FRESHWATER MONSOON - 35 minutes
Written and Directed by Valerie Olson van Heest/Produced by Robert Gadbois
On a violently stormy November day on Lake Michigan more than a century ago, a small schooner loaded with slabs of freshly milled lumber wallowed in the trough of the huge seas as her captain and crew struggled to keep their ship afloat and their lives intact. More than a century later, Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates attempts to identify the wreck of a small schooner off Saugatuck, Michigan. Broken and water-logged, the ship none-the-less calls out to have her story told.  Through painstaking research and several dangerous dives to this deep site, MSRA explores not only the wreck, but the lumbering industry that sustained Michigan in its early years as a State as well as the careers of two ordinary vessels whose work often found them along the  western shores of Michigan. The journey ultimately leads to a surprising conclusion when it is realized that the schooner was swallowed by...a freshwater monsoon.
$19.95

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FLIGHT 2501 - 50 minutes
Written and Directed by Valerie Olson van Heest/Produced by Robert Gadbois
On the evening of June 23, 1950, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 took off from LaGuardia airport for a stopover in Minneapolis en route to Seattle. As Captain Robert Lind passed over Battle Creek, MI preparing for the Lake Michigan crossing, his radio request for an altitude drop in hopes of avoiding the turbulence of a thunderstorm over the lake was denied. That transmission was the last that was heard from the DC-4. The next morning scattered airplane debris and human remains floating in Lake Michigan confirmed the tragedy—the plane and all 58 persons aboard was gone, making this the worst passenger aviation disaster of its time. Since 2001, Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates has beenworking with author Clive Cussler,to attempt to locate the DC-4. This documentary details the tragedy of Flight 2501 as well as the NUMA/MSRA 2004 joint expedition to find the scattered remains of this DC-4.
$19.95

PLANES TRAINS AND SHIPS:
THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANN ARBOR NO 5  - 35 minutes
Written and Directed by Valerie Olson van Heest/Produced by Robert Gadbois  
When Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates (MSRA), nationally acclaimed author Clive Cussler, and his organization the National Underwater Marine Agency (NUMA), teamed up to search for Northwest Flight 2501, a DC-4 airliner that crashed on Lake Michigan in 1950, they made a surprising discovery.  In 160 feet of water eight miles off South Haven lay the remains of a huge steel ship seemingly impaled into the lake bottom.  Just how this vessel, the Ann Arbor No 5, ended up embedded on the lake bottom of after ferrying rail cars across Lake Michigan for six decades proved as much a mystery as the plane crash itself.  Join MSRA as they dive the wreck, revisit the magnificent history of railroad car ferry service on the Great Lakes, and ultimately meet the man who was on the Ann Arbor No 5 when it sank!
$19.95

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SHIPWRECK H.C. AKELEY - 50 minutes
Written and Directed by Valerie Olson van Heest/Produced by Robert Gadbois

On a cold and stormy morning in October 1883, 18 crewmen aboard a Grand Haven built cargo steamer heading from Chicago to Buffalo with a load of corn, struggled to save their lives and their ship and a foundering tugboat. Each man, while faced with his own mortality, was forced to make a fateful decision. Twelve men lived to tell the tale of tragic storm and six men went to their watery graves with their ship the H. C. Akeley.  Over a century after this disaster, local explorers, Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates, discovered the wreck was the H.C. Akeley. This documentary details the efforts taken to research and discover lost shipwrecks and the challenges of deep-water shipwreck identification and documentation.  Through the first video images acquired of this very deep shipwreck shot by scuba divers and remote operated vehicles, MSRA tells the tale of what happened to those 18 crewmembers in the final, fateful moments aboard this doomed vessel.
$19.95

THE VERANO: PORTHOLE TO THE PAST   - 35 minutes
Written and Directed by Robert Gadbois
On a clear and sunny day in August, 1946, a yacht called the Verano  sank  two miles north of  South Haven, Michigan just minutes after the Coast Guard arrived at the scene to attempt a rescue. Within three days, the bodies of the three crewmen were found washed ashore. Surprisingly, two of the three had their life jackets on backwards. Soon after the life boat was found upside down with the oars still in place.
The rediscovery of the Verano in 1995 by local divers opened  a “Porthole to the Past”.  The mysteries surrounding   the Verano’s sinking resurfaced. In an attempt to find closure to this tragedy, members of Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates under the auspices of the Southwest Michigan Underwater Preserve tracked down and interviewed many individuals associated with   the vessel, and they surveyed the wreck site for clues to the cause of the sinking.  In the process they explored the times that this ship sailed through, from the roaring 20’s to the depression, and on to the Post WWII boon.
$19.95

A PIECE OF A SHIP - 4 minutes
Produced by Valerie Olson van Heest and Jack van Heest
John Francis’s classic poem, “A Piece of a Ship” comes alive with dramatic photographs and moving music.