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Side-scan sonar turned up the 420-foot, sunken steamer Cyprus

DEER PARK - Nearly a month after side-scan sonar turned up the image of a sunken steamer lost in a Lake Superior storm almost 100 years ago, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society today announced it has found the wreck of the 420-foot steamer Cyprus.

Cyprus, reportedly in active service for only 21 days, rolled over and disappeared in a moderate Lake Superior gale the evening of Oct. 11, 1907 off Deer Park. The 420-foot steel steamer was on only her second trip after entering service as a new vessel in September, 1907.

Tom Farnquist, director of the Shipwreck Society, said the sonar find was not expected. He said the Society's dive boat David Boyd was conducting a routine sonar scan of the Lake Superior bottom on Aug. 11 when the profile of a intact sunken steamer clearly appeared on sonar scanning gear. He said the Boyd was searching for a lost schooner at the time of the discovery.

At first, Shipwreck Society staffers aboard the Boyd thought they'd found the remains of the original D.M. Clemson, which also sank in the same general area. Only after more sonar scans of the wreck and a dive by the society's camera-equipped remote vehicle did the staff learn the ship was actually the ill-fated Cyprus.

Typically tight-lipped about the schooner wreck Boyd was seeking, Farnquist refused to divulge that target vessel's name.

Farnquist said the unexpected Cyprus wreck lies about 10 miles due north of remote Deer Park. That in itself was a surprise, he said, since the ship's only survivor, Second Mate Charles Pitz fixed the ship's location as 18 miles off Deer Park when she rolled over and sank.

After a handful of additional sonar passes and ROV dives on the wreck in the days that followed, Farnquist said wreck experts cannot account for the obvious discrepancy. In 1907, navigation on the Great Lakes depended heavily on celestial navigation, magnetic compass, dead reckoning and scattered lighthouse and range beacons. The marine radio had yet to come into general use and nearly a half century would pass before ships were equipped with radar and other electronic navigation aids.

Farnquist said another conundrum about the Cyprus wreck was the reason she foundered. He cited a variety of shipwreck sources which offer a suggestion as to the cause but no definitive reason for the ship's pronounced port list and eventual rollover.

He noted that the new ship was fitted with telescoping hatch covers, called “Mulholland” covers made up of several overlapping leaves that slid over each other when opened. The telescoping hatch covers, which remained in use on many Lakes ships well into the 1960s, were not water-tight.

Some accounts at the time suggested the ship, which was taking boarding seas from the port quarter in a moderate gale, took on water through the closed hatch covers or lost leaves in the seas and gradually took on the port list that eventually claimed her.

Farnquist said the ship's lone survivor said otherwise after he recovered from his ordeal. He said mate Pitz reported that the then-new hatches were intact at the time of the sinking. Pitz also indicated that a shipyard labor dispute in Lorain, Ohio may have resulted in structural defects that led to the Cyprus loss.

The only eye-witness account of the sinking, filed by Capt. Harbottle of the steamer George Stephenson, which was accompanying the Cyprus across the lake, indicated the doomed ship was listing and trailing red in her wake - a sign that flooding had reached the ship's vulnerable cargo hold. (Cyprus carried iron ore loaded at Superior, Wisc. at the time of her loss.)

The sonar image of the ship appears to further deepen the puzzle. When found laying on her port side, the ship's hull appears sound and intact with no sign of catastrophic hull failure.

Farnquist said the Shipwreck Society plans additional dives on the recently discovered wreck to perhaps get at the cause of the sinking. Laying in 460 feet of cold Lake Superior water, the wreck is well below safe diving limits without sophisticated dive gear. He said planned dives with the remote vehicle will examine the exposed hull more closely to see if signs of hull failure are present in the well-preserved wreck.

Farnquist also said the Shipwreck Society plans to examine more closely an unidentified piece of wreckage spotted by sonar well off the ship's bow. He suspects that wreckage is the Cyprus' pilothouse, which was detached from the hull at some point after the ship slipped beneath the waves.

In all, 22 men died in the sinking and only Pitz survived. His rescue from the stormy beach at Deer Park was yet another stroke of luck connected with the Cyprus wreck. At about 2 a.m. on Oct. 12, 1907, the shipwrecked second mate was found in a semi-conscious state by a patrolling Lifesaving Service crewman.

Just hours after the ship disappeared, the Lifesaving Service at the Two-Hearted Lifesaving Station had not yet learned of the Cyprus sinking when Pitz was found alive.

The second mate went on to sail the Lakes for many years after the sinking but strangely never listed the Cyprus as one of his ships on records filed after the sinking.

(sooeveningnews)