A rare spell of clear water let a Wisconsin mother and her son see the remains of a tugboat that had been submerged off a Lake Superior beach for decades. Hannah Damon, who works in outreach and administration at Camp Amnicon Adventures and Retreats in South Range, said she noticed the wreck while at the shoreline with her 9-year-old son.
Damon told Fox News Digital that beams, cables and a large pipe came into view beneath the water. She said she had visited the beach for 10 or 11 years and knew the wreck was there, but had never previously seen it. After realizing what they were looking at, she went to shore to get her camera and asked her son not to splash her while she filmed.
The vessel is the A.H. Pitz, a steam-powered tugboat built in 1923 for the McMullen and Pitz Construction Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Historical Society says the boat was named for Armond Pitz. At nearly 70 feet long, it changed hands several times before being abandoned at the mouth of the Amnicon River in 1951.
Damon said she had heard the tugboat was deliberately sunk that year to help stabilize a sandbar along the beach. The supplied account does not provide an independent confirmation of that explanation.
The wreck is fully underwater and is usually hard to make out, Damon said. The shoreline lies on the Lake Superior clay plain, where clay-rich soil can cloud the water and conceal objects below the surface. She described the water during the sighting as unusually clear and glassy. When she returned to the beach the following day, she said the water was calm but murky again.
Damon shared video of the remains on social media. The footage showed weathered wooden beams and other debris on the lakebed, according to the report. People responding to the post shared memories of the tugboat and its location. Some commenters said they remembered seeing it as early as 1967.
Damon described the online response as an unusually large moment for the camp and said the discovery had helped reconnect people through local history. She expressed hope that visitors who know where to look might occasionally see the wreck again when conditions are right, while noting that the sighting was rare.
