LAKE MICHIGAN TRIANGLE

Opening

The Lake Michigan Triangle is a stretch of water roughly between Ludington and Benton Harbor in Michigan and Manitowoc in Wisconsin. Since the 1970s it has been described as the Great Lakes' answer to the Bermuda Triangle: a place where ships vanish, a captain disappears from a locked cabin and an airliner is lost with everyone aboard. The incidents are real. Whether they add up to anything more than a busy, dangerous lake is another matter.

Timeline

18 September 1679Le Griffon, the first full-sized sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes, leaves Green Bay with a cargo of furs and is never seen again.

1875 and October 1921The schooner Rosabelle is found capsized with no crew, twice. In 1921 the captain had refused to sail, and the crew went without him.

21 May 1891The schooner Thomas Hume leaves Chicago and vanishes with six men aboard. In 2006 it is found almost intact about 150 feet down. Investigators conclude a squall sank it.

28 April 1937Captain George R. Donner of the coal freighter O.M. McFarland goes to his cabin to rest as the ship nears Port Washington. When the crew break in, the cabin is locked from the inside and empty. He is never found.

23 June 1950Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501, a DC-4 with 58 people aboard, is lost over the lake after flying into a line of storms. Debris and remains are recovered, but the main wreckage has never been found.

1977Jay Gourley's book The Great Lakes Triangle gathers losses across the lakes. Later writers narrow the idea to Lake Michigan.

3 July 1998A two-seat jet trainer disappears from radar near Traverse City. A 2008 sonar search finds a possible wreck about 450 feet down that a dive cannot confirm.

Key figures

Jay Gourley, whose 1977 book first gathered the Great Lakes losses into a "triangle."

The Michigan Shipwreck Research Association, which found the Thomas Hume and has argued that the triangle is a myth.

Captain George Donner, whose disappearance from a locked cabin is the case's strangest single story.

Physical and documentary trail

Most of the losses are well recorded in newspapers, Coast Guard records and air-accident reports, and several wrecks have since been found. What the record does not show is any pattern that sets this part of Lake Michigan apart. Even the shape is disputed; some researchers say the losses fall in a rough rectangle covering most of the lake.

Things you might not know

• A missing ship was found after 115 years. The Thomas Hume turned up in 2006, upright and nearly intact.
• Flight 2501 was the deadliest US airline crash of its time. When it was lost in 1950, no American airliner accident had killed more people.
• The search for Le Griffon never ends. Several wrecks have been claimed as the ship. None has been confirmed.
• Some blame a stone circle. Speculation about the triangle includes a supposed prehistoric structure on the lake bed, reported in 2007.

Competing explanations

A dangerous, busy lake. Lake Michigan is long and narrow, so winds build large, steep waves, and sudden squalls and strong currents are common. For centuries it was one of the busiest shipping routes in North America. The shipwreck researchers who know it best say it has no more losses than the other Great Lakes.

Something unexplained. Supporters point to vanishings that left little trace, compass problems and UFO sightings over the lake. Most of the specific losses have ordinary explanations, and none needs a special one.

Later life of the case

The triangle is a fixture of Great Lakes folklore, ghost tours and television, and every new discovery on the lake bed brings it back. It also comes to mind whenever Flight 19 and other famous vanishings are discussed.

Finding

The Lake Michigan Triangle is a name for real losses on a lake that is busy and dangerous. Several of its "vanished" ships have been found, sunk by storms, and the record shows no more losses here than the size of the traffic would suggest.

What still will not resolve: where Captain George Donner went after he locked his cabin door in 1937, and where Flight 2501 lies.