As noted in a previous story by Carl Eisenberg, the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society launched Little Toot 2 and Little Toot 3, the Society’s own versions of the proverbial message in a bottle, into two of the Great Lakes on June 9 and June 30, 2021. The Little Toot project was inspired when WMHS executive director Suzette Lopez read a story about an inscribed model boat that was recovered in 2020 at Ashland, Wis. after being launched 27 years earlier at Duluth, Minn. But between those two launch dates a discovery revealed that someone had beaten WMHS to it by about one hundred years.

As first reported on the Fox News web site on June 25, 2021, Jennifer Dowker runs glass bottom boat shipwreck tours in Cheboygan, Mich.  As she was cleaning her boat when she noticed a green bottle on the bottom of the Cheboygan River. Read Jim Heinz’s story.

Our book club just finished Erik Larson’s Dead Wake, and now it’s on to Tim Powers’ historical fantasy On Stranger Tides. He writes about Blackbeard, ghosts, zombies and the fabled fountain of youth. Swashbuckling John Shandy braves natural and supernatural peril to rescue his bewitched love. Members will meet via Zoom at 7 p.m. Aug. 18.

Sutton Hoo, the enthralling English archeological site, is the setting of The Dig, a historical novel by John Preston. While he takes some literary license, his story draws on real people and the very real excavation of an Anglo-Saxon ship discovered in Suffolk, England, in 1939. Again Zoomed, this discussion is at 7 p.m. Sept. 15.

One-hundred and fifty feet off shore from a small park in Sturgeon Bay is the wreckage of the steam barge JOYS. She was once known as the “greyhound among lumber carriers” for her record-breaking speed.

Constructed at the Milwaukee Ship Yard Company and launched Sept. 2, 1884, the vessel was partly owed by Andrew M. Joys, who had ties to the Milwaukee Company, Laacke & Joys, and by John Fitzgerald, president of Milwaukee Shipyard. It was  John’s grandfather, Edmund Fitzgerald, who was a founder of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society.

Carl Eisenberg, president of the Society, recounts the history of the vessel in his visit to the historic marker.