Exploration

One family’s connection to a 129-year-old shipwreck 

Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick found the wreck of the Africa while working on a documentary in Lake Huron – they didn’t realize the meaning of the discovery to relatives of the lost ship’s captain

  • Oct 25, 2024
  • 619 words
  • 3 minutes
An underwater view of the bow of the steamship Africa
The Africa was lost in Lake Huron during a winter storm in 1895. The wreck was discovered covered in quagga mussels during the filming of "All Too Clear." (Photo: All Too Clear/Zach Melnick & Yvonne Drebert)
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Janet Inkster heard tales her whole life of the fateful day her great-grandfather Captain Hans Larsen’s ship, the Africa, disappeared into the depths of Lake Huron, never to be seen again.  

The mystery of the shipwreck and Captain Larsen’s whereabouts was passed down from generation to generation as a family legend or folklore.

That is, until one day in October 2023 when Inkster’s Nephew, Leandre Vigneault, came across a story online by Canadian Geographic, about documentary filmmakers who found a ship called the Africa at the bottom of Lake Huron. 

Bow of the Africa.
Bow of the Africa, discovered by Drebert and Melnick in the summer of 2023 while filming their documentary, All Too Clear. (Photo: Inspired Planet Productions)
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Captain Hans Larsen, with his wife Jane, perished on the steamship Africa when it sunk in Lake Huron in 1895. (Photo: Courtesy Inspired Planet Productions)
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Zach Melnick (left), and Yvonne Drebert (right), the team that discovered the Africa, with their robot, Kiyi (centre). (Photo: Esme Batten)
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After getting in touch with the filmmakers, married duo Yvonne Drebert and Zach Melnick, the family was invited to see the shipwreck and to document their journey for TVO’s YouTube channel. They were finally ready to sail the same waters their great-grandfather Hans had sailed 129 years before. 

“Completing a story that we’ve been told from the time that we were young is pretty lovely and it just sort of puts things at peace and at rest,” says Inkster. 

On a rainy Sunday morning this past June, Janet and her siblings Doug Inkster, Eleanor Nielsen and her nephew Leandre Vigneault set out on Drebert and Melnick’s boat off the coast of Larsen Cove, Ont. The rough water crashed against the sides of the small boat, echoing the waves that swallowed the Africa over a century ago. 

When the boat neared the location after about half an hour, Drebert and Melnick lowered their new 25-kilogram robotic camera deep below the surface of the water, controlling it from a console above. As Inkster watched a computer set up in the back of the boat, the figure of a shadowed ship emerged from the deep blue. 

“It was just an unreal situation,” says Inkster of that moment. “I just wish my parents and my grandparents were alive to know that it was discovered, it would have been really special for them to know that.” 

For Melnick and Drebret, reconnecting Captain Larsen’s descendants with the 1895 tragedy touched them deeply.  

“I do sense from them that it was quite a meaningful experience, and it certainly was for us,” says Melnick. “There’s only a few times in our lives where we get to do truly cool things, and this is one of them.” 

(Left to right) Janet Inkster, great granddaughter of Africa Captain Hans Larson, with relatives Doug Inkster and Eleanor Nielsen, and filmmaker Zach Melnick on their way to the site of the Africa. (Photo: TVO Docs)
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Eleanor Nielsen (left) and Janet Inkster with Zach Melnick watching the shipwreck appear onscreen. (Photo: TVO Docs)
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As part of Drebert and Melnick's Great Lakes documentary, All Too Clear, Professor Harvey Bootsma, of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee School of Freshwater Sciences, collects algae samples in his underwater laboratory at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore in Michigan. Here, he studies what quagga mussels are doing to life on the lake bottom. (All Too Clear - Zach Melnick & Yvonne Drebert)
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Drebert and Melnick's three-part TVO documentary series, All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes. (Photo: All Too Clear - Zach Melnick & Yvonne Drebert)
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However, in the summer of 2023 when Drebert and Melnick set out on Lake Huron, they had never even heard of the Africa. The duo was working on a documentary about quagga mussels in the Great Lakes, when they happened on a mass of millions of the invasive species colonizing what appeared to be a ship. Later, they realized they had made the discovery of a lifetime — it was the long lost steamship Africa, which disappeared in 1895 after hitting a windstorm on its way from Ashtabula, Ohio to Owen Sound, Ont.   

“After finding the Africa it became clear that the impacts of an invasive species can go well beyond anything you can dream of, even reaching into affecting and destroying all our cultural heritage,” says Drebert. 

Drebert and Melnick’s three-part TVO documentary series, All Too Clear: Beneath the Surface of the Great Lakes, about the impacts of quagga mussels and their discovery of the Africa will be available to stream across Canada on TVO streaming platforms starting on Friday, Oct. 25. It will also be aired weekly for three weeks on TVO’s broadcast channel in Ontario starting Saturday, Oct. 26.

“We really just want to show people the amazing underwater world that people don’t really even know exists,” says Melnick. “People are going to be amazed that this is happening in the Great Lakes.” 

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