May 11, 1999--The saga of the ill-fated and historic Lady Elgin came to an end on April 15 when the Illinois Supreme Court decided to let stand the decision of the Illinois Appellate Court to allow salvage operator Harry Zych keep the wreck that he found 10 years ago. The Illinois Historic Preservation Administration (IHPA) had attempted to use the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 to claim the Lady Elgin for the state, even though Zych had spent 17 years searching for the sunken side wheel steamer. After a seven-year court battle, a circuit court judge awarded rights to the Lady Elgin to Zych. Circuit Court Judge Margaret McBride had ruled that the IHPA failed to prove that the ship's owner, Gordon Hubbard, and Aetna Insurance, the company that insured the Lady Elgin, abandoned her. The Illinois Appellate Court agreed and the case went up to the Illinois Supreme court, which rendered a unanimous decision in favor of Zych. The IHPA announced that it would not take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Illinois Attorney General's office apparently advised the agency that there are few, if any, openings for an appeal.

The saga began in 1860, when the Lady Elgin sank about 10 miles off of Highland Park, Ill., after colliding with another vessel on a stormy, foggy night.

Aetna Insurance paid Hubbard $12,000 after the Lady Elgin sank. According to the state, a letter dated Oct. 10, 1860, showed that Aetna refused to accept abandonment of the ship and therefore did not accept title. Zych claimed salvage rights in 1989, but the IHPA sued him in federal court, claiming that the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 gave the state title to the Lady Elgin. Zych went to the insurer, which granted him title to the wreck. He then counter-sued in federal court. Judge Ilana Rovner originally awarded title to Zych, but upon an appeal from the state amended her ruling, declaring that Zych had title in all the world except Illinois. This threw the case back into state court.

To make a long story short, an agreement was struck between Zych and the state that would have given the state title to the Lady Elgin in return for finder's credit, compensation, and a position on an oversight committee. Each party later accused the other of breaking the agreement, and they went back to court.

Since the case began, two judges that were involved in the case retired. It was then assigned to McBride's court, where the state argued that since neither Aetna nor its successor, Cigna Property & Casualty had done anything in the 140 years since the disaster to recover the ship, she was abandoned. Judge McBride disagreed, saying that Aetna had six letters in its file proving that the insurer had taken title, and that the burden was on the state to prove that she had been abandoned. "Abandonment cannot be presumed by the passage of time or non-use," she said.

Artifacts that have been retrieved from the Lady Elgin thus far include pre-Civil War muskets, swords, glassware, china, serving ware, a chandelier and the ship's whistle. Zych says he plans to set up a museum and a traveling exhibit, and he intends to put in motion an archeological plan that he devised nine years ago.