Case file · High strangeness
Le Griffon vanishes
La Salle's ship Le Griffon, the first full-sized sailing ship on the upper Great Lakes, sailed from the Green Bay area on 18 September 1679 with a cargo of furs and was never seen again.
1679 CE · 45.40, -86.90 · status: unexplained
The account
Explanations at the time included a storm, sabotage and an attack. It is often called the first of the Great Lakes' lost ships, and several wrecks have been claimed as hers without confirmation.
The sceptical view
A storm on Lake Michigan is the likeliest cause; the mystery is where she lies, not why she sank.
The researched reading
A pioneering ship lost on a dangerous lake in storm season. The mystery is where she lies, not what happened.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Undetermined | 42% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 40% | Native observers reported a severe storm on northern Lake Michigan shortly after she sailed. Autumn storms there have sunk thousands of vessels, and an untested ship with an inexperienced crew was vulnerable. |
| A cultural story | 8% | A legend of a curse and of a ghost ship grew later, adding mystery to an ordinary loss. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | La Salle himself suspected his pilot and crew of scuttling her and stealing the furs. An attack by rival traders or local nations was also rumoured. These are deliberate human acts, unproven but not implausible. |
| Something in the surroundings | 2% | Already covered by the weather. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 2% | The wreck has not been confirmed, but nothing suggests an extraordinary cause. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 1% | No witness accounts of the loss itself. |
Official position: No formal finding; historians accept loss in a storm as most likely.