SS Governor Dive

[Curt McNamee]

There has been some speculation brought to this board about a dive on the SS Governor that took place last summer by some very good friends of mine, including my wife.

I would like the facts to come out so that the speculation and critisisium of some folks can be checked at the door.

This is an interesting story about how a very well planned dive can go wrong. But with good training and crew, all can come out OK.

The dive was planned on the SS Governor around horrible tides and current that are present off of Port Townsend. The Governor is a 417' passenger vessel that sank in 240' of water in 1921 after being struck by another ship.

We were on a Charter with Port Hole and Mike was the Captain. He performed all the things that he needed to do for the dive on the Governor to take place properly.

The wreck was hooked and a float put in the water. On Mike's decision, 4 experienced rebreather divers went in the water and started down the line.

On the teams decent, the current became so strong that the line, the float and the dive team ended up on the bottom.

The team stayed together and shot a bag to the surface and started back up for their over an hour long decompression.

The float and line to the wreck eventually came loose and floated back up to the surface but in a different location.

All of us on the boat thought that the divers were on that float when infact they were on a lift bag somewhere else.

Mike made decisions the best he could based on what we thought happened.

The divers and Mike did nothing wrong. A series of things happened that caused the seperation of the dive team from the boat.

After floating around for some time, the dive team was finally spotted by a private boat, we picked them up and all turned out ok.

This goes to show you that even with the best of planning things can go wrong. We all need to train for emergency's, survival and have the proper equipment.

I was on the boat and was involved in all that happened. Speculation and derogatory comments about this dive are not warranted.

Some times the truth justly blows the wind out of some people's sail.

[peo]

Thanks for posting! Openness about things that go wrong is a good thing. I'm sorry they had a bad dive (though no-one got hurt).

What were your learnings from this incident?

[sparky]

I gather then no one was hurt in any way thats is in my books a good day diving . my hats off to those with the trainning and guts to do this type of diving

I have no wish to dive that deep but i do realy enjoy hearing about those that do it never failes to amaze me just how far a person can go with the right trainning and gear and the right people with the propper trainning as well

I for one am looking foward to more reports all though with happier endings i hope would have loved to been able to read the dive report on a dive where some one actuly made it to the wreck

better luck next time

Sparky

[Sergeant Pepper]

I must be behind on this story, I hadn't heard of this one.

[Curt McNamee]

Thanks for posting! Openness about things that go wrong is a good thing. I'm sorry they had a bad dive (though no-one got hurt).

What were your learnings from this incident?

One of the things learned was to have a bigger float holding up the up-line. The one provided just wasn't big enough to hold up 4 divers in the current that they encountered.

The other thing is the good training and skills that everyone had came in very handy!!!!!!!!

[Curt McNamee]

I gather then no one was hurt in any way thats is in my books a good day diving . my hats off to those with the trainning and guts to do this type of diving

I have no wish to dive that deep but i do realy enjoy hearing about those that do it never failes to amaze me just how far a person can go with the right trainning and gear and the right people with the propper trainning as well

I for one am looking foward to more reports all though with happier endings i hope would have loved to been able to read the dive report on a dive where some one actuly made it to the wreck

better luck next time

Sparky

No one was hurt and we will try again and I will post when that happens.

We did actually try again this last Monday but had to call the dive because of high winds.

[peo]

We did actually try again this last Monday but had to call the dive because of high winds.

It's a great wreck. Hope you get to get down on it soon!

[Curt McNamee]

We did actually try again this last Monday but had to call the dive because of high winds.

It's a great wreck. Hope you get to get down on it soon!

Thanks for the encouragement do you have any stories about this wreck that you would like to share!!!!

[Diver_C]

Glad everyone okay. I'm with Sarg Pepp - didn't hear about any of this until reading this posting. Stuff happens once in awhile. That's what training and education are for - to know how to deal with it so all okay.

[peo]

We did actually try again this last Monday but had to call the dive because of high winds.

It's a great wreck. Hope you get to get down on it soon!

Thanks for the encouragement do you have any stories about this wreck that you would like to share!!!!

I might have posted this on this board earlier -- this is from a dive last year:

August 03

The Governor

Yesterday, SCRET put two teams on the wreck of the Governor north of Port Townsend. Richard and I were the second team, diving the second slack of the day.

From the SCRET web page:

Code: Select all

SS Governor was a 417 foot long passenger liner. In 1921 the Governor was traveling inbound to Seattle from San Francisco with 240 passengers and crew members, when she collided with the freighter S. S. West Hartland and sank within 30 minutes in 240 feet of water, one mile off Point Wilson, with a loss of eight lives. 

Richard and I met the first team out in Port Townsend, helped them unload their gear, and load ours. We then drooled over the blueprints of the Governor while waiting for the time to leave the dock.

We couldn't have been met by better conditions. Only small wind waves, the sun was shining and a mellow tidal exchange. The buoy was still in place, and after Mike from Porthole Dive Charters had cleared us with the vessel traffic control, Richard and I geared up, jumped in the water with our doubles, a 70' bottle, an O2 bottle and a scooter each. We held on to the current line hanging off the buoy while doing some quick bubble checks.

I didn't quite know what to expect on the way down. I felt humbled by the sheer size of this wreck, by the complexity of the layout that I learned from the blueprints, and its reputation as the "Mount Everest" as Mark and others more experienced than me like to put it. I know of some divers that have had to do MANY attempts at getting down on the wreck without succeeding, and I know some of them consider this to be a more complex and difficult dive than the Andrea Doria. I have no idea on whether that is true or not, but if nothing else, it added an extra level of anticipation and perhaps a bit of nervousness as well as I hit the Gavin scooter trigger and we left the surface behind us. We had a smooth descent that brought us down to the anchor which was jammed inside one of the caved in stern cabins. The descent took us two minutes and thirty seconds, and we had more current on the way down than what I would have been comfortable swimming against.

While Richard unhooked the downline so it could be retrieved, I stayed put (which did require some scootering due to the current) and looked around. We were at about 220' below the surface, and the wreck was far beyond any expectation I had had. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen under water. I could make out the green tint of the ambient light coming down all the way from the surface. Visibility was only limited by the power of my Halcyon 18W HID.

When Richard was done, we peeked around together, and started looking for one of the corridors than ran (and still runs) inside the wreck. The topmost floors are caved in, but underneath that, there are still intact cabins and corridors. We found a promising opening in the wreck. I took out the reel and tied off, and then we scootered in.

There were HUGE barnacles on the floor, and while relatively wide, it wasn't that high and I had no interest in punching a hole on my drysuit on one of those barnacles, so I ran the scooter out on my right side rather than the normal position underneath and out in the front. About 100' in, the ceiling had collapsed partially down. We could still probably push ourselves through swimming, but I had no interest doing that on my first dive on the wreck. The opening looked promising though, and may be worth exploring if I can find it again on my next dive on the wreck.

The corridor we were in was just beautiful. You could pick out various ship details such as a toilet and some plates, and it was all covered in sponges, anemones and the huge barnacles. It was as decorated as any cave I've been in. :-) And for once, the sea life wasn't disturbing or distracting. I normally find that it is just "in the way" when I want to look at the wreck, but here it complemented it in such a beautiful way. I turned the penetration, and Richard and I swam the same way back out again.

We then scootered up across the superstructure and over the the bow of the ship, some 350 feet further away. In one place, probably above the engine room where the smoke stacks had once been, it had caved in more than elsewhere. Just as we were coming out of from the 'ledge' so we could see into the hole, a HUGE, and I mean HUGE, red snapper was sitting out in the open. It looked like 6' long, so it was probably about 5'. :-) I screamed 'holy f#ck' through my regulator, and I heard Richard shouting something very similar as well. The current was beginning to really pick up, so we dropped down on the side of the ship to get some lee since we otherwise had to swim our scooters to make progress towards the bow. I recall thinking that I would definitely NOT like to do this dive without a scooter and a very dependable buddy. Doing this without a scooter would mean seeing just a tiny portion of the wreck, and continuously focusing on finding the next lee spot that you can jump to, rather than enjoying the scenery. That said, even with scooters we had to be really careful. There are so many ribs and pieces of extremely sharp metal sticking up out of the wreck that if you don't pay careful attention to where you are, you will rapidly drift into something as soon as you let go of the trigger, or, even worse, drift into one of the cavernous openings.

We crossed over to the other side of the ship again as we approached the bow, and spotted an ENORMOUS cleat and three beautiful port holes that were probably 15 inches in diameter, with the glass and brass still intact (actually one of them had a crack in the glass). There was even more sea life growing on the inside of the glass that on the outside, which looked very strange.

We again scootered up on top of the wreck, and drifted over the beautiful wreck back to the stern section. The stern is the really smashed up part of the over 400' long wreck. When she sank, she sank stern first, and it shows.

The stern is still pretty interesting to look at, despite it being so mangled. There are toilets, tiled floors, chamber pots and dinner plats spread all over it (and many other parts of the wrecks too).
We drifted off the stern, looked at each other, and thumbed the dive at 24 minutes of runtime. From 180' and up I had enough ambient light to see my gauges without my light (though we of course used them since they help communications and team positioning). Our first deep stop was at 160', and I shot a surface marker from 120' so the boat could follow us. Support greeted us at 90', and managed communication with the surface and taking our 70' bottles and scooters off of us when we got up to 30'.

We only spotted one dogfish during deco.

Max depth for the dive was 238 feet. After about 85 minutes, we broke the surface. The small waves we had had when we jumped in had settled down and the Inlet was almost as flat as a mirror.

Can you ask for a better dive?

[John Rawlings]

FANTASTIC dive report, Peo!

What an experience!

- John

[Curt McNamee]

We did actually try again this last Monday but had to call the dive because of high winds.

It's a great wreck. Hope you get to get down on it soon!

Thanks for the encouragement do you have any stories about this wreck that you would like to share!!!!

I might have posted this on this board earlier -- this is from a dive last year:

August 03

The Governor

Yesterday, SCRET put two teams on the wreck of the Governor north of Port Townsend. Richard and I were the second team, diving the second slack of the day.

From the SCRET web page:

Code: Select all

SS Governor was a 417 foot long passenger liner. In 1921 the Governor was traveling inbound to Seattle from San Francisco with 240 passengers and crew members, when she collided with the freighter S. S. West Hartland and sank within 30 minutes in 240 feet of water, one mile off Point Wilson, with a loss of eight lives. 
Richard and I met the first team out in Port Townsend, helped them unload their gear, and load ours. We then drooled over the blueprints of the Governor while waiting for the time to leave the dock.

We couldn't have been met by better conditions. Only small wind waves, the sun was shining and a mellow tidal exchange. The buoy was still in place, and after Mike from Porthole Dive Charters had cleared us with the vessel traffic control, Richard and I geared up, jumped in the water with our doubles, a 70' bottle, an O2 bottle and a scooter each. We held on to the current line hanging off the buoy while doing some quick bubble checks.

I didn't quite know what to expect on the way down. I felt humbled by the sheer size of this wreck, by the complexity of the layout that I learned from the blueprints, and its reputation as the "Mount Everest" as Mark and others more experienced than me like to put it. I know of some divers that have had to do MANY attempts at getting down on the wreck without succeeding, and I know some of them consider this to be a more complex and difficult dive than the Andrea Doria. I have no idea on whether that is true or not, but if nothing else, it added an extra level of anticipation and perhaps a bit of nervousness as well as I hit the trigger and we left the surface behind us. We had a smooth descent that brought us down to the anchor which was jammed inside one of the caved in stern cabins. The descent took us two minutes and thirty seconds, and we had more current on the way down than what I would have been comfortable swimming against.

While Richard unhooked the downline so it could be retrieved, I stayed put (which did require some scootering due to the current) and looked around. We were at about 220' below the surface, and the wreck was far beyond any expectation I had had. It was the coolest thing I've ever seen under water. I could make out the green tint of the ambient light coming down all the way from the surface. Visibility was only limited by the power of my Halcyon 18W HID.

When Richard was done, we peeked around together, and started looking for one of the corridors than ran (and still runs) inside the wreck. The topmost floors are caved in, but underneath that, there are still intact cabins and corridors. We found a promising opening in the wreck. I took out the reel and tied off, and then we scootered in.

There were HUGE barnacles on the floor, and while relatively wide, it wasn't that high and I had no interest in punching a hole on my drysuit on one of those barnacles, so I ran the scooter out on my right side rather than the normal position underneath and out in the front. About 100' in, the ceiling had collapsed partially down. We could still probably push ourselves through swimming, but I had no interest doing that on my first dive on the wreck. The opening looked promising though, and may be worth exploring if I can find it again on my next dive on the wreck.

The corridor we were in was just beautiful. You could pick out various ship details such as a toilet and some plates, and it was all covered in sponges, anemones and the huge barnacles. It was as decorated as any cave I've been in. :-) And for once, the sea life wasn't disturbing or distracting. I normally find that it is just "in the way" when I want to look at the wreck, but here it complemented it in such a beautiful way. I turned the penetration, and Richard and I swam the same way back out again.

We then scootered up across the superstructure and over the the bow of the ship, some 350 feet further away. In one place, probably above the engine room where the smoke stacks had once been, it had caved in more than elsewhere. Just as we were coming out of from the 'ledge' so we could see into the hole, a HUGE, and I mean HUGE, red snapper was sitting out in the open. It looked like 6' long, so it was probably about 5'. :-) I screamed 'holy f#ck' through my regulator, and I heard Richard shouting something very similar as well. The current was beginning to really pick up, so we dropped down on the side of the ship to get some lee since we otherwise had to swim our scooters to make progress towards the bow. I recall thinking that I would definitely NOT like to do this dive without a scooter and a very dependable buddy. Doing this without a scooter would mean seeing just a tiny portion of the wreck, and continuously focusing on finding the next lee spot that you can jump to, rather than enjoying the scenery. That said, even with scooters we had to be really careful. There are so many ribs and pieces of extremely sharp metal sticking up out of the wreck that if you don't pay careful attention to where you are, you will rapidly drift into something as soon as you let go of the trigger, or, even worse, drift into one of the cavernous openings.

We crossed over to the other side of the ship again as we approached the bow, and spotted an ENORMOUS cleat and three beautiful port holes that were probably 15 inches in diameter, with the glass and brass still intact (actually one of them had a crack in the glass). There was even more sea life growing on the inside of the glass that on the outside, which looked very strange.

We again scootered up on top of the wreck, and drifted over the beautiful wreck back to the stern section. The stern is the really smashed up part of the over 400' long wreck. When she sank, she sank stern first, and it shows.

The stern is still pretty interesting to look at, despite it being so mangled. There are toilets, tiled floors, chamber pots and dinner plats spread all over it (and many other parts of the wrecks too).
We drifted off the stern, looked at each other, and thumbed the dive at 24 minutes of runtime. From 180' and up I had enough ambient light to see my gauges without my light (though we of course used them since they help communications and team positioning). Our first deep stop was at 160', and I shot a surface marker from 120' so the boat could follow us. Support greeted us at 90', and managed communication with the surface and taking our 70' bottles and scooters off of us when we got up to 30'.

We only spotted one dogfish during deco.

Max depth for the dive was 238 feet. After about 85 minutes, we broke the surface. The small waves we had had when we jumped in had settled down and the Inlet was almost as flat as a mirror.

Can you ask for a better dive?

Great story!!! thanks for sharing. We hope to have that same sort of dive on this wreck someday.

[sparky]

I was told there is suposed to be a large amount of gold on this wreck

has any one else heard this ? or was some one pulling my leg?

I dont remember who told me that but I was led to belive that she was carrying a shipment of Gold Bars whenshe went down

Sparky

[Curt McNamee]

I was told there is suposed to be a large amount of gold on this wreck

has any one else heard this ? or was some one pulling my leg?

I dont remember who told me that but I was led to belive that she was carrying a shipment of Gold Bars whenshe went down

Sparky

I have heard that story also. The valuable cargo was suppose to be in a "safe" in the stern of the ship. When she went down stern first, the ocean floor caved the stern into a big mess.

Several attempts have been made by the person that owns the salvage rights to recover artifacts and valuables without much success.

The currents are so strong that they have not been able to really stay on the wreck long enough to do any good.

I really don't know if any of this information is factual, just what I have heard and read.

And the mystery continues!!!!!

[sparky]

that was pertty much what i had heard. all though I had not heard of the Air craft on board. that is a new one for me .

Some day i will be ready to do some deeper dives and maybe even a little wreck diving but I have no desire to enter a wereck of any type
my Idea of a wreck dive is just to dive on the wreckits self thats good enough for me

for now i am happy to do my wreck diving by reading about the ones you guys do so keep diving them wrecksthere is a lot of wrecks on my hit list and I know if you dive offten enough and try real hard you can get to them all

So I can read all about it

Sparky

[Curt McNamee]

that was pertty much what i had heard. all though I had not heard of the Air craft on board. that is a new one for me .

Some day i will be ready to do some deeper dives and maybe even a little wreck diving but I have no desire to enter a wereck of any type
my Idea of a wreck dive is just to dive on the wreckits self thats good enough for me

for now i am happy to do my wreck diving by reading about the ones you guys do so keep diving them wrecksthere is a lot of wrecks on my hit list and I know if you dive offten enough and try real hard you can get to them all

So I can read all about it

Sparky

What aircraft are you speaking of???? I have not heard of that before either.

[Joshua Smith]

Really great dive report, Peo! Thank you for posting it here. What a dive!

[sparky]

Curt I ment to say ARTIFACTS I must have had Air planes on my mind after reading the lake washington posts sorry my bad

Sparky

[mattwave]

(Text of this post edited by moderator John Rawlings)

Regarding the dive in question, has UAS, VTS, and USCG been notified on the recent and not so recent visits to the SS Governor?

It is our duty as divers who want to uphold a "Code" of responsibility to preserve such protected sunken artifacts as well as diving in sensitive waterways.

Anyone not notifying the proper authorities about diving the Governor can potentially ruin it for the whole community, it happens all the time.

Please make sure the legal "Owners" of this vessel are aware of your presence so they will refrain from taking drastic measures to protect their interests.

[peo]

If you dive the Governor without VTS clearance, then you're really asking for trouble on many levels. It's in the middle of the freakin' shipping lane.

Philosophically, my stance is that if there are people who have an interest in a wreck for one reason or another, it's only a good thing to let them know you're going to be diving it. It takes away the sense of someone trying to go behind their back.

[dsteding]

Philosophically, my stance is that if there are people who have an interest in a wreck for one reason or another, it's only a good thing to let them know you're going to be diving it. It takes away the sense of someone trying to go behind their back.

Peo, that makes a ton of sense. I hope people follow this advice. I for one don't know if I'll ever have the skills, experience, training and teammates to dive the Governor, but if I ever get there, I sure would like it to still be an option.

For those of you that aren't aware, locals that have dived it compare it to the Doria, but argue that it is a much more difficult dive. Our own Mt. Everest of diving in our backyard, it sounds like a real treasure.

[Curt McNamee]

(Text of this post edited by moderator John Rawlings)

Regarding the dive in question, has UAS, VTS, and USCG been notified on the recent and not so recent visits to the SS Governor?

It is our duty as divers who want to uphold a "Code" of responsibility to preserve such protected sunken artifacts as well as diving in sensitive waterways.

Anyone not notifying the proper authorities about diving the Governor can potentially ruin it for the whole community, it happens all the time.

Please make sure the legal "Owners" of this vessel are aware of your presence so they will refrain from taking drastic measures to protect their interests.

The "dive" as you say in question did have all the proper notification with the authorities and Owner. The "dive" was done with Port Hole Charters and Captain Mike does charter to this location often and does do all the right things.

[mattwave]

The "dive" as you say in question did have all the proper notification with the authorities and Owner. The "dive" was done with Port Hole Charters and Captain Mike does charter to this location often and does do all the right things.

ok, I ask becasue there has been rumors of divers visiting unnanounced, and names were mentioned.

rumors rarely seem to process into truth.