An energetic and passionate presenter, and award winning author, Valerie van Heest shares the exciting stories of her expeditions to discover and document Great Lakes Shipwrecks. A recent Inductee to the Women Divers Hall of Fame, and recipient of a Michigan History Award for her work preserving and promoting Michigan’s maritime heritage, Valerie has researched and dived some of the most significant shipwrecks in the Great Lakes over the past 20 years. She has written and directed more than a dozen documentary films and appeared on the major television networks. Her work has appeared in numerous print publications and has been featured in several books. She is an author of the award winning book, Icebound! The Adventures of Young George Sheldon and the SS Michigan, and co-author of Buckets and Belts: Evolution of the Great Lakes Self-Unloader. Her programs feature spectacular underwater images and video and are filled with excitement, adventure, surprises and ultimately offer a “deeper” look at the maritime history of the Great Lakes. Valerie serves as Director of Holland, Michigan based Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates.
A Tale of Two Schooners
What’s the chance that two, small, 2-masted schooners, each a diminutive sixty-feet in length, both heading from Chicago to St. Joseph, Michigan with two very unique cargos would go down during the same season 140 years ago and be found within a year and a few miles of each other in southwest Lake Michigan? Well it happened! Join explorer Valerie van Heest as she recounts the discovery of these vessels made with Clive Cussler, and Ralph Wilbanks of the NUMA team and her team Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates while searching for Northwest Flight 2501 off South Haven, Michigan. One vessel, the William Tell, named after the famous Swiss patriot, sank due to a chemical reaction, and the other, the A.P Dunton went down in a violent storm that claimed the lives of the 4-man crew and took with a load of school-house furniture destined for a new one room schoolhouse in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
Southeastern Lake Michigan- The Great Lakes New Tech Diving Mecca
While the sandy shores and wide open expanse of clear blue water of Southwest Michigan have been a tourist destination since the states incorporation in 1837, scuba divers have headed elsewhere because the areas few, shallow-water, broken shipwrecks, did not hold much visual or recreational appear. Now just a decade after Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates began its first annual shipwreck search teaming with three of the most renown shipwreck hunters, David Trotter, Clive Cussler, and Ralph Wilbanks, the waters in Southeastern Lake Michigan have become a playground for technical divers. With thirteen new deepwater shipwreck discoveries, of which the histories span the evolution of shipping on the Great Lakes, divers can explore vessels such as the schooners, Hamilton and Hattie Wells, the great Passenger propellers like the SS Michigan, the workhorse freighters like the H.C Akeley, the steel car ferries represented by the ANN Arbor No 5 and the Great Lakes very first self-unloader: the Hennepin. Award winning author and member of the women Divers Hall of Fame, Valerie van Heest will share the history of these vessels, underwater footage and tips for diving these newly discovered wrecks.
Deckhand for a Day
Anyone who has dived one of the Great Lakes mamouth self-unloader shipwrecks like the Bradley, Cedarville, Niagara, Sand Merchant, Material Service or Jodrey might wonder what it would have been like to sail aboard one of these big boats that are today the most prolific vessels on the Great Lakes. Join award-winning author and women diver hall of fame member Valerie van Heest as she journeys across Lake Michigan on board the 604-foot self-unloading freighter Maumee, the Lakes oldest operating self-unloading freighter, and sister ship to the ill-fated Cedarville, to gather data for her new book “Buckets and Belts: Evolution of the Great Lakes Self-Unloader.” The journey begins in Chicago with the loading of 13,000 tons of coal. Along with the captain, chief engineer and 18 other crew members, van Heest traveled 12 hours across the lake, on the way piloting the boat, exploring the bowels of the vessel and spending time with the crew getting to know them and understanding their fascinating career choice. She will also take attendees beneath Lake Michigan to explore the wreck of the Hennepin, the world’s first self-unloader, the inspiration for her journey and her book. Special evening presentation.
Additional Info
New Book
On a warm summer afternoon in 1927 off South Haven, Michigan, an aged barge began taking on water. Helpless to staunch the flow and realizing their vessel would inevitably sink, the crew escaped to the accompanying tug, and watched as their ship plunged beneath Lake Michigan. Its loss unlamented, its career unheralded, it slumbered on the sandy bottom in the same obscurity that had shrouded its earlier work days as a steam freighter sailing the Great Lakes. However, the vessel’s anonymity ended in 2006 when Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates located the sunken wreck of the Hennepin. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the world’s first self-unloading vessel. Buckets and Belts: The Evolution of Great Lakes Self-Unloaders traces over a century of innovative technological advancements in the conveying of bulk cargos from the Hennepin’s conversion to a self-unloader in 1902 to today’s mammoth thousand-foot long lakers. Enhanced with the most comprehensive collection of self-unloader images ever published and dozens of underwater photographs, the book also explores the lives of the people who designed these vessels, the crewmen who sailed them and the self-unloaders that tragically went to the bottom of the lakes, often taking entire crews with them.
You may purchase the book through the Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates.