France claims rights to Lake Michigan shipwreck

[diverlynn]

By JOHN FLESHER • Associated Press • January 30, 2009

TRAVERSE CITY — The French government says it still owns the Griffin, a 17th-Century ship built by legendary explorer La Salle that may have been discovered in northern Lake Michigan.

France filed a claim to the vessel Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, escalating a legal battle over who owns and has authority to retrieve artifacts from the long-lost vessel.

Michigan also is seeking title, although state officials have raised doubts about whether the Griffin’s gravesite actually has been found. They say federal law gives the state ownership of abandoned vessels embedded in its Great Lakes bottomlands.

A private group, Great Lakes Exploration LLC, located what it contends may be the Griffin’s wreckage in 2001. It wants to be appointed custodian until the courts determine ownership and salvage rights.

The precise site has not been publicly revealed, but is believed to be between Escanaba and the St. Martin Islands, near Wisconsin.

The Griffin (also spelled “Griffon”) disappeared on its maiden voyage in 1679 after embarking from an island near Green Bay, Wis., with a crew of six and a cargo of furs and other goods.

France filed paperwork with the court this week to meet a deadline for avoiding loss of rights to the ship, a spokesman for the French embassy in Washington said Thursday.

The claim is based on documents showing the fatal expedition was undertaken on behalf of the French crown and was not a private venture, the spokesman said.

Steve Libert, spokesman for Great Lakes Exploration, backs the claim. “Michigan isn’t fighting just me any more. They’re fighting the country of France,” he said.

Matt Frendewey, spokesman for the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, said state officials were reviewing the French court filing and would respond later.

In a motion filed last month, Michigan asked federal judge Robert Holmes Bell to declare the wreckage — if it exists — state property. Assistant Attorney General Louis Reinwasser said divers visited the site in October and found only a timber protruding from the lake bottom.

Ken Vrana, director of the Lansing-based Maritime Center, said a sonar examination of the site in 2006 detected numerous artifacts on the bottom and embedded in sediments.

His nonprofit scientific and educational organization is working with Libert on plans for a remote sensing expedition this summer in hopes of identifying the artifacts. France’s director of underwater archaeology has endorsed the mission, Vrana said.

“I would still love to do it on a cooperative basis with the State of Michigan and I’m perplexed as to why they are resisting,” he said.

 

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[Mich. Wolverine]

Alright I can't help myself I'll reply to this. First of all I think it's a bunch of baloney. The Griffon and the H.MS. Ontario have been lost for 200 plus years in the Great Lakes. Now that they have been found you have countries making claims to them and didn't do anything to find them. I don't know why they should be able to make claims when these ships are in the interior of our country not in the open ocean. These ships were built here and with wood from North America. Why is right to be able to make claims on a shipwreck in the interior? The British built the Fort Haldimand on Carleton Island N.Y. where the H.M.S. Ontario was built, so do they have right to make claims on that? ( I hope I didn't give them any ideas!!) Just kidding lol. I just think the ships are as, if not more important to the history of the United States.

Wolverine.

 

[wwwtimmcp]

the only problem with your logic mich. wolverine is the u.s. claimed hamilton and scourge. not that I agree with them but it does raise a few questions.

 

[go deep]

DIVERLYNN Thanks for the post,this is in my backyard,have emailed my congressman Bart Stupak with info of Treasurenet so he can see the real meaning of shipwreck salvage and treasure hunting. There is never enough information unless you look for it. The Griffin must not be claimed by France. TAKE CARE GO DEEP

 

[rgecy]

It sounds to me that France is actually endorsing Great lakes Exploration on the project.

His nonprofit scientific and educational organization is working with Libert on plans for a remote sensing expedition this summer in hopes of identifying the artifacts. France’s director of underwater archaeology has endorsed the mission, Vrana said.

To me it sounds like the State of Michigan is trying to claim the wreck and take it from Great Lakes Exploration. GLE probably went to the French Gov and asked them to get involved and worked out a deal on the project.

So who are the bad guys here? Michigan, Great Lakes Exploration, or France?

I guess we need to know who is looking out for who's best interest! What does France plan to do if they are awarded ownership? What does Michigan plan to do?

As with most states, spend the taxpayers money to do a survey over 10 years, then put the artifacts in a vault where no one but Archaeologist will ever see them!

 

[RON (PA)]

Built from American wood, sailed in American waters, sunk in American waters. It is an American Ship and if France wants to come and claim it, they will need to get past the Navy first. France gets nothing. They did not support us in Iraq, therefore they are crap in my book.

 

[jeff of pa]

send France Notice.

Tell them They have 90 days to come & Get it.
Otherwise It will be declaired Legally abandond

 

[rgecy]

Ron, I definitely agree.

So, if GLE got France involved, have they gone too far?

I think there is very little doubt that Michigan has the rights to submerged cultural resources.

 

[G.I.B.]

Just some history...

 

[Old Bookaroo]

Here is a detailed account of the first (and last) voyage of Le Griffon. I must give a hat tip to Guy in the Back - you beat me to it. I hope you don't mind me posting a more extensive account.

France and England in North America; A Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third; The Discovery of the Great West, by Francis Parkman (Boston: 1870)

A more important work than that of the warehouse at the mouth of the river was now to be begun. This was the building of a vessel above the cataract. ..{at} the mouth of a stream which entered the Niagara two leagues above the cataract, and which was undoubtedly that now called Cayuga Creek…[The neighboring village now bears the name of La Salle.] Trees were felled, the place cleared, and the master-carpenter set his ship-builders at work. Meanwhile two Mohegan hunters, attached to the party, made bark wigwams to lodge the men.

Hennepin had his chapel, apparently of the same material, where he placed his altar, and on Sundays and saints' days said mass, preached, and exhorted; while some of the men, who knew the Gregorian chant, lent their aid at the service. When the carpenters were ready to lay the keel of the vessel, La Salle asked the friar to drive the first bolt; "but the modesty of my religious profession," he says, "compelled me to decline this honor."

…On a paper drawn up at the instance of the Intendant Duchesneau, the names of the greater number of La Salle's men are preserved. These agree with those given by Hennepin: thus the master-carpenter, whom he calls Maitre Moyse, appears as Moise Hillaret, and the blacksmith, whom he calls La Forge, is mentioned as--(illegible) dit la Forge.] The work of the ship-builders advanced rapidly; and when the Indian visitors beheld the vast ribs of the wooden monster, their jealousy was redoubled. A squaw told the French that they meant to burn the vessel on the stocks. All now stood anxiously on the watch. Cold, hunger, and discontent found imperfect antidotes in Tonty's energy and Hennepin's sermons.

During his {La Salle’s} absence Tonty finished the vessel, which was of about forty- five tons burden. [Hennepin (1683), 46. In the edition of 1697, he says that it was of sixty tons. I prefer to follow the earlier and more trustworthy narrative.] As spring opened, she was ready for launching. The friar pronounced his blessing on her; the assembled company sang Te Deum; cannon were fired; and French and Indians, warmed alike by a generous gift of brandy, shouted and yelped in chorus as she glided into the Niagara. Her builders towed her out and anchored her in the stream, safe at last from incendiary hands, and then, swinging their hammocks under her deck, slept in peace, beyond reach of the tomahawk. The Indians gazed on her with amazement. Five small cannon looked out from her portholes; and on her prow was carved a portentous monster, the Griffin, whose name she bore, in honor of the armorial bearings of Frontenac. La Salle had often been heard to say that he would make the griffin fly above the crows, or, in other words, make Frontenac triumph over the Jesuits.

They now took her up the river, and made her fast below the swift current at Black Rock. Here they finished her equipment, and waited for La Salle's return; but the absent commander did not appear. The spring and more than half of the summer had passed before they saw him again. ..It required four of them {La Salle’s men}, well stimulated with brandy, to carry up the principal anchor destined for the "Griffin."
…
The "Griffin" had lain moored by the shore, so near that Hennepin could preach on Sundays from the deck to the men encamped along the bank. She was now forced up against the current with tow-ropes and sails, till she reached the calm entrance of Lake Erie. On the seventh of August {1679}, the voyagers, thirty-four in all, embarked, sang Te Deum, and fired their cannon. A fresh breeze sprang up; and with swelling canvas the "Griffin" ploughed the virgin waves of Lake Erie, where sail was never seen before. For three days they held their course over these unknown waters, and on the fourth turned northward into the strait of Detroit. Here, on the right hand and on the left, lay verdant prairies, dotted with groves and bordered with lofty forests.

They saw walnut, chestnut, and wild plum trees, and oaks festooned with grape-vines; herds of deer, and flocks of swans and wild turkeys. The bulwarks of the "Griffin" were plentifully hung with game which the men killed on shore, and among the rest with a number of bears, much commended by Hennepin for their want of ferocity and the excellence of their flesh. "Those," he says, "who will one day have the happiness to possess this fertile and pleasant strait, will be very much obliged to those who have shown them the way." They crossed Lake St. Clair, [They named it Sainte Claire, of which the present name is a perversion.] and still sailed northward against the current, till now, sparkling in the sun, Lake Huron spread before them like a sea.

For a time, they bore on prosperously. Then the wind died to a calm, then freshened to a gale, then rose to a furious tempest; and the vessel tossed wildly among the short, steep, perilous waves of the raging lake. Even La Salle called on his followers to commend themselves to Heaven. All fell to their prayers but the godless pilot, who was loud in complaint against his commander for having brought him, after the honor he had won on the ocean, to drown at last ignominiously in fresh water. The rest clamored to the saints. St. Anthony of Padua was promised a chapel to be built in his honor, if he would but save them from their jeopardy; while in the same breath La Salle and the friars declared him patron of their great enterprise. [Hennepin (1683), 58.]

The saint heard their prayers. The obedient winds were tamed; and the "Griffin" plunged on her way through foaming surges that still grew calmer as she advanced. Now the sun shone forth on woody islands, Bois Blanc and Mackinaw and the distant Manitoulins,--on the forest wastes of Michigan and the vast blue bosom of the angry lake; and now her port was won, and she found her rest behind the point of St. Ignace of Michillimackinac, floating in that tranquil cove where crystal waters cover but cannot hide the pebbly depths beneath. Before her rose the house and chapel of the Jesuits, enclosed with palisades; on the right, the Huron village, with its bark cabins and its fence of tall pickets; on the left, the square compact houses of the French traders; and, not far off, the clustered wigwams of an Ottawa village. [There is a rude plan of the establishment in La Hontan, though, in several editions, its value is destroyed by the reversal of the plate.]

Here was a centre of the Jesuit missions, and a centre of the Indian trade; and here, under the shadow of the cross, was much sharp practice in the service of Mammon. Keen traders, with or without a license; and lawless coureurs de bois, whom a few years of forest life had weaned from civilization, made St. Ignace their resort; and here there were many of them when the "Griffin" came. They and their employers hated and feared La Salle, who, sustained as he was by the Governor, might set at nought the prohibition of the king, debarring him from traffic with these tribes. Yet, while plotting against him, they took pains to allay his distrust by a show of welcome.
The "Griffin" fired her cannon, and the Indians yelped in wonder and amazement. The adventurers landed in state, and marched, under arms, to the bark chapel of the Ottawa village, where they heard mass. La Salle knelt before the altar, in a mantle of scarlet, bordered with gold. Soldiers, sailors, and artisans knelt around him,--black Jesuits, gray Recollets, swarthy voyageurs and painted savages; a devout but motley concourse.

As they left the chapel, the Ottawa chiefs came to bid them welcome, and the Hurons saluted them with a volley of musketry. They saw the "Griffin" at her anchorage, surrounded by more than a hundred bark canoes, like a Triton among minnows. Yet it was with more wonder than good-will that the Indians of the mission gazed on the floating fort, for so they called the vessel. A deep jealousy of La Salle's designs had been, infused into them. His own followers, too, had been tampered with. In the autumn before, it may be remembered, he had sent fifteen men up the lakes, to trade for him, with orders to go thence to the Illinois, and make preparation against his coming. Early in the summer, Tonty had been despatched in a canoe, from Niagara, to look after them. [Tonty, Memoire, MS. He was overtaken at the Detroit by the "Griffin."]

It was high time. Most of the men had been seduced from their duty, and had disobeyed their orders, squandered the goods intrusted to them, or used them in trading on their own account. La Salle found four of them at Michillimackinac. These he arrested, and sent Tonty to the Falls of Ste. Marie, where two others were captured, with their plunder. The rest were in the woods, and it was useless to pursue them.

Early in September, long before Tonty had returned from Ste. Marie, La Salle set sail again, and, passing westward into Lake Michigan, [Then usually known as Lac des Illinois, because it gave access to the country of the tribes so called. Three years before, Allouez gave it the name of Lac St. Joseph, by which it is often designated by the early writers. Membre, Douay, and others, call it Lac Dauphin.] cast anchor near one of the islands at the entrance of Green Bay. Here, for once, he found a friend in the person of a Pottawattamie chief, who had been so wrought upon by the politic kindness of Frontenac, that he declared himself ready to die for the children of Onontio. ["The Great Mountain," the Iroquois name for the Governor of Canada. It was borrowed by other tribes also.]

Here, too, he found several of his advanced party, who had remained faithful, and collected a large store of furs. It would have been better had they proved false, like the rest. La Salle, who asked counsel of no man, resolved, in spite of his followers, to send back the "Griffin," laden with these furs, and others collected on the way, to satisfy his creditors. [In the license of discovery, granted to La Salle, he is expressly prohibited from trading with the Ottawas and others who brought furs to Montreal. This traffic on the lakes was, therefore, illicit. His enemy, the Intendant Duchesneau, afterwards used this against him.--Lettre de Duchesneau an Ministre, 10 Nov. 1680, MS] She fired a parting shot, and, on the eighteenth of September, spread her sails for Niagara, in charge of the pilot, who had orders to return with her to the Illinois as soon as he had discharged his cargo. La Salle, with the fourteen men who remained, in four canoes, deeply laden with a forge, tools, merchandise, and arms, put out from the island and resumed his voyage.

The parting was not auspicious. The lake, glassy and calm in the afternoon, was convulsed at night with a sudden storm, when the canoes were midway between the island and the main shore. It was with much ado that they could keep together, the men shouting to each other through the darkness. Hennepin, who was in the smallest canoe, with a heavy load, and a carpenter for a companion, who was awkward at the paddle, found himself in jeopardy which demanded all his nerve. The voyagers thought themselves happy when they gained at last the shelter of a little sandy cove, where they dragged up their canoes, and made their cheerless bivouac in the drenched and dripping forest. Here they spent five days, living on pumpkins and Indian corn, the gift of their Pottawattamie friends, and on a Canada porcupine, brought in by La Salle's Mohegan hunter. The gale raged meanwhile with a relentless fury. They trembled when they thought of the "Griffin." When at length the tempest lulled, they re-embarked, and steered southward, along the shore of Wisconsin; but again the storm fell upon them, and drove them, for safety, to a bare, rocky islet. Here they made a fire of driftwood, crouched around it, drew their blankets over their heads, and in this miserable plight, pelted with sleet and rain, remained for two days.…The lake, swept by an easterly gale, was rolling its waves against the beach, like the ocean in a storm…

…where was the "Griffin"? Time enough, and more than enough, had passed for her voyage to Niagara and back again. He {La Salle} scanned the dreary horizon with an anxious eye. No returning sail gladdened the watery solitude, and a dark foreboding gathered on his heart. Yet farther delay was impossible. He sent back two men to Michillimackinac to meet her, if she still existed, and pilot her to his new fort of the Miamis, and then prepared to ascend the river, whose weedy edges were already glassed with thin flakes of ice.

= The End =

Comments within brackets "[ ]" are from the original (Mr. Parkman's notes). Comments with "{ }" are this editor's.

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

 

[Salvor6]

What about La Salle's other ship the Belle ? It was looted by the Texas Historical Comission back in 1995 in Matagorda Bay. http://www.callertimes.com/newsarch/lasalle1.htm.

 

[jeff k]

I wonder what the reaction would be if Germany tried to claim sovereign immunity on a Nazi shipwreck.

 

[jeff of pa]

I wonder what the reaction would be if Germany tried to claim sovereign immunity on a Nazi shipwreck.

Good Point

 

[Old Bookaroo]

Jeff K:

Such as the U-505 at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry? That was not a wreck, of course, that was an enemy vessel taken on the high seas.

There have been a number of news articles about lost Nazi subs loaded with war loot that went down in '45. It will be interesting to see what happens if one of those is ever found.

Or the Japanese freighter that was supposed to have sunk with a fabulous treasure - Awa Maru? I don't have the book in front of me at the moment.

All these issues were very well resolved with international law (and the Lloyd's salvage contract) before the Abandoned Shipwreck Act and other attempts to regulate.

Good luck to all,

~The Old Bookaroo

 

[Smithbrown]

The list of ships round the British coast which have been designated as wargraves includes 4 u-boats, two from World War I and two from World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Military_Remains_Act_1986

Smithbrown

 

[Voldbjerg]

I wonder what the reaction would be if Germany tried to claim sovereign immunity on a Nazi shipwreck.

Well the norwegian goverment are about to salvage a nazi uboat with a cargo of mercury, i dont think the germans have interferred in any way. But they are propably scared of beeing held responsible for an enviromental disaster.

/V