Anchor's discovery retold as Empire prepares for celebration

Doug Manning remembers the day 30 years ago when he and Michelle Stryker (now Michelle Hoch) borrowed a friend’s canoe and ventured into Lake Michigan from the beach at Empire.

Manning was on a break from his duties with the Coast Guard, and he and Stryker were enjoying a paddle on the calm waters. About a quarter-mile off shore, he looked down and saw something he immediately recognized: an anchor.

“I was serving aboard the cutter Acadia which was based out of Sturgeon Bay, Wis. It was down in Chicago undergoing repairs at that time. I knew all about ship stuff so when I looked down and saw something sticking out of the sand, I knew exactly what it was,” Manning said.

The shifting sands on Lake Michigan’s bottom can bury an anchor or a ship wreck for decades, then seemingly overnight reveal it for someone to discover. Manning and Stryker headed to Taghon’s Filling Station to talk with David Taghon, the station’s owner and Empire Village Council President.

“They came into the store and asked if the Empire Museum wanted a ship’s anchor for the collection,” Taghon recalled. “At the time all we had was half of the old fire hose house, but I was very excited and said ‘Yes!’”

From that humble beginning, the story of how the anchor at Empire Beach came ashore has been retold hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. The discovery, and the process a small group of friends and family undertook to recover and bring ashore the mammoth weight, are the foundation for the Anchor Days celebration held each July in Empire.

While some involved in the securing and moving of the anchor no longer live in the area, Taghon, Manning, Tim Barr and Don “Skeet” Welch are still pretty much year-round Empire area residents.

Raising the one-ton anchor took place two weeks after its discovery. Between the finding and the raising, Taghon, Barr, Welch, Manning and John Preston assembled a raft to lift what was later determined to be a buoy anchor, and bring it ashore.

Taghon said at the time that Fred Arnold, a grandson of Virginia Claggett, was in town along with a friend, Craig Hampton. Both were experienced divers, so Taghon asked if they would help.

“We needed someone to dive down the 18 feet or so to attach the ropes to pull the anchor up. Fred was a commercial diver and just happened to be in town along with his friend. It was a happy circumstance they were there,” he said.

The day finally arrived for the raising and moving. Taghon, Manning, Welch, Barr and the divers, along with Chuck Westie, headed out on a fairly calm day on Taghon’s pontoon boat to tow the anchor on the raft as close to shore as possible.

The anchor was supposed to have 10 feet of chain attached. Taghon said in fact it had 50 feet as well as some other smaller chains. Using “come-a-longs,” they were able to hoist the anchor and some of the chain off the bottom but quickly figured out they weren’t going to be able to pull it all the way up without swamping the pontoon boat and raft.

“It was an all-day affair. We got out there at 8 a.m. and we got back to shore around 4 or 5 p.m.,” Taghon said. They recovered all of the chains that came with the anchor. The anchor was pulled ashore with a bulldozer and rope from the Empire Village Department of Public Works.
After spending all day in the sun, Taghon said he suffered from the worst sunburn of his life.

“It was worth it. I didn’t even notice it throughout the day, working at one of the come-a-longs, but boy I felt it later that night,” he said.

Taghon also used his Super 8 movie camera to film the odyssey. He later converted the 8 millimeter film to 16 millimeter, and had it shot onto videotape. This year, Taghon said he converted the VHS tape to DVD. The film runs about 13 minutes, and includes some underwater camera still photos taken by one of the divers as they were bringing the anchor up.

“I added in some wave sounds and music and the moving picture images were originally shot on 8 millimeter film, so its a little grainy. But, it’s a lot of fun to watch and it tells the story,” Taghon said. The DVD Raising the Anchor will be shown starting around dusk Friday at the green space next to the Post Office in Empire.

For Manning, the images that stick with him are coming into the shore at Empire and seeing the hundreds of people who were watching from the beach.

“When we started in the morning, there was almost no one there. Throughout the day people would stop by the beach to see how we were doing. At the end of the day, there were hundreds of people waiting,” Manning said.

What was exceptional to him is the fact that most of the throng were locals.

“You have to remember this was 1977 and Empire was not that overwhelmed with tourists at that time. Most of the people waiting on the beach were locals,” he said.

Manning said he heard people who had been through some great events in their lives remark that bringing the anchor ashore was one of the most exciting things to happen in their lives. “These are people who fought in World War II and such and they were talking about this being the best thing to happen to Empire in 50 years,” he said.

The anchor and its chains now sit on the south end of the Empire Village Beach as it has for the last 30 years and most likely will stay for at least the next 30.