Thursday, June 19, 2008

Published in the Courier News

Water's fine for Midwest scuba diving

June 19, 2008

It may not be the tropical destination you had in mind, but there are places to scuba dive in the Midwest -- many within two hours of Elgin.

Just ask the folks at Sea Lions Dive Center, 1158 E. Lake St. in Hanover Park.

"When someone mentions diving, most people think of warm water and colorful fish and not the fine diving we have here in the Midwest," said Tom Robinson, business manager for Sea Lions. "They are surprised to learn of the history that lies beneath the surface of Lake Michigan in the form of shipwrecks.

"They are also surprised to learn the colorful fish of the Midwest ... to be found at Haigh Quarry match the numbers of fish on any reef in the Caribbean. They do not believe you can swim with large and small mouth bass, blue gills, perch, northern pike, crappie, carp and even the occasional turtle."

Sea Lions will give an introduction to scuba diving lesson on Monday at the Greater Elgin Area YMCA, 50 N. McLean Blvd. Participants are asked to arrive by 8:30 p.m. to be in the pool by 9 p.m. Other introduction to scuba diving sessions will take place Mondays, July 21, Aug. 18 and Sept. 22, at the Elgin YMCA. The fee is $10, which is refundable if you sign up for a class.

Also, Sea Lions has scheduled trips to two area shipwreck sites: the Straits of Mackinac in Chicago on Sunday, Aug. 17, and the Prince Wilhelm off the coast of Milwaukee on Sunday, Sept. 14. For more information, call (630) 289-1680 or e-mail info@sealions.org.

Here's a list of local places to scuba dive:

The Caissons

This is the informal name given to the area just off the entrance to the Chicago River. After the Great Chicago Fire, barges were loaded with debris that was dumped into the lake. There still are a lot of bricks from the fire, and occasionally after a storm when the water is stirred up, bottles and other items can be found.

Car Ferry Milwaukee

This serious dive sits in 130 feet of water and is beginning to collapse. The wreck was featured on The History Channel's Deep Sea Detectives. The ferry holds railroad cars full of cargo, including an antique truck, bath tubs and a toilet. The pilot house blew off when the ship sank and sits about 100 feet away. It can be accessed by a guideline installed by previous divers.

Haigh Quarry

This former limestone quarry near Kankakee has been transformed into the area's premier scuba diving training site. Called the Caribbean of the Midwest, there is a shallow area (20 feet) for new divers and a deep area (50 feet) for more experienced divers. The quarry holds local fish, including bass, crappie, blue gill, carp, pike, perch and the elusive paddle fish. There also is old quarry equipment, a truck, land craft and a house boat. Visit www.haighquarry.com.

Material Service Barge

Off the Illinois-Indiana border, this is another good wreck for the beginning diver, it is a shallow dive, less than 35 feet to the deck. It was a ship, not a barge, but was built low so it could pass below the bridges on the river.

The Number 9 Dredge

Also in Milwaukee, this dredge sunk upside down and sits on its crane in relatively shallow water. It is about 40 feet to the deck. The bottom of the lake is scattered with tools and debris.

Prince Wilhelm

This fully intact ship is off the coast of Milwaukee and is one of the premier wreck dives in the world. It sits on its side in about 85 feet of water. It is sunken into the lake bed so it could not be salvaged. The pilot house and cargo bays are accessible without penetration dives.

Straits of Mackinac

In Lake Michigan about seven miles northeast of Chicago's Navy Pier, this former car ferry was scuttled as a dive site and sits in about 80 feet of water. This artificial reef was cleaned up prior to sinking, and the most common diving hazards (cables and loose pipes) were removed, making it a great wreck dive for beginners.

The Wells Burt

This is a relatively shallow dive about three miles from Evanston and is the broken up wreck of an old schooner. It is historically significant for the artifacts that have been discovered and preserved.

The Wisconsin

Another serious dive, the Wisconsin sits in 130 feet of water off Winthrop Harbor (in Illinois) with the deck at about 100 feet. This cargo ship is largely intact.

On the Net

• Sea Lions Dive Center: www.sealions.org

Saturday, June 14, 2008

1780 British warship found in Lake Ontario

Intact 80-foot sloop is oldest ever found in the Great Lakes

By William Kates

updated 5:15 p.m. CT, Fri., June. 13, 2008

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A 22-gun British warship that sank during the American Revolution and has long been regarded as one of the "Holy Grail" shipwrecks in the Great Lakes has been discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario, astonishingly well-preserved in the cold, deep water, explorers announced Friday.

Shipwreck enthusiasts Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville used side-scanning sonar and an unmanned submersible to locate the HMS Ontario, which was lost with barely a trace and as many as 130 people aboard during a gale in 1780.

The 80-foot sloop of war is the oldest shipwreck and the only fully intact British warship ever found in the Great Lakes, Scoville and Kennard said.

"To have a Revolutionary War vessel that's practically intact is unbelievable. It's an archaeological miracle," said Canadian author Arthur Britton Smith, who chronicled the history of the HMS Ontario in a 1997 book, "The Legend of the Lake."

The finders of the wreck said they regard it as a war grave and have no plans to raise it or remove any of its artifacts. They said the ship is still considered the property of the British Admiralty.

Although the vessel sits in an area where the water is up to 500 feet deep and cannot be reached by anyone but the most experienced divers, Kennard and Scoville declined to give its exact location, saying only that it was found off the southern shore.

The sloop was discovered resting partially on its side, with two masts extending more than 70 feet above the lake bottom.

"Usually when ships go down in big storms, they get beat up quite a bit. They don't sink nice and square. This went down in a huge storm, and it still managed to stay intact," Scoville said. "There are even two windows that aren't broken. Just going down, the pressure difference, can break the windows. It's a beautiful ship."

Smith, who was shown underwater video of the find, said: "If it wasn't for the zebra mussels, she looks like she only sunk last week."

The dark, cold freshwater acts as a perfect preservative, Smith said. At that depth, there is no light and no oxygen to hasten decomposition, and little marine life to feed on the wood.

The Ontario went down on Oct. 31, 1780, with a garrison of 60 British soldiers, a crew of about 40, mostly Canadians, and possibly about 30 American war prisoners.

The warship had been launched only five months earlier and was used to ferry troops and supplies along upstate New York's frontier. Although it was the biggest British ship on the Great Lakes at the time, it never saw battle, Smith said.

After the ship disappeared, the British conducted a sweeping search but tried to keep the sinking secret from Gen. George Washington's troops because of the blow to the British defenses.

Hatchway gratings, the binnacle, compasses and several hats and blankets drifted ashore the next day. A few days later the ship's sails were found adrift in the lake. In 1781, six bodies from the Ontario were found near Wilson, N.Y. For the next two centuries, there were no other traces of the ship.

Explorers have been searching for the Ontario for decades, and there have been numerous false finds over the years, said Eric Bloomquist, interpretative programs manager at Old Fort Niagara.

Kennard, an electrical engineer who has been diving for nearly 40 years and has found more than 200 wrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, the Finger Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, began searching for the Ontario 35 years ago but quit after several frustrating and fruitless years.

Six years ago, he teamed up with Scoville, a diver who developed the remote-controlled submersible with students from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Since then, the pair have found seven ships in the lake.

Over the years, Kennard obtained documents from British and Canadian archives on the Ontario, including the ship's design plans. Even then, it took the pair three years of searching more than 200 square miles before they found the vessel earlier this month.

After locating the wreck with the sonar, the explorers used the submersible to confirm their find, documenting their discovery with more than 80 minutes of underwater video.

"Certainly it is one of the earliest discovered shipwrecks, if not the earliest," said Carrie Sowden, archaeological director of the Peachman Lake Erie Shipwreck Research Center of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermillion, Ohio. "And if it's in the condition they say, it's quite significant."

A rare feature that helped identify the ship: the two crow's nests on each mast. Another was the decoratively carved scroll bow stem. The explorers also found two cannons, two anchors and the ship's bell.

The clincher was the quarter galleries on either side of the stern — a kind of balcony with windows typically placed on the sides of the stern-castle, a high, tower-like structure at the back of a ship that housed the officers' quarters.

Kennard said he and his partner have gathered enough video that it will not be necessary to return to the site. He added that they hope to make a documentary about the discovery.

There are an estimated 4,700 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, including about 500 on Lake Ontario.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Key Largo Trip May 2008

Instructors Joanna Pietrzyk and Andy Kluzik lead the Sea Lions Dive Center trip to the Florida Keys over the Memorial Day weekend. The group – ten in all – left the dive center at 6 PM Wednesday evening and drove through to the Keys in the Sea Lions van.

The group dove the Spiegel Grove, the 510 long Landing Ship Dock (LSD) which sits in 130 feet of water. The dive is large and can be penetrated with the proper training and experience. The wreck is large and even without penetration takes multiple dives to explore. Afrter the deep dive the group dove French Reef, Recal Reef and Pelican reef with its plentiful life including Elkhorn Coral, Brain Coral ad lots of colorful fish.

The second day they did four dives including a dive on the wreck of the Duane, a reef, the Spiegel Grove and a night dive on the Benwood which sunk when it collided with a tanked in 1942. Joanna reported seeing a huge sleeping parrot fish, a first for her.

They completed their diving on the Bibb

Sea Lions Dive Center will be returning to the Florida Keys in November so make your plans now. Our next trip is to the Graveyard of the Atlantic on Morehead City North Carolina to dive the U352 and the other wrecks. The water is Caribbean warm and clear with the same colorful aquatic life.

Report provided by Gerard Scheffler.