Shipwreck explorers affiliated with the National Museum of the Great Lakes have discovered the wreckage of a ship that sank in Lake Ontario in 1868. 
 
 The schooner Royal Albert was discovered in deep water off the southern shore of Lake Ontario near Fair Haven, N.Y., the museum announced today. The museum said the wreck was discovered in mid-June. 
 
 Shipwreck explorers Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski located the shipwreck using a high-resolution side scan sonar system. The Royal Albert sank when its cargo of 285 tons of railroad iron shifted bursting the seams of the schooner. 
 
 The discovery was made possible with an annual grant from the National Museum of the Great Lakes, which underwrites the search expenses of its volunteers on Lake Ontario. 
 
 “Our collaboration with Jim Kennard and his team have produced some of the most important discoveries on Lake Ontario. More importantly, because of the nature of our collaboration, these discoveries are made cost effectively,” said Christopher Gillcrist, the museum’s director, in a written release this morning. “If a for-profit CRM firm attempted what our collaborative efforts accomplished, it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” 
 
 Last October, Mr. Kennard and Mr. Pawlowski’s team also discovered the wreckage of another Toledo-bound steamship that sank in Lake Ontario. The team found the S.S. Bay State, the oldest propeller-driven steamer found in Lake Ontario, also using high-resolution side-scan sonar. 
 
 The latest find, the Canadian schooner Royal Albert, departed Oswego, N.Y., on Aug. 9, 1868, loaded with 285 tons of railroad rails and headed due west for the Welland Canal and then on to Toledo. 
 
 A few hours into the journey, lake conditions caused the heavy cargo of rails to shift, bursting the seams of the ship, which sank off Fair Haven. 
 
 The crew barely had enough time to escape, but made it to shore in a small boat the next day, the museum said. ||||| After Lakes Were Drained At A British Palace, It Revealed An Astonishing Network Of Secret Rooms 
 
 - Duration: 6:17. 
 
 Let Me Know 
 
 900,743 views ||||| The shipwreck of a Canadian schooner that sank off Lake Ontario's central New York shore nearly 150 years ago has been discovered, a team of underwater explorers announced Wednesday. 
 
 Jim Kennard, Roger Pawlowski and Roland Stevens said they recently found the wreck of the Royal Albert in deep water off Fair Haven, 35 miles northwest of Syracuse. The western New York-based team said the 104-foot vessel was carrying 285 tons of railroad iron that shifted in rough conditions, bursting the ship's seams. 
 
 The crew survived the August 1868 sinking by getting into a small boat and making it to shore. 
 
 The wreck was found in mid-June using side-scan sonar, Kennard said. Video images taken by a remotely-operated vehicle helped identify the wreck as the Royal Albert, the only two-masted schooner known to have sunk off Fair Haven, he said. 
 
 Built in 1858 in Oakville, Ontario, the schooner departed Oswego on Aug. 9, 1868, headed to Toledo, Ohio, on Lake Erie, via Canada's Welland Canal. Kennard said the Royal Albert was only a few miles into its westward voyage when lake conditions turned rough, causing the cargo to shift and break apart the hull. The crew barely had time to scramble into a small boat as the ship sank, he said. 
 
 Video of the wreck shows both masts toppled over and some of the railroad rails can be seen in the aft hold, Kennard said. While the discovery isn't as significant as some of the many others the New York team has made during Lake Ontario explorations in recent years, Kennard said the find offers a glimpse into shipping methods and manifests in the post-Civil War period. 
 
 "It's essentially typical of how goods were being shipped and the kind of goods being shipped," he said. "The heavier commodities couldn't be shipped through the canals on canal boats." 
 
 Associated Press
– A retired engineer and two buddies took his boat out on Lake Ontario a few weeks ago, with a high-res side-scan sonar to see if they could find any shipwrecks. What they stumbled across, 400 feet below the surface: the remains of the Royal Albert schooner, which sank nearly 150 years ago after leaving Oswego, NY, for Toledo, Ohio, the Democrat and Chronicle reports. Jim Kennard, 73, tells the Toronto Star he was going back and forth in a certain area of the lake—what he refers to as his "mowing the lawn" method—with Roger Pawlowski and Roland Stevens when the sonar picked up the schooner. "We saw two masts lying on either side of the ship," he tells the Democrat & Chronicle. Because Kennard had an extensive database of shipwrecks—he's helped track down more than 200 shipwrecks since the '70s—and an idea of the Royal Albert's size and shape, they were able to ID the vessel. A remote-controlled vehicle sent to take pictures and video of the ship offered more evidence of their find. The 104-foot-long schooner, which Kennard says sank 15 miles west of Oswego, was transporting 285 tons of railroad iron on Aug. 10, 1868, when something happened (some say bad weather) to make the railroad iron move, causing it to tear a hole in the side of the vessel; Kennard tells the AP some of those rails can be seen in video of the ship's hold. The crew safely made it to shore in a small boat. Kennard and his fellow explorers were out on the lake thanks to the National Museum of the Great Lakes, which funds volunteer shipwreck explorers, per the Toledo Blade. "Our collaboration with Jim Kennard and his team have produced some of the most important discoveries on Lake Ontario," the museum's director said. As for the Royal Albert, it will likely stay put, per local and federal shipwreck laws. "It's essentially an underwater museum of maritime history," Kennard tells the Democrat & Chronicle. ("One of the most important shipwrecks" ever may have been found off Rhode Island.)