A gold pocket watch connects a Lake Michigan beach town to an English port town. It’s a homecoming 165 years in the making, weaving invisible strings between a British parliament member, a deadly shipwreck, treasure hunters and Michigan’s foremost expert on the ‘Titanic of the Great Lakes.’
The pocket watch was preserved underwater in the wreckage of the Great Lakes deadliest shipwreck for decades. This spring, it made its way home to England, hand delivered by a Michigan historian who has been studying the shipwreck for more than 30 years.
The discovery of the ship, a lavish luxury steamboat, set off a legal battle in the 1990s as treasure hunters vied for possession of the goods that sank with the ship.
The discovery of the watch, though, reopened a story of a rags-to-riches-type politician who died on the shores of Lake Michigan in the 19th century.
As an underwater explorer, historian, author and director of Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates, Valerie van Heest’s depth of knowledge and respect for the Lady Elgin is unparalleled.
“I was the right person to be the delivery person,” she said. “My passion for the Lady Elgin, museums, preserving history. I was the last and the right cog in the wheel to do this.”
Although many years of research led her on this trail, the pocket watch landing in her hands was either “the hand of God or a wonderful coincidence,” she said.
“I don’t know how to explain it other than powers beyond me were making this happen,” she said.
Lady of luxury becomes the Great Lakes deadliest shipwreck
In the mid 1800s, the lavish Lady Elgin was known as “The Queen of the Great Lakes.”
More famous than her luxury and grandeur is the fatal fate of Lady Elgin, giving her the more somber nickname: “The Titanic of the Great Lakes.”
On an early fall day, the Lady Elgin was returning from a day trip on the big lake, departing Chicago with passengers bound for Milwaukee.
Just after midnight on Sept. 8, 1860, a storm rolled over Lake Michigan, decreasing visibility and whipping up waves. After 2:30 a.m. Lady Elgin collided with a lumber schooner, Augusta, and was left with a large hole in its side.
Within half an hour the luxurious steamboat sank and took 300 lives with her, marking the deadliest shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
Fewer than 20 people, mostly crew, made it into lifeboats. Amid the chaos, passengers kept eyes on the most influential and wealthy passenger – Herbert Ingram.
Ingram earned his fortune by creating a visual magazine, the Illustrated London News. His innovative use of woodcuts brought vivid imagery of breaking news events to the middle-class readership. He depicted news of war, train crashes, steamboat explosions and high-fashion balls at Buckingham Palace. He became the “father of pictorial journalism.”
In today’s world, he would have been the “father of social media,” van Heest jokes.
Running on a platform of social reform and progress, Ingram represented his hometown of Boston in British parliament, furthering his well-known status.
A reporting trip for his magazine brought Ingram and his eldest son to America. Before leaving Chicago on the Lady Elgin, Ingram wrote home saying he was extending his trip to “visit the remote regions of Lake Superior.”
When the Lady Elgin was sinking, surviving passengers recalled seeing Ingram get on a life raft with the ship’s captain.
Although Lady Elgin was only a few miles from the shore of Highland Park, the waves were so strong that survivors, bodies and debris were swept further north.
Shipwreck survivors say Ingram survived the night in the rough waters, according to van Heest’s research. It wasn’t until he reached the shore near Evanston, about 15 miles north of Chicago, that Ingram died, likely from a blow to the head from debris kicked up in the wild surf.
When authorities found Ingram he was still warm, van Heest said. His body was returned home to England. Two years later the town erected a 10-foot tall marble statue in the town’s market place in his honor.
It would take another 132 years before divers realized what he left behind in Lake Michigan.
The underwater discoveries within Lady Elgin
Michigan historian Valerie van Heest hand-delivered the gold pocket watch belonging to British Parliament member Herbert Ingram to his hometown in England. (Photo Courtesy of Valerie van Heest)Photo Courtesy of Valerie van Heest
Debris from the Lady Elgin is scattered along the bottom of Lake Michigan stretching nearly a mile long, van Heest said, a rarity among Great Lake shipwrecks that mostly sank in one piece.
This scattering made the story of the steamboat, and the luxuries left behind, all the more alluring to divers.
“The discovery of a shipwreck is often what immerses us in its history,” van Heest said.
The initial discovery of the ship in 1989 made headlines on its own, but what divers found within the ship created a court controversy.
Diver and private salvor Harry Zych found a safe full of silver and gold coins within Lady Elgin’s remains.
It was the only modern-day discovery of ‘treasure’, van Heest said. And although that would have been pocket change to wealthy elites onboard Lady Elgin, it sparked the longest court battle over a Great Lakes shipwreck to date.
Despite a federal law enacted a year earlier claiming that abandoned vessels are the property of the state, Zych successfully sued Illinois for possession. Zych won because he contested the insurance company never abandoned the ship.
Lady Elgin remains one of very few privately owned shipwrecks.
A few years later, van Heest found herself among the wreckage when her team, the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago, conducted a free archaeological survey of the shipwreck for Illinois.
Van Heest swam through nearly every site along the mile-long debris field. Under the waves and among the wreckage, she felt a responsibility toward the ship and its passengers.
“I realized that I was doing something and seeing something that not everybody could see,” she said. “That sparked the kernel of the thought, ‘how do I share this with the people who don’t dive?’”
While van Heest was dedicated to the humanity and science of the shipwreck, there were other divers in the water seeking what was inside.
During that same exploratory period in 1992, divers found a gold pocket watch with the initials H.I. They quietly held onto it for three decades.
Serendipity at sea
Michigan historian and underwater explorer Valerie van Heest and her team, the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago, conducted an archaeological survey of the Lady Elgin shipwreck for Illinois in 1992. (Photo Courtesy of Joe Oliver)Photo Courtesy of Joe Oliver
In the decades since her archaeological dive, van Heest became an expert on Lady Elgin.
She used her survey drawings along with the diving photo and video footage to supplement her publication, “Lost on the Lady Elgin: 150th Anniversary Commemorative Book,” as well as presentations and museum exhibits about the shipwreck.
In 2024, she was hired to curate a Lady Elgin exhibit for the Chicago Maritime History Museum.
While Zych died with the possession of Lady Elgin and the artifacts he recovered, one of his former employees began working with van Heest and donated artifacts to the Chicago exhibit she was designing.
At the same time, van Heest published a second edition of her commemorative book.
Both the exhibit and book drew the attention of the divers who found the watch. Van Heest said they had worked together on other shipwreck projects, but they never mentioned the artifact from the Lady Elgin.
Van Heest describes it as a slow reveal.
The divers first described the manufacturing marks on the back from the John Bennett Company. Van Heest recognized the name instantly as the famous English watch and jewelry maker. (Michiganders may recognize this name as the watchmaker’s London shop now sits in the Henry Ford Museum’s Greenfield Village.)
Then they told her there was a 1-inch oval fob with the initials H.I. engraved.
Does that mean anything to you, they asked. Van Heest grabbed her book and combed through the names of victims and survivors. Only one passenger had a name that matched.
“I said, ‘is this Herbert Ingram’s watch?’ and they said, ‘well it can be no other,” she said.
This discovery made van Heest eager to pin down more information on Ingram.
“I can think of no other individual lost on a Great Lakes shipwreck – and there are some 30,000 people lost – most crew members, some passengers, but there was no person with as much significance in the world [than Ingram],” van Heest said.
Ingram’s status as an active member of Parliament and a wealthy entrepreneur made him by far the most influential figure to die on the Great Lakes, she said.
Not to mention finding a personal item tied to this significant figure, from the most significant shipwreck in the Great Lakes.
The superlatives are overwhelming for the historian who has dedicated her career to resurfacing sunken stories.
“I can’t find the words to convey the magnitude of that,” van Heest said.
Historic homecoming
Michigan historian Valerie van Heest hand-delivered the gold pocket watch belonging to British Parliament member Herbert Ingram to his hometown in England. (Photo Courtesy of Valerie van Heest)Photo Courtesy of Valerie van Heest
As these discoveries were unfolding in van Heest’s professional life, she was quietly unfurling her personal history.
In the same month she found out about the pocket watch, van Heest received the results for her family genealogy test. She learned her ancestors were from a small town in England near the North Sea.
“When I learned they were specifically from Boston, England it was like a light bulb that went off,” she said. “This all happened within the space of weeks – learning of the watch’s existence and then getting the results of my DNA test. It was like I was being cosmically directed to get this watch to England.”
Van Heest tried to find Ingram’s descendants, which would be four generations from the politician, but couldn’t find a family member.
At that point, van Heest was set on getting the watch to England and was working with the city’s museum, the Boston Guildhall. It just so happened the museum was working on an exhibit dedicated to Ingram but was missing any physical artifacts to connect with him.
In Boston, city representatives told the BBC they “couldn’t sit down” after hearing from van Heest and were “absolutely buzzing” from the surprise discovery.
In May, van Heest flew to Boston, England and stood by Ingram’s statue to hand deliver the watch to museum curators. Van Heest stayed in town to do a Lady Elgin presentation and book signing.
In the weeks since, she said the small city-owned museum has received unprecedented attention. Bringing this personal artifact home brought the story back to life, she said.
“We can’t let the people be forgotten,” van Heest said. “In this case, Herbert Ingram for the Lady Elgin will sort of represent the other 300 souls lost. They weren’t nearly as famous as him, but each individual was significant to their family.”
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