One man’s fight with Michigan over quest for the oldest Great Lakes shipwreck

Eight feet beneath the clear, green water sat the skeletal wreck of the first full-size European ship to sail—and sink—in the Upper Great Lakes, in 1679: French explorer Robert La Salle’s Le Griffon.

Or maybe not.

Every adventurous spirit has their own white whale. Libert, 70 years old and retired from a career in naval intelligence, has been diving these waters in search of the Griffon for 43 years. Yet he is nearly alone in his belief that he has finally located the fabled wreck, thanks in part to the failure of a highly publicized 2013 excavation of a different spot he thought would finally reveal the ship, and a prickly, litigious relationship with Michigan officials.

“The ‘Griffon’ has not been found," said Wayne R. Lusardi, maritime archaeologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Asked to elaborate on his conclusion, he responded: “I’m sorry, I am very busy documenting real sites and don’t have time for fantasy."

“They don’t look at the evidence," Libert countered. “They think I’m this shady character."

Still, Libert has a trusted crew who believe in his quest, including Tom Kucharsky, a 68-year-old machinist from Dayton, Ohio.

“If Steve asks me to do something, I’m gonna try like hell to do it," he said. “He’s my treasure."

‘A great mystery’

Libert is rowing against the tide. Over the years, many amateur explorers have been taken with the idea that they could find a historic shipwreck not among the world’s vast oceans but smack in the heart of the American Midwest.

“From the ’30s to the present day, there have been multiple ‘discoveries’ of the Griffon," said Valerie van Heest, an explorer, historian and director of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association. “There are thousands of hulks of old ships in the Great Lakes and they are not all the Griffon."

Libert was 14 in suburban Dayton, Ohio, when he first heard of La Salle’s Great Lakes adventure. As Libert tells it, his 8th-grade teacher touched his shoulder and said: “Maybe someday someone in this class will find it."

La Salle, who would eventually lay claim to a huge swath of North America for France, began building the Griffon above Niagara Falls in 1679, according to historical accounts.

That August, he and his crew embarked on an epic journey through Lake Erie, up the Detroit River and across lakes Huron and Michigan to an island at the mouth of Green Bay.

After loading the ship with furs, La Salle dispatched a crew of six to sell them back east, while the rest continued exploring by canoe. The Griffon vanished on its return voyage.

“It’s the first real shipwreck on the Great Lakes, and it’s a great mystery," said Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum near Whitefish Point, Mich.

‘It was work’

Libert, who began researching the Griffon in earnest in 1979 while in college, pursued the theory that the ship fell to a storm soon after departing. Historical references to the ship possibly sinking in “shallows near the Huron Islands" led some to look for the wreck in Lake Huron, but Libert found that a group of islands at the north end of the mouth of Green Bay were once called the Huron Islands. They include Summer and Poverty islands.

In the early 1980s, Libert began assembling a team of divers to search for the Griffon along with another mystery beckoning under the water—the Poverty Island Treasure, a legendary hoard of $400 million in gold supposedly lost during the Civil War.

Libert and his crew, including Kucharsky and his older brother, Jim, 75, have dived together ever since. Today, all three suffer from health ailments. In their youth, they spent vacations inhabiting an abandoned lighthouse on Poverty Island in search of both wrecks.

“It was work," said Tom Kucharsky, the Dayton machinist, describing hauling scuba tanks across rough terrain on the uninhabited island.

The explorers found some success—and legal hardship. In 1985, the team located a Depression-era salvage ship, which Libert identified as the Captain Lawrence and that he believed might have some of the lost gold aboard. Libert, by then working as an intelligence analyst at what is now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, tracked down a relative of the original owner who granted Libert’s team salvage rights to the ship.

When Libert applied for a permit to excavate it, Michigan officials refused and claimed ownership, sparking a legal battle stretching from 1994 to 2001. Libert lost and couldn’t excavate the ship.

As that drama wrapped up, Libert said he was diving in murky waters looking for the Griffon when he collided with something that knocked his mask off. Several dives later, he believed he had found a part of a ship—and imaging showed a large mass on the lake bed.

Could the Griffon lie below?

Again, Libert applied for a permit to excavate and Michigan declined. This time, Libert found a powerful ally, inviting France to claim the Griffon as its sovereign vessel. After another legal battle from 2004 to 2012, Libert prevailed and the French rights to the Griffon, if found, were confirmed.

The resulting 2013 expedition, led by French and American archaeologists, drew international attention. But Libert’s hopes were sunk. Instead of the Griffon, the excavation uncovered a 4-foot mass of invasive zebra mussels.

Still, Libert’s team was able to bring up the pole. French archaeologists believed it exhibited many characteristics of a bowsprit, the long pole at the front of a ship that supports the rigging, according to their reports on the find. It had a beveled end and a flat joint with wooden spikes that would have attached it to the part of the ship that carries the flag, Libert said.

Carbon dating placed its age range anywhere between 1670 and 1950, indicating it could come from the Griffon, or something much more recent.

The Michigan History Center concluded it wasn’t a bowsprit, but a stake used in commercial fishing, probably dating between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s. Cornell University’s Tree Ring Laboratory wasn’t able to conclude the age of the pole by a technique called dendrochronology, but agreed with the History Center’s analysis, according to a paper published in 2014.

Libert counters that such a stake would have a pointed end for driving into the lake bed, not a beveled one.

A state official visits

Over the years, Libert and his wife, Kathie Libert, who owned a marketing firm, pursued careers in Washington, D.C., but would spend summers in Michigan, where Steve would continue his hunt and Kathie would paint. She supported his passion project and they co-wrote a book on the Griffon.

Now retired, the couple lives full time in their condo in Charlevoix, Mich., with a huge collection of maritime books—and water views. “I can look out my window at Lake Michigan and know the wreck is out there, 67 miles away," he said.

In 2014, Libert was spending hours going over satellite images after knee surgery when he spotted a large trident shape in the water near Summer Island. He thought it might be the mast and yardarm of a ship. After diving it in 2018, he came to believe it was the Griffon.

Exploring the wreck has been difficult, as Covid-19 and other health issues took a toll. After a cancer diagnosis, Libert spent six months in chemotherapy. Tom Kucharsky had a near-fatal bout of Covid that damaged his lungs. His brother, Jim, suffers from diabetes and neuropathy.

One recent day, Libert swam along a heavy beam with protruding ribs covered in mossy green growth. He pointed to features he said would have been used by French shipbuilders in the 1670s, including wooden pegs known as treenails and forged wrought iron fasteners.

Libert said he would love to apply for excavation permits to dig through a pile of rocks he thinks could be ballast stones hiding the Griffon’s ancient canons. But he says he’s ready for someone else to take over the hunt.

“I’m 70 years old and not in the greatest health," he said. “I don’t want to have to wait another 10 years to get another permit—even if I could get one."

Little did Libert know that Lusardi, the state marine archaeologist who dismissed Libert’s claims in emails to the Journal in late July, would dive the wreck on Aug. 20, a day after Libert left the area, according to Sandra Clark, director of the Michigan History Center and the state historian.

Lusardi, who had also visited the wreck in 2013, described a “small wooden watercraft" that would have been about 70-feet long and 13-feet wide off the northwest coast of Summer Island, Clark said, summarizing Lusardi’s findings.

“The vessel features an oversized keelson, paired 4-inch sided and 8-inch molded frame sets, possible iron boiler fragments, and other features related to late 19th-century Great Lakes shipbuilding traditions," according to Clark. “There is nothing about this shipwreck that suggests it dates to the late 17th century."

Libert rejects most of Lusardi’s findings.

“It fuels the fire," Libert said of Lusardi’s dismissal, adding that he plans to keep searching the area for artifacts to prove he has found the Griffon—as long as his health allows. “The more they say, the less they know about the ship."