Julius Roth and the Kitty Reeves

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Some claim she never existed, and that the story of her sinking in Lake Huron waters off Tawas Point with a fortune of copper ingots in her holds was just another sea story. It was just one of the romantic tales told to anyone who would listen and, of course, buy tankards of ale for the old sailors who told the story at the portside saloons they frequented. After all, there is no sailing vessel called the Kitty Reeves in any of the annual Lists of Merchant Vessels of the United States published from 1868 through 1885.
And, then there's the problem with the date the Kitty Reeves supposedly wrecked as she headed downbound from Calumet in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula to winter lay-up in Detroit. Some say she sunk during a November storm in 1872. Others say the year was 1882. Whichever, if at all, there is no newspaper account or historical record of the Reeves wrecking in either of those years.
Nonetheless, Julius Roth, 70, a retired Port Clinton, Ohio, grocer, was a believer. He knew the wreck lay just off Tawas Point. He had the letter to prove it. He had the location. He had two copper ingots found next to the wreck. More importantly, he had the faith.
What he apparently didn't have was either the money or the luck necessary to turn his nearly two-decade long search for the wraithlike ship and her cargo into the treasure trove he knew was there.
This is Julius' story of his ill-fated treasure hunt and of his five year battle with the Michigan Conservation Department over the fate of a vessel that, in the course of that hunt, he sunk at the old Michigan State Dock in Tawas Bay.