Lake Erie is the 11th largest lake in the world (by surface area), and the fourth largest of the Great Lakes in surface area and the smallest by volume. There are over 8,00 ships that have fallen to the bottom of the Great Lakes. Lake Erie has it’s fair share of 2,000 and less than 400 have been found.
The greater part of Lake Erie’s southern shore was at one time occupied by a nation known to the Iroquois League as the “Erielhonan,” or the “long-tails,” a tribe of Indians from which the lake derived its name. This name is always mentioned by the early French writers as meaning “cat;” Lac du Chat means “Lake of the Cat.” Many attribute this reference to the wild cat or panther. source
