The legendary 1679 wreck of 'Le Griffon' finally found?

A group of American divers say they have probably managed to locate one of the most legendary wrecks in the Great Lakes region. They are talking about “Le Griffon”, which sank in the waters of Lake Michigan in 1679. Since then, the desire to find the vessel has kept many searchers up at night, but no one has managed to locate the final resting place of the “Griffon”.

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Things were certainly not made easier by the fact that the vessel sank in the northern, deepest part of Lake Michigan. This means, the search area also included the deepest part of the lake, where the distance between the surface and the bottom is up to 300m!

Kevin Dykstra and Frederick Monroe are two divers who claim to have found the wreck sought by so many back in 2011. Why did they wait so long to announce the news? Simple, work had to be done to confirm its identity. It involved a lot of tedious work to establish whether this was the 17th-century wreck of ‘Le Griffon’.

But the best part of the whole story is how the wreck of the ‘Griffin’ was found:

“During the dive I simply turned behind me and it was already there. Right in front of my eyes at a distance of 1.5m was a wreck! Even though I didn’t know what the craft was, the return to the surface was quick. Later, when we analysed the photos on the computer, the first speculation was that the Griffin had been found,” recalls Dykstra

After returning home and consulting with specialists, the two explorers only reassured themselves that the wreck they had found was “Le Griffon”. Especially if you consider what they had not noticed while underwater…

“We started searching the web for information and graphics depicting ‘Le Griffon’. On one of them I superimposed a photo we had taken during the dive and… it turned out to be a perfect match! It was the bow section, which had a griffin head carved in wood. So the bow of the ship looks exactly like the Griffin, and I don’t think it could be any other ship,” Dykstra explains

Journalists from the local TV station, while talking to the two divers, did not fail to ask a question that was just coming to mind… “if the target of the search was not the “Griffin” then what was it?”

“Gold! Of course it’s gold! We were looking for $2million in gold that rests somewhere at the bottom of Lake Michigan. In the late 1800s, cars carrying loads of gold were ferried across. Sometimes,due to bad weather, the cars would land overboard,” explain the prospectors.

This is not the first time someone has claimed to have found the wreck of the legendary ‘Le Griffon’. In 2013, another group of searchers claimed to have found this famous wreck. Unfortunately, researchers and experts on the subject expressed a lot of doubt about the find, suggesting that it was just an old fishing device.

When asked by journalists what they plan to do next, Dykstra and Monroe reply with disarming honesty that they are only interested in prospecting for gold.

Source: theblaze.com