Rail Carferry
Built: 1910, Toledo Shipbuilding Co., Toledo, Ohio
Built for: Ann Arbor Railroad
Length: 360 feet
Discovery: May 2005 by NUMA/MSRA
Location: N 42° 22.760′, W 086° 27.427′, WSW off South Haven harbor
Depth: 160 feet
DISCOVERY
In May 2005, while searching Lake Michigan for the wreckage of Northwest Airlines Flight 2501, the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association (MSRA), working with Clive Cussler’s National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), located a large steel wreck projecting from the lake bottom at an angle of approximately 30 degrees in about 160 feet of water.
Divers discovered a largely intact section of a carferry impaled in the lake bottom. No known carferry had been accidentally lost in the area, raising questions about the wreck’s identity and how it came to rest there.
Research into newspaper archives provided the first significant clue. The Ann Arbor No. 5 had served as one of three vessels used to construct a breakwall around the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant during its construction between 1967 and 1969. After the construction project, workers partially dismantled the ferry and scrapped it.
Rumors had circulated within the Great Lakes diving community that Captain Richard Race had located the Ann Arbor No. 5 while searching for Flight 2501. Race never publicly released the wreck’s location or information confirming its identity, however, leaving the vessel’s final resting place unverified.
IDENTIFICATION
MSRA’s investigation traced the final ownership of the Ann Arbor No. 5 to Bultema Dock and Dredge, which had purchased the vessel in 1967 for $27,775. MSRA located members of the Bultema family and conducted a personal interview that established the circumstances of the ferry’s loss.
After Bultema completed its work installing intake pipes at the Palisades plant, the deteriorated ferry had suffered too much structural damage to remain useful. The vessel had broken in two places. Workers cut the forward section into manageable pieces, lifted the sections onto a working barge, and transported the scrap to the Padnos scrap yard in Holland, Michigan.
Bultema’s principals believed the aft section remained sufficiently buoyant to tow intact to the scrap yard. Towing the section would require less time and effort than dismantling it with a clamshell dredge. Using one of the company’s tugboats, the crew pulled the damaged section free from its position in the breakwall and began towing it westward with several pumps aboard to control the incoming water.
After the tug turned north toward Holland, a section of the watertight bulkhead began to leak. The contractors quickly realized that they might lose the vessel. The crew struggled to keep the remaining main pump operating, but the incoming water overwhelmed their efforts.
John Bultema II, then 20 years old and working as a diver for his father’s company, remained aboard the sinking wreck until a crane lifted him to safety only seconds before the aft section disappeared beneath the lake. The tug crew watched as the stern rose and the wreck plunged downward. Water rushing into the damaged hull pulled the vessel beneath the surface, and the wreck descended nearly vertically at the point where it had broken.
The aft section struck the lake bottom in approximately 160 feet of water and drove itself into the underlying sediment. It remains there today, resting at a dramatic angle.
When the crew returned to Bultema’s headquarters in Manistee, Michigan, Bultema Jr. reported the loss to his father, John Bultema Sr. His primary concern was the safety of the crew, and he expressed relief that no one had been injured or killed.
Bultema reported the sinking to marine authorities. A “Wreck PA” (Position Approximate) subsequently appeared on marine charts south of South Haven, Michigan. The charted position may have originated from Bultema’s report, although it lies several miles from the actual wreck site. Later NUMA and MSRA sonar surveys of the charted position found no wreck there.
HISTORY OF ANN ARBOR NO. 5
When the Ann Arbor No. 5 entered service in 1910, it ranked as the largest carferry on the Great Lakes. The vessel also introduced an important safety feature: it became the first Great Lakes carferry launched with a sea gate, designed to prevent waves from flooding the low stern while the vessel operated on the open lake.
The 360-foot ferry carried four railroad tracks and could accommodate approximately 30 railroad cars, making it one of the largest and most capable carferries of its era.
The vessel carried two triple-expansion steam engines with cylinders measuring 21, 33, and 52 inches in diameter and a 40-inch stroke. Four Scotch boilers, each measuring 13 feet 6 inches by 12 feet, supplied steam at pressures up to 185 pounds per square inch. The Marine Boiler Works of Toledo, Ohio, built the engines and boilers, which together produced approximately 3,000 horsepower.
For more than five decades, the Ann Arbor No. 5 carried railroad traffic on the Great Lakes. Changing transportation technology eventually reduced the need for the aging ferry. In 1964, the vessel underwent conversion from coal to oil fuel. Bulk Food Carriers of San Francisco purchased it in 1966.
The ferry subsequently changed hands several times through the federal government’s ship exchange program before Bultema Dredge & Dock Company acquired it in 1967. Its final assignment came not as a working carferry, but as a component of the breakwall constructed during development of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant.
THE WRECK AT THE TIME OF ITS DISCOVERY
The wreck’s extraordinary angle remains one of its most striking features. Its position is clearly visible in the sonar image by the pronounced “shadow” extending alongside the wreck.
The section of the ferry remaining on the lake bottom consists primarily of the aft portion left after workers separated the vessel during its dismantling. The forward end of this section penetrates deeply into the lake bottom, disappearing beneath layers of sand and clay. From the sediment to the uppermost point of the stern, the exposed wreck measures slightly more than 100 feet.
The wreck rests in approximately 163 feet of water. Its twin propellers, each measuring 12 feet 6 inches in diameter, and its massive rudder remain accessible at a depth of approximately 125 feet.
The wreck’s steep angle creates an unusual hazard for divers. As they swim forward from the stern, they descend rapidly along the vessel’s length. A diver can therefore reach depths approaching 160 feet without immediately realizing how far the lake bottom has fallen away.
Today, the Ann Arbor No. 5 provides a remarkable underwater record of both Great Lakes transportation and the final days of the region’s railroad carferry era. Its wreck also preserves the unexpected story of a vessel that survived more than half a century of service only to sink during an attempt to tow it to the scrapyard.
