In it bottom of Lake Superiorthe largest body of water in North America located between Canada and the United Statesmembers of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS), along with researcher Dan Fountain, They found a ship that sank during World War II with its captain inside.
A discovery stunned the GLSHS researchers who were working together with Fountain in the search for a shipwreck, but when they learned that it was the Arlington, a historic ship loaded with wheat and measuring seventy-one meters in size, they were filled with pride.
The legendary ship set sail on April 30, 1940 from the Canadian coast of Ontario bound for Owen Sound, another port in the same city. However, the dense fog that turned into a storm as the hours passed, and caused the boat to begin to fill with waterchanged plans and the captain, Frederick Burke, decided to return to Port Arthur, from where they set sail.
When the ship began to sink at 4:30 AM on May 1, the crew on board boarded the Collingwood, another larger freighter that was nearby. Captainfor its part, He was the only crew member who remained unchanged inside the ship, and he sank with him.
Fountain's investigation
For the last ten years, Fountain has been working on a project on Lake Superior with another objective through information collected by remote sensors. Frequent searching for shipwrecks since he was a child, the retired electronics technician who lives in Michigan never imagined what he would find from the information collected by a remote sensing vessel.
As explained by the GLSHS on its official website, Fountain went to its facilities to ask for help with its work because it had detected an anomaly in a specific sector. In 2023, members of the organization together with Fountain detected that it was indeed a shipwreck and, after observing the letters with the name of the vessel using a remote-controlled vehicle, They concluded that it was the historic Arlingtonfamous for the story of its captain.
Despite the emotion that the discovery aroused in the work team, Fountain warned that he felt some disappointment not finding the boat they were really looking for, whose name was not revealed because they are still working to find him. “It is exciting to solve just one more of the many mysteries of Lake Superior, finding the Arlington so far out on the lake. I hope this final chapter of its story can provide some closure for Captain Burke's family,” the researcher stated in dialogue with the GLSHS.
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