Patty Loew:
In Wisconsin there is water everywhere you look. But sometimes you need to look beneath the surface to uncover a true treasure. That's what reporter Andy Soth discovered when he took a dive with the Wisconsin historical society on Lake Michigan near Kenosha.

Man:
Diving is a very solitary sport. You realize how alone you are. And then when you're going on a new shipwreck, all other things fade away and you realize now you're going to go back in time and see something very few people see.

Woman:
These are time capsules on the bottom. They went down with everything they had on them. Everything the passengers and crew would have had with them.

Andy Soth:
This time capsule is the SS Wisconsin, sunk in 1929. It's being explored today by an underwater archeological team put together by the Wisconsin historical society.

Keith Meverden:
We don't know a lot about the maritime culture of early Wisconsin so we're out here trying to document that culture and learn as much as we can about it.

Andy Soth:
The Good rich steamship line commissioned the Wisconsin in 1881. It was a technological marvel, one of the first iron-hulled ships on the lakes. One of the first with a double hulled ballast system. It entered service in an era when the Great Lakes were vital for transporting products and people.

Tamara Thomsen
The lakes were like highways are today. I remember my grandfather, he grew up in Milwaukee and he'd tell me about all the ships and all the ships in port and it just really makes you think wow, you know, there were that many ships that were out on the lake at one time.

Andy Soth:
It is an era now remembered in photographs. And in the more than two dozen shipwreck sites documented by the historical society. Off the coast of Kenosha the SS Wisconsin sank in a storm, claiming nine.

Paul Bently:
Over the history of the Great Lakes, most people don't know this but 30,000 sailors lost their lives out there.

Andy Soth:
Lives lost on ships like the Wisconsin that sunk while they were doing the work that helped build the state.

Keith Meverden:
Maritime history is very important to Wisconsin. If we look to the Wisconsin state flag you can see there is a picture of a sailor, an anchor and a arm with a hammer which is a caulking mallet used in early wooden ship construction.

Andy Soth:
These remains help tell the story of Wisconsin's maritime past and being carefully documented with a team of volunteer divers.

Tamara Thomsen:
Our program wouldn't run without help of the volunteers that come out. We have people that come out from not only across the state but all over the world.

Andy Soth:
The team has its base of operations in a couple of UW Parkside dorms. Here they carefully plan each day's activity to make the most of limited time in the water.

Keith Meverden:
We do quite a bit of work before we come on site and diving the shipwreck researching the historical record so when we come out here we have a list of questions we're looking to answer.

Andy Soth:
The team wants to see if modifications to the hull may have been a factor in the ship's sinking. But the primary mission is a full measuring and documenting of the site as a resource for future historians and divers. Unlike most archeological digs on land, the artifacts here will be left undisturbed.

Keith Meverden:
We get a lot of people from across the country coming to Wisconsin shipwrecks to dive them. The more artifacts that are on the site and the more intact the shipwreck sites are the better experience it is for the divers diving and the more valuable they are.

Andy Soth:
The site is also valuable as a silent memorial to those Wisconsinites who made the lake their livelihood and gave up their lives it to.
Paul Bently:
When you’re into this, people say, “It’s a great shipwreck.” No, it's a very tragic thing. These are places where people played all their cards, you know, and lost.

Patty Loew:
Reporter Andy Soth was joined by underwater videographers Bruce Johnson and Will Salzmann who made the trip down to the bottom of Lake Michigan.