Drat you people, now I can't get the wreck off my mind. I'm supposed to be paying the bills!

Here's some info from the Marine Historical Society of Detroit, which seems to be a legitimate.

"All 29 officers and crew, including a Great Lakes Maritime Academy cadet, went down with the ship, which lies broken in two sections in 530 feet of water. Surveyed by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1976 using the U.S. Navy CURV III system, the wreckage consisted of an upright bow section, approximately 275 feet long and an inverted stern section, about 253 feet long, and a debris field comprised of the rest of the hull in between. Both sections lie within 170 feet of each other."

So the ship's in 530 of water, not on a shoal.

The ship was 729 feet long. 275 feet of the bow survived and 253 of the stern. 729 minus 275 minus 253 = 201 feet. The ship sank because something destroyed 201 feet of its middle, which now lies in deep water in the form os debris.

The bow is right side up and the stern is upside down. Is that a clue?

Was it twisted by wave trains which struck it from different directions ? Was there a rupture or explosion?

I'll put the link to the site in the next post. The pics make it clear that this was a long, long ship. Its midsection looks unstable to me.

They talk a lot about the hatch covers, but I figure, if the holds were full of taconite pellets, what difference would water make by filling a small amount of void space between the balls? (I believe a taconite pellet is a small black ball abt the size of a malted-milk ball. They would pack well.)

I think what sank this ship was the action of wave trains twisting that long, long middle section.

As others have said, the lakes are famous for their violence and unpredicatability.