Largest shipwrecks on the Great Lakes Isaac M. Scott !scope="row"|"SS Charles S. Price Largest shipwrecks on the Great Lakes The Great Lakes are the largest bodies of freshwater in the world. They are five giant freshwater lakes, named Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Thousands of vessels have sailed on the lakes from the late 15th century to the present day. Thousands of ships sank on the lakes from 1679 when "LaSalle"'s wooden barque the "Le Griffon" was lost, to the 1975 sinking of the giant freighter "Edmund Fitzgerald" on Lake Superior. Many of these shipwrecks were never found, so the
Lake Michigan Michigan is the sole Great Lake wholly within the borders of the United States; the others are shared with Canada. It lies in the region known as the American Midwest. Lake Michigan has a surface area of 22,404 sq.mi (58,026 km); (13,237 square miles, 34,284 km lying in Michigan state, 7,358 square miles, 19,056 km in Wisconsin, 234 square miles, 606 km in Indiana, & 1,576 square miles, 4,079 km in Illinois) making it the largest lake entirely within one country by surface area (Lake Baikal, in Russia, is larger by water volume), and the fifth-largest lake in the world.