Thanks to Mlive for this:
EMPIRE, MI — What does a shipwreck taste like?
It’s an intriguing question that Ari Sussman, Chad Munger and Ross Richardson hope can serve as a launching pad for new conversation about preserving shipwrecks.
Sussman is the head distiller at Mammoth Distilling and Munger is his boss; the CEO of an expanding Michigan spirits business which recently revived a heritage variety of grain once produced on South Manitou Island.
Richardson is a shipwreck diver and researcher who, in 2010, discovered the Westmoreland, a steamer that sank in 1854 off the coast of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, reportedly carrying a cargo of gold and whiskey.
Together, the three have formed an unlikely partnership around a controversial idea:
Rather than leaving wrecks like the Westmoreland to decay unseen on the lakebed, they want to salvage pieces of wood and use them to make whiskey.
The notion is out of step with conventional preservation standards, which, in addition to state of Michigan law, generally prohibit disturbing historical wrecks.
But the trio think it’s time for a culture shift; driven largely by the speed in which invasive quagga and zebra mussels are accelerating the deterioration of Great Lakes shipwrecks.
Using shipwreck timber to make a whiskey with a unique flavor and provenance is a way to “save” a wreck, they argue, and not only preserve its history in a new format, but also potentially fund a larger effort to preserve more of the wreck itself. They have formed a nonprofit around the project, which they’ve named “Save The Westmoreland.”
“Instead of leaving everything down there just to rot away and be gone in the next 50 years, maybe we need to save certain artifacts and display them publicly to share our history with our fellow humans,” said Richardson.
“I’m sure this is going to create a lively debate.”
On Dec. 7, 1854, the steamer sank in Lake Michigan during a blizzard, reportedly carrying 280 barrels of whiskey and $100,000 in gold coins bound for the U.S. Army garrison on Mackinac Island. Seventeen crew and passengers died. Another 17 lived and spread the tale of a lost treasure ship.
Wreck hunters spent more than 150 years searching in vain for the Westmoreland. In 2010, Richardson discovered the ship sitting upright 200 feet below the surface of Platte Bay.
Thus far, no physical evidence of gold or whiskey has been found. The coins were reportedly in a safe. That hasn’t been located. The liquor would have been stored in the bilge level, which sits at a depth that’s basically impossible for divers to reach without using special gas mixtures.
Temperature, darkness and the wreck’s overall condition have made even finding the whiskey difficult.
“Things went off the rails,” said Richardson, who touched off the flurry by speaking to the Daily Mail tabloid.
Underwater archeologists and state of Michigan environmental regulators say it’s unlikely a salvage effort to recover the whiskey itself could obtain a state permit.
“Generally speaking, the idea of salvaging shipwrecks for commercial value is sort of a thing of the past in Michigan,” said Wayne Lusardi, a maritime archeologist at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Lake Huron.
“Recoveries now are, generally, more archeological or historic preservation minded,” Lusardi said.
Munger, Sussman and Richardson are emphatic that their goal is not to salvage gold and bottle whiskey from the Westmoreland. Were gold to be found, the state could presumably step in to assert a claim to it. Platte Bay is part of the Manitou Passage state underwater preserve.
They have not yet applied for a state permit. And they definitely don’t want to be seen in the same light as divers spinning farfetched yarns about, for instance, Civil War gold lost in Lake Michigan — a recent Great Lakes tall tale which few historians take seriously but which nonetheless spawned a short-lived reality TV show on the History Channel.
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