On a Sunday evening in 1868, the Royal Albert, a 19th-century Canadian schooner, was trying to transport 285 tons of railroad iron to Toledo via the Great Lakes.

Things seemed to be going fine when they left Oswego, N.Y. But a few hours later, something about the lake’s conditions caused the massive cargo to shift. The wooden boat’s seams burst, and water flooded in as the crew had just enough time to escape onto lifeboats. The Royal Albert, about the length of two basketball courts, sank to the bottom of Lake Ontario.

Thanks to a team of shipwreck hunters sponsored by the National Museum of the Great Lakes, the Royal Albert now has a second life. A group of explorers led by Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski discovered the wreck near Fair Haven, N.Y., in mid-June, the museum announced Wednesday afternoon.

The ship is the first discovered by the group in 2016, adding to a list of finds Mr. Kennard, who is from the Rochester, N.Y., area, has made after 10 years of work in the Great Lakes with underwriting from the museum. Museum director Chris Gillcrist said the wrecks act as underwater exhibits.

“We like to think of them as time capsules,” he said. “If you think macro, each one is a piece in a 5,000-piece puzzle.”

The Great Lakes take up more surface area than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire combined, so it makes sense that the Royal Albert is just one of thousands of shipwrecks left to find. Mr. Kennard has found about 200, including one airplane and a horse-powered ferryboat, since he started in the 1970s. Back then, he said, what lured him to the sport is what still lures many: treasure.

“Here I am in my 20s, with a house mortgage and a car payment and maybe some kids on the way,” he said. After getting scuba certified, hearing about sunken ships worth millions of dollars piqued his interest. “I think, ‘If I can find that, I can retire by the time I’m 35.’ ”

But once he started looking for shipwrecks, he realized the talked-about treasures were often just rumors. He started to fall in love with the history instead, so he built his own sonar device and searched for clues to lost vessels. Since retiring from his electrical engineering job, exploring takes up most of his time.

The Royal Albert was found more than 300 feet below the surface, deeper than many other discoveries in the lakes. Freshwater environments are more friendly to shipwreck explorers than the oceans, which have destructive breeds of mollusks that burrow holes into wooden ships. Because of the conditions, the ships stick around, and the video and images of the Royal Albert clearly show the ship’s structure.

But changes in Lake Ontario’s environment in the last 20 years have affected its surface. Invasive species such as zebra and quagga muscles attach themselves to the wood, sometimes bringing chunks of the ship with them when they die and fall off. Most ships have to be identified by data available in old records or small details, such as an engraved bell found on a ship called the Cortland.

With the Royal Albert’s location pinpointed, the museum and the Great Lakes Historical Society hope to learn more about it and establish an inventory of its contents. This hopefully will prevent theft by rogue divers, but it also helps the groups learn more about the time period.

And Mr. Kennard, others, and younger generations will keep looking, likely for hundreds of years.

“My favorite shipwrecks are the ones that haven’t been found,” Mr. Gillcrist said.

Contact Elena Saavedra Buckley at: ebuckley@theblade.com, 419-724-6050, or on Twitter at @elenaSB_.

First Published June 30, 2016, 4:00 a.m.