“Mystery Ship” Unveiled in Gibraltar Talks Series

“The Mystery Ship” is the focus of the next Gibraltar Talks presentation and takes place on Tuesday, August 11 at 7:30 pm at the Gibraltar Town Hall in Fish Creek. The presenter for the evening is Naval Historian Jon Paul Van Harpen.

In November of 1967, a commercial fisherman’s nets became tangled in an object in the waters of Green Bay. Charts indicated that the depth at the same location was 105 feet. The fisherman, wanting to salvage his costly nets, hired a scuba diver to free them. That diver, Frank Hoffman, found the nets tangled in what amazingly appeared to be a ship’s mast. Diving deeper, he found an ostensibly intact ship at a slight list on the bottom of Green Bay.

The “mystery ship” was raised from the depths of Green Bay just south of Fish Creek on July 29, 1969. She had sat on the floor of the bay for 100 years and was now seeing daylight for the first time in a century.

In a series of articles published in the Peninsula Pulse in 2008, it was stated that the ship was built in 1846, sank in 1864, recovered in 1969 and sadly destroyed in 1993.

The “Mystery Ship” program is sponsored by the Gibraltar Historical Association. Admission is free, but donations are always appreciated to help with historical programming. For more information call 920.868.3618.