Talk:List of shipwrecks in the Great Lakes

Excellent work

Thanks for this excellent listing of shipwrecks. While it appears that a lot of information is missing, the reality is that many wrecks are only known from the lack of a ship appearing in port. Little else may be known. Great job. Thankd --Chris Light (talk) 17:54, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Coordinate error

{{geodata-check}}

The following coordinate fixes are needed for location of Penelope

this is in the middle of Avon Lake (the city, on land)

—66.213.111.101 (talk) 19:56, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

•  Done. The best sources I can find are this page (which says "1⁄4 mile off Avon Point") and this map. I've tweaked the coordinates accordingly to get them into the lake while keeping to the nearest-minute precision used elsewhere throughout the list. Deor (talk) 20:21, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Images, table width

Haven't previously edited this page before, so wanted to mention here that I shrank the table widths to 75% in order to accommodate images along the right. I think we have several that could go here (I added a couple that I found via NOAA, which has many more). More will be needed for those two not to look weird, but what do people think? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi, Rhododendrites. I like the idea of images, but I'm not really a fan of the format you used. The images wouldn't line up with the table entries of the ships they depict; I don't think it would really be valuable to readers. As an alternative I'd like to suggest a column in the table for an image, similar to what's done at List of world's longest ships. Thoughts? Howicus (Did I mess up?) 23:03, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

That might be a better way to go, yes. That's sort of what I meant by more being needed to not look weird (i.e. to push the images down closer to where the ship is mentioned). Could also add something like "[pictured]" to ensure a connection, but certainly adding a column is more effective. For some reason I feel like images in tables can be sloppy, but I can't remember why I think that :) — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:15, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

@Howicus: Do you want to have a go at adding that image column? I don't have time right now but would be glad to add what I can later. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:16, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I added an image column to the Lake Huron section, to see how it looks. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of images in tables, as they're often hard to make out at postage-stamp sizes. Also, I've had a look through Commons:Category:Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, and I'm not convinced we're going to find enough PD shipwreck images to justify the extra column. DoctorKubla (talk) 11:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm coming around to the column idea. I added a bunch more to the Huron section. Many are of the ships before they wrecked, but that still seems to have encyclopedic value. A couple were already on Commons and the others were pretty easy to find. I'd also note that there are a whole lot more on this site that aren't listed yet (and most, if not all of them have images with compatible licensing). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:43, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

After reading DoctorKubla's comment and thinking about it, I guess I'm less sure about adding images. The images at List of world's longest ships are all pretty clear images of the entire ship, but for many of the Great Lakes shipwrecks the only available images are underwater shots of pieces of the shipwreck, which are less useful at a smaller size. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 19:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've been mulling it over, and I don't think the shipwreck images are at all useful. They may be pretty, but there's no encyclopedic value in a picture of a mangled propeller or a corridor. There may be more value in the pre-wreck images; while I still feel these are unnecessary, I won't oppose their addition. I'm going to remove the wreck images for now, though, as there seems to be a 2-to-1 consensus against them. DoctorKubla (talk) 11:20, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

On a list of shipwrecks, I can't think of anything more encyclopedic than pictures of those shipwrecks. That it's not a nice whole ship is part of the point, no? Images of ships are common -- images of shipwrecks are not so common. So my opinion is largely the opposite -- that if there's encyclopedic value of an image of either the ship before or after it's wrecked in a list of shipwrecks, it should most definitely be the wrecked image (if not both in a nice before/after). It seems like that's what a casual reader (as I am with this subject, more or less) would expect to see, if anything. I added the pre-wreck images only where there wasn't easy access to post-wreck images.

So I'll go on record saying I think they should be restored, but as it seems there are two people inclined against the images and just me advocating, I'll leave it alone. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:37, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh, wait, I misunderstood. I thought you removed all of the images for aesthetic reasons and suggesting that if we were to add images and adding that only the pre-wreck ships had value anyway. But you only removed the shipwreck images and left the images of the pre-wrecked ships. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense at all to me. That it's just a mangled propeller is the point -- that it's that ship's mangled propeller -- that it's where the ship wrecked. The shipwrecked images don't need to show whole ships to be encyclopedic. Granted, if it were twenty pictures of sandy ocean floors, I could sort of see the point, but the mangled propeller, for example, is dramatic and visually interesting. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Dramatic and visually interesting – but not informative. It doesn't give me any idea what the ship looked like, or even what the wreck looks like. If the tables are going to include images (though I'd still rather they didn't), then per WP:PERTINENCE we should choose the most informative image avaliable, which to my mind would generally be a pre-wreck image (although something like this might be suitable if it showed up well at a smaller size). DoctorKubla (talk) 10:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Right -- that's what I'm disagreeing with. I don't know why we would expect an image of a shipwreck to tell us what the ship used to look like (especially since this article is about wrecks, not the ships themselves), but a picture of the shipwreck today certainly tells us what the shipwreck looks like today. While an older picture or wider-frame picture might be better, that doesn't negate the fact that it is documentation of the subject. The pictures show what the shipwrecks look like -- they just don't show what the shipwreck looked like, and I don't think they have to. But again, I appreciate that as long as I'm the only one saying this it's more or less moot. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:35, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

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FYI

If anyone wants to add this and/or research further, I just came across this page, listing a steamer called Lambton, 16 Dec 1927 "survivors of wreck landed". Laterthanyouthink (talk) 10:31, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

SS Jane Miller

Noticed by mere coincidence that there is an existing page on the SS Jane Miller, which sunk in the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron.Seems appropriate to be on the list here. Please advise.

I have to give credit to the poem "The Jane Miller Mystery" by Allan Elliot from his collection Georgian Bay On The Rocks for starting me down this rabbit-hole. Marchofcells (talk) 02:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Marchofcells (talk) 02:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)