such a voyage. Some of them had been reduced to Sault Ste. Marie at the same time as he also laid hands on four others at Illinois. On Sept. 2, The Griffon entered Michigan and soon landed in Green Bay,” the Echo de’ L’ouest article, translated into English, stated.

But after leaving Green Bay, the ship never made it back to Niagara.
Hennepin attributes the loss to a storm somewhere between Green Bay and Mackinac.

“Leaving the islands upon the 19th of September, La Salle, with 14 men in five heavily-laden canoes, paddled southward along the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan,” Hennepin said, adding that the men who stayed with the Le Griffon were inexperienced, while the more experienced men went with La Salle in the canoes.

“For many months La Salle was heartsick with anxiety for her fate,” he added. “It was not until long after, that the unfortunate pathfinder learned of her loss in a storm between Green Bay and Mackinac, owing to the unskillfulness of the pilot— although there were not lacking rumors of positive treachery.”

Over time, shipwreck hunters have claimed to have found the ship; however, Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association President Brendon Baillod told Discover Magazine that the wooden ship would not have survived 345 years underwater because of the unique area where it is most-recently believed to have met its demise.

“The waves really move the water, even at 80 feet below,” Baillod says. “I would not expect any wooden remains from 1679 to remain,” he said.

Baillod added that people began suggesting that Le Griffon had never been found because it was in Lake Huron, not Lake Michigan.