The head of underwater archeology in France is still interested in a site in Michigan he visited in 2013, looking for the remains of the Griffin.
Michel L’Hour is listed as the project director in a proposal to the State of Michigan to take wooden samples from beams on the bottom of Lake Michigan. The beams, and other debris, were found off the Garden Peninsula near an area that was excavated two years ago.
Steve Libert and his group Great Lakes Exploration first discovered the site more than a decade ago and are now working with France. The ship was built by French explorer Robert de La Salle and disappeared in 1679. The remains belong to France if found.
Libert believes they have found the Griffin and says they want to run tests on the wooden beams.
“I think what we did find is the superstructure of that vessel and this is what we are trying to prove,” he says.
Libert says the debris includes nails and iron rods and the proposal to the state notes a “lack of threaded rod or other modern fasteners.”
In 2013, Libert’s crew removed an entire wooden beam from the site. It had wooden pegs, or treenails, sticking out of it. They believed it was a bowsprit and hoped to find it attached to a ship hull but did not.
American archeologists involved in that excavation later decided it was most likely a post from a fishing net set in the late 1800s.
French archeologists disagree. They think it could be the bowsprit of an old ship, perhaps the Griffin.
“We don’t know,” says Libert, “but they’re pretty excited about the possibility that it does belong to the Griffin.”
The research team now also includes archeologists from the University of Montreal and the director of the Maritime Museum of Quebec.
Libert hoped to have divers in the water at the end of June but was not sure the state could process his permit application in time.
