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
Great Lakes Protection Fund the 1986 Toxic Substances Control Agreement, signed by the Great Lakes governors. Seven Great Lakes states contributed $81,000,000 to capitalize the Fund. Each state contributed to the Fund based on its usage of Great Lakes water. The Great Lakes Research Consortium hailed the Fund as a "unique and precedent-setting conclusion to the search for a stable, long-term funding mechanism for Great Lakes research." The Great Lakes Protection Fund held its first meeting on July 12, 1989, in Chicago. The earnings from the endowment, now worth over $100 million, have supported 274 regional projects, committing more than $83 million to regional