MADISON, Wis. — After decades of scouring the bottom of Lake Michigan, searchers have finally found the wreckage of a cargo schooner that sank during a ferocious storm almost 140 years ago off the Wisconsin coastline.

The Wisconsin Historical Society and the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association announced Monday that a team led by researcher Brandon Baillod found the wreck of the F.J. King. Baillod said in an email to The Associated Press that the wreckage was discovered on June 28.

According to the announcement, Baillod’s team found the ship off Bailey’s Harbor, a town of about 280 people on Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, an outcropping of land jutting into Lake Michigan that gives the state its distinctive mitten-thumb shape.

The F. J. King was a 144-foot, three-masted cargo schoon

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