Speakeasy boat — where Al Capone partied — lurks under lake in Michigan. Take a look
Just below the surface of a Michigan lake lies a shipwreck with a sordid past: a prohibition-era party boat linked to an infamous gangster.
The massive barge, known as the Keuka, lurks in Lake Charlevoix, Chris Roxburgh, an underwater photographer, scuba diver and author, told McClatchy News on Wednesday, Jan. 4. Roxburgh dove the frigid waters on Jan. 2 to see the Keuka.
The wooden ship, constructed in 1889, is almost 200 feet long and over two stories tall, Roxburgh said. Due to its height, the base of the shipwreck lies about 50 feet down, but the top deck is only about 15 feet below the surface.
“My favorite part of diving this wreck is just trying to envision what would’ve been going on there in the past,” Roxburgh said.
The Keuka “was used by Al Capone’s men in the prohibition days for a speakeasy (from) 1929 to 1931,” he wrote on Facebook.
Although alcohol was illegal in Michigan during prohibition, that ban didn’t reach the Keuka, Roxburgh explained. Al Capone and his gangsters supplied illegal alcohol to much of northern Michigan and had several barges in the region where they’d party and drink — and stay out of reach of the authorities on the mainland, he explained.
The Keuka’s party days, however, were short-lived. After a shooting and attempted murder on the boat, police confiscated the barge in 1932 and auctioned it off, Roxburgh explained. “A local church group supposedly bought the barge, and just a couple weeks later it mysteriously sank,” he said.
“As you move through the wreck, you could kind of envision where the bar may have been,” Roxburgh said, “what may have been going on almost a hundred years ago.”
On the shipwreck, the shadows seem to dance as partygoers once did, and the rhythm of the regulator seems to echo the live music that bands once played.
Down the middle of the ship, “there’s these big beams and the light shines through all the old port holes and cargo holes on the boat,” Roxburgh said. “The light kind of washes down. It’s almost like a limelight.
“And there’s hundreds of bass that live in the bow, and they’re always there. ... So it’s like a huge bait ball, basically like this huge ball of fish,” Roxburgh said. “They just hang out, and they kinda stare at you. We literally swam into the ball of fish.”
Photos show the shipwreck’s stunning — and eerie — scenes.
“The wreck is so long and large and not very deep that you can safely swim through the whole entire thing,” Roxburgh said. “I would encourage people to go check out this vessel in Lake Charlevoix, either novice divers or free divers or snorkelers because it’s such a big wreck that’s not too deep and it’s still intact, which is rare.”
Lake Charlevoix is about 250 miles northwest of Detroit.
This story was originally published January 5, 2023 at 7:37 AM with the headline "Speakeasy boat — where Al Capone partied — lurks under lake in Michigan. Take a look."
