Despite this uncertainty, experts do know the single deadliest documented shipwreck: the Lady Elgin. After nearly 165 years, a solid gold pocket watch has been returned to the family of one of the steamer’s victims—a man famous for his own reasons. Rediscovery and a Return HomeIt would take another 129 years before maritime archeologists rediscovered the wreck of the Lady Elgin. “The location had leaked, and a trio of divers… came upon a pocket watch. A gold pocket watch, an extraordinary discovery,” Van Heest told the local Michigan news outlet Fox 17.