NY Times article about northeast wreck diving

[DiverDown]

The prospect of scuba diving in the Northeast may not conjure visions of crystal clear water, pristine reefs or pretty fish. But for those who routinely splash in the region’s chill waters, there is an equally enticing siren of underwater adventure: shipwrecks.



With a long history of commerce, wars, storms and just plain bad navigating, the bottoms of lakes, rivers and the North Atlantic are the last resting places of countless warships, submarines, wooden sailing vessels, pleasure craft and cargo haulers from every era.

The East Coast is also blessed with a continental shelf that extends into the Atlantic some 200 miles, affording accessible depths for the sport diver. On the West Coast, depths plummet to thousands of fathoms within a few miles of land, or well beyond the parameters of recreation.

The following is a sampling of the choice underwater locales in the Northeast that are challenging at every level of expertise:

LAKE GEORGE Looming out of the darkness in the depths of Lake George in upstate New York, a shipwreck materializes like a ghost. Rough-hewn oaken planks, functioning gunport hatches and pendulous mooring rings mournfully testify to the vessel’s early demise. Alone, it quietly rests on the featureless, flat bottom. The eerie silence is broken only by the exhaust bubbles percolating to the surface in steady bursts from the divers’ scuba gear.

Immersed in Lake George’s chilly, spring-fed waters, only 200 miles from Midtown Manhattan, scuba divers have to remind themselves that they are beholding something far older and more historic than the Titanic. Christened Land Tortoise by the American colonials, this time capsule from the French and Indian War is the oldest known intact shipwreck in the Western Hemisphere.

The seven-sided floating gun battery, called a radeau, is distinctly reminiscent of a turtle’s shape. The pine planking that extends above the gunwales provided a shell-like protection from shoreline musket fire. Closer examination shows crude and hurried workmanship, including the clearly visible caulking that joined the oak planking. Sweep holes, which held the 26 oars that propelled this juggernaut from the past, pock the hull.

LONG ISLAND SOUND Paul J. Creviere Jr., author of “Wild Gales and Tattered Sails,” wrote: “A shipwreck is like a crime scene. If you know how to read the clues, you have drama right in front of you.”

If that is the case, then the divers who head out on the Minnow, based in Bridgeport, Conn., become underwater detectives. The skipper Gary Gilligan and his diving partner, Peter Johnson, have been exploring the waters of the Long Island Sound for 20 years. The bottom of this salt-water estuary and the local New England waters are home to thousands of shipwrecks. Johnson, a shipwreck historian, said he and Gilligan had made another significant find. It is an early 20th century coastal cargo carrier they call the Rum Runner because of the plethora of period whiskey and beer bottles that litter the wreckage.

During Prohibition, bootleg liquor was surreptitiously delivered to late-night rendezvous by swift boats. Gilligan and Johnson said the Rum Runner may be one such vessel. Two other divers — Peter Piemonte from Belchertown, Mass., and Kathleen Brown of New Canaan, Conn. — hope to help Gilligan and Johnson find an artifact that can finally put a name to this long lost ship.

Encased in neoprene from head to toe, the two teams of divers splash into the 60-degree waters. Dropping down 100 feet to the sandy bottom, lobsters, spider crabs, fluke and blackfish scurry for cover among the broken, rotting timbers of the vessel. The foursome systematically pick through debris for the telltale link to a lost identity.

From dozens of harbors up and down the Northeast coast, this scene is replicated countless times by divers in search of adventure and a taste of history. One of the more popular underwater destinations in the area is the German submarine U-853 and its last victim, the Black Point, both sunk in the waning days of World War II a few miles off Point Judith, R.I.

THOUSAND ISLANDS REGION If diving off an island is what you seek, head north, not south, to more than 1,000 of them. The Thousand Islands region of New York and Canada on the St. Lawrence Seaway is one of the best-kept secrets in diving. Postcard beautiful, the clear, seasonably warm waters that separate the two countries rival the salt waters of the Northeast with fleets of accessible, recreational scuba-level shipwrecks.

One such wreck is the wooden, three-masted schooner A. E. Vickery, which sank after striking a shoal near the Rock Island Lighthouse in 1889. A short boat trip from Clayton, N.Y., it lies on a sliding shelf, with the bow of the 136-foot schooner resting in just 65 feet and the stern dropping off to 110 feet. Remarkably intact after 117 years underwater, the wreck of the A. E. Vickery is an authentic submerged museum from the Victorian era.

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