Michele Siuda Jacques

Detroit Free Press

A man claims to have seen a ghost ship rising and falling in the waves of Lake Superior near Marquette, Mich.

Jason Asselin of Kingsford, Mich., in the state's Upper Peninsula posted a video Monday on YouTube showing footage of Lake Superior, WDIV-TV, Detroit, reported. A tall, eerie image appears to be moving in the waves.

"Saturday evening far off coast from Marquette, Mich., appeared this mysterious ship that had to be gigantic! Almost as if a ghost ship was showing itself to the world," Asselin said in describing the video on his channel. "Even if it was a ship, what could be that tall in these choppy waves?"

Or could it be something less of an apparition, something already off the coast of Marquette? Some of Asselin's commenters say it may be Granite Island lighthouse and tower, the image rippling in the warmth of Superior's water vapor as it meets the colder air — kind of like heat waves off asphalt in the summer.

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Among the vessels that have sunk off the coast of Marquette, according to information from Marquette Underwater Preserve and The Great Lakes Shipwreck File:

• The DeSoto, a three-masted schooner that stranded in 10 feet of water and broke up Dec. 12, 1869. No lives were lost.

• The Florida, a two-masted schooner that was crushed against the Marquette docks in a Nov. 17, 1886, blizzard. One man died.

• The Charles J. Kershaw, a wooden freighter that struck Chocolay Reef and sank Sept. 29, 1895. Its crew of 13 survived.

• The D. Leuty, a wooden freighter lost while struggling to enter Marquette harbor on Oct. 31, 1911. Its remains are about 800 feet off Lighthouse Point near downtown Marquette; no one died.

• The Henry B. Smith, a wooden freighter that left its safe harbor of Marquette at the end of a storm Nov. 10, 1913, to get a load of iron ore to Cleveland and never was seen again; all 25 aboard perished. Shipwreck hunters found it May 24, 2013, in 535 feet of water, according to Lake Superior Magazine.

Asselin's video had close to almost 165,000 views as of Tuesday night. He said his YouTube channel features "snowmobile hill climbing, racing, nature scenes, life in upper Michigan, local new stories and many other subjects from upper Michigan and Wisconsin."

The Great Lakes is home to more than 6,000 shipwrecks, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum estimates, while a historian, Mark Thompson, estimates more than 25,000 wrecks large and small. About 30,000 lives have been lost in shipwrecks across all five Great Lakes, according to the museum.

Follow Michele Siuda Jacques on Twitter: @msjacques