Identifying the many pieces of wreckage in the waters around Pilot Island requires considerable sleuthing. Archaeologists and historians combine clues from historical records such as newspapers and shipping logs with their knowledge of the evolution of shipbuilding practices to hone in on the probable identities of scattered remnants of sailing vessels. Pilot Island, for example, is known to have stranded at least ten shipwrecks between 1858 and 1899 for which no historical evidence of later removal has been found:

One or more of six other vessels reported to have stranded in the area of Death's Door between 1841 and 1859 may have also ended up near Pilot Island:

Knowing the rig type of these vessels and the dates they were lost helps archaeologists sort out the historical relics on the lake bed, as was done for the remnants of the A.P. Nichols , the Forest , and the J.E. Gilmore .

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