Diving to Drink a 19th-Century Shipwreck’s Treasure

A team recently dived deep beneath Lake Huron hoping to harvest grain that may one day be distilled into whiskey with a flavor forgotten to history.

The wreck of the James R. Bentley, a 170-foot-long schooner, has sat 165 feet beneath the surface of Lake Huron since 1878. Within its hold was an unlikely treasure.

The quest to retrieve the prized cache stored in the Bentley brought together a rescue team on a sunny September morning.

If their dive was successful, the group would be bringing up not gold, jewels or other archetypal shipwreck loot. Instead, it was aiming to retrieve a few scoops of 145-year-old rye seeds.

The dive had been sponsored by Chad Munger, the founder of Mammoth Distilling, which produces spirits in Northern Michigan. For him, these rye seeds held the promise of local flavor that might help set his whiskey apart. For Eric Olson, a botanist who runs a lab at Michigan State University, the seeds contained hidden botanical information that could shed light on past farming in Michigan. To the divers and shipwreck experts on the expedition, they offered the chance to interact with a beloved trove of history much more closely than is normally possible.

Many possibilities might grow from these small seeds, especially if they could actually be made to sprout. But first, they had to be brought to the surface.

Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes are “one of America’s best-kept secrets,” said Ross Richardson, an author and historian who helped spur the Bentley dive.