Mystery breakthrough as ship sunk in 1940 with captain on board found at bottom of Great Lakes

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) said it discovered the 244ft ship in Lake Superior, around 35 miles north of the Keweenaw peninsula.

The ship, which was loaded with wheat, departed Port Arthur in Ontario on April 30, 1940, under the command of Frederick “Tatey Bug” Burke, an experienced captain.

However, a dense fog soon clouded over the waters which soon turned into a storm, and Burke overruled an order from a first mate to reroute closer to the shore.

Burke’s decision put the vessel on a course back across the open lake and to its doom.

On May 1, 1940, at 4.30am, the GLSHS said the ship began to sink and a chief engineer sounded the alarm, which sent crew members scrambling.

The crew began to abandon ship, and eventually made it to safety on the Collingwood, another vessel in the lake that day.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

• Lost 'Titanic of the Alps' sat 210m underwater set to re-surface after nearly 100 years
• Mysterious centuries-old ghost shipwreck washes up on shore
• 'Shipwreck crammed with enough explosives to send 'catastrophic' tsunami up the Thames rapidly decaying

However, Burke – for reasons unknown – decided he would stay with his ship rather than leave with his crew, reportedly waving at the Collingwood as the Arlington plunged down into the water.

“She went down fast,” Gilbert, the engineer, said in a May 3, 1940 issue of the Toronto Daily Star, CNN reported. “We hardly had time to get the lifeboats out. The ship was covered in ice — I got my hands frozen shoving them over.”

His choice remains a mystery to this day, the GLSHS said, however there is speculation that he chose to go down with his ship, a high seas tradition.

“I am not a bit surprised to hear that Capt. Burke went down with the ship,” George Mackery, whose father was first mate on the Arlington, said at the time, according to CNN.

“He was a real sailor type, rough and ready and never was the type who would desert a sinking ship. We sure will miss him around the ships.”

The ship, which was missing for eight decades, was discovered thanks to Dan Fountain, a shipwreck researcher, who worked with the GLHSH in the recovery.

Fountain, a resident of Negaunee, Michigan, had been conducting research in the lake for around a decade.

“It’s exciting to solve just one more of Lake Superior’s many mysteries, finding Arlington so far out in the lake,” Fountain said in a statement.

“I hope this final chapter in her story can provide some measure of closure to the family of Captain Burke.”