The wheel of the F.J. King shipwreck in Lake Michigan on Aug. 23, 2025.

After decades of scouring the bottom of Lake Michigan, searchers have finally found the wreckage of a “ghost ship” 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 Brendon Baillod found the wreck of the F.J. King. Baillod said in an e-mail 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.

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