Lake Michigan, it turns out, once had its own pirates—lumber pirates, Prohibition-era booze pirates and even religious pirates.

In 1855, a gang from a religious sect on Beaver Island, Mich., burned sawmills and stole $1,600 worth of goods from a lakeside store, under the leadership of “King” James Jesse Strang, according to a New York Times article at the time, under the headline “Wholesale Robbery by Pirates on Lake Michigan.”

A later Times article, “Relic of a Pirate Band,” published in 1907, reported the finding of the burned hull of Strang’s boat, the Eclipse, on Beaver Island, and painted a vivid, if perhaps exaggerated, picture of the raiders:

“It was the custom to sail forth upon the great lake and lie in wait for the unlucky vessels that passed, capture the craft, and either murder the sailors or make them go to the island and conform to the peculiar faith of the inhabitants, which resembled that of early day Mormons.”