Researchers were looking for World War I minesweepers in Lake Superior and found a ship that sank in 1879

Researchers searching for a pair of World War I-era minesweepers that mysteriously vanished in Lake Superior over a century ago instead found a long-missing ship that sank to the bottom of the lake nearly four decades earlier, in 1879.

The tug boat called Satellite, which sank on June 21, 1879, was located by a crew last June, the Michigan-based Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society announced this week.

The story behind the discovery unfolded in June 2022, when Josh Gates of Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown" traveled to Michigan to search for two French minesweepers that disappeared in 1918.  The twin vessels — Inkerman and Cerisoles — were en route to Europe when the ships vanished in a storm, killing 78 crewmembers.