TRAVERSE CITY -- Steve Libert doesn't hunt treasure, but that's just what he may have discovered in upper Lake Michigan.
Libert, a part-time Charlevoix resident and president of Great Lakes Exploration, believes he may have located the remains of Le Griffon, a French ship that sank in 1679. If proven, the find would be a treasure of historical significance "on a par with some of Columbus' ships," said Chris Doyal, president of the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council.
Libert will show video of the shipwreck -- considered by some hunters to be the Holy Grail of Great Lakes wrecks -- and share the story of his long search for it at the council's third Underwater Summit: "Maritime Discoveries of Northwest Michigan." The event takes place Saturday at the Waterfront Conference Center.
Now a U.S. Department of Defense senior intelligence analyst living in Virginia, Libert was a day-dreaming eighth-grader in Dayton, Ohio, when he first heard about the ship built by the legendary French explorer Rene-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle.
"My history teacher talked about La Salle and the griffon, this mythical beast -- part bird, part lion -- on the bow and stern," recalled Libert, who began researching the ship in 1973. "He put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'And maybe someone in this room will discover it someday.'"
During a routine dive in murky waters in 2001 Libert swam into a pole emerging from the upper Lake Michigan floor. Underwater research, including Carbon-14 dating by two independent labs and investigation by three archaeologists, confirms it could be part of the Griffon, the first European ship to ply the Upper Great Lakes, he said.
"Everyone agrees that this ship needs to be excavated to see if it is the Griffon," said Libert, whose attorneys are working to come up with a cooperative agreement with Michigan and France that would give his company exclusive excavation rights. "If it's the Griffon, it could rewrite the history books."
Built for fur-trading commerce to raise funds for La Salle's expedition in search of the mouth of the Mississippi, the ship was loaded with 6,000 pounds of furs when it sailed out from present-day Washington Harbor on Washington Island in northern Lake Michigan on Sept. 18, 1679. It caught the tail end of a storm and was never seen again.
The shipwreck is one of an estimated 3,000 in Lake Michigan and 8,000 in the Great Lakes, Libert said.
The underwater summit is a fundraiser to help the nonprofit Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve survey the Grand Traverse Bay, said Doyal. The group promotes underwater tourism, recreational diving and maritime awareness in the Grand Traverse region through underwater archaeology educational programs.
"The big goal of the preserve is to do an inventory of the bay so we know what's there, so we know what we have to protect," Doyal said.
If Libert's discovery is the Griffon and not the British vessel Felicity, it could help answer dozens of questions about the ship and its people, Libert said.
"Ships actually are a time capsule of culture from that period: what people ate, the cargo, how they sank," he said. "I've had calls from archaeologists who are thrilled just to have a beaver pelt so they can find out how they were skinned from the marks on them."
If excavated, he said, the ship could be displayed in a museum that can afford to house and maintain it. Meanwhile he's keeping its exact location a secret.
"We can't do anything until we identify it," he said. "We want to do that before it's discovered and leaked."
For tickets or more information on the underwater summit, visit www.gtbup.org.
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