<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com/util/image/w/shipwreckmap.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com/util/image/w/shipwreckmap.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com/util/image/w/shipwreckmap.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > The wreckage of the Margaret Olwill was located in July off Lorain, Ohio.

At a Glance Nine people died when the limestone steamer Margaret Olwill sank during a gale in 1899.

The ship was transporting 800 tons of limestone from Kelley's Island to Cleveland when the "great power of the waves dashed over her."

The wreckage of a steam barge that sank during a brutal Lake Erie nor'easter nearly 120 years ago has been discovered in waters off Lorain, Ohio.

The wreckage of the Margaret Orwill was discovered in July by a dive team with the Cleveland Underwater Explorers. The discovery was announced Thursday by the National Museum of the Great Lake after officials with the museum confirmed that the wreckage was indeed from the Orwill, Rock the Lake reports.

The team was led by Rob Ruetschle, a diver who has been on a personal quest to find the wreckage for the past 29 years.

“When you first find the wreck that you’re looking for, it’s exciting,” Ruetschle told Rock the Lake. “It’s like climbing Mount Everest for the first time.”

The dive team located deck house framing posts, the ship’s 14-foot stem, steel windlass and two anchor chains at the wreckage site.

Nine people died when the Olwill sank during a gale in 1899. The ship was transporting 800 tons of limestone from Kelley's Island off Marblehead Peninsula to Cleveland when the "great power of the waves dashed over her ," according to a newspaper account from the Port Huron Daily Times, archived at the Maritime History of the Great Lakes.

Among the dead was Capt. John C. Brown, his wife and their 9-year-old son , according to the Great Lakes Vessels Online Index. Four others on board survived.

“She was probably not overloaded. Her load of stone was shifted to one side by the great power of the waves dashing over her. She went over, the stone shifted with her, and she never came back,” according to the Daily Times, which also noted that "the blow in which the Olwill was lost was very severe."

(MORE: Winter Storm Riley Uncovers 250-Year-Old Maine Shipwreck )

One survivor, John Smith, was rescued the next morning by a steamship called the Sacramento.

“The lake was smooth when the propeller drew away from the island and all went well until about 9 o’clock, when a heavy squall from the northeast struck us,” Smith told the Plain Dealer at the time, sister publication Rock the Lake reports. “The boat stood up well before it for a time and until the wheel chains parted.”

There are an estimated 2,000 shipwrecks in Lake Erie, but only 375 have been located. The dive team that found the Olwill discovered two other shipwrecks last summer that have yet to be identified.

The story of the Margaret Olwill seems eerily similar to the tragic tale of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank along with its 29-member crew during a November 1975 nor'easter on Lake Superior. The sinking was immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."