The 'holy grail' of shipwrecks

[Taller, Better]

This might seem a bit random to some, but for me it was wildly interesting. Tomorrow when the light is better I will photograph the detailed sketch of the ship. From the Globe and Mail. link:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...=patrick+white

THE ONTARIO

The 'holy grail' of shipwrecks

Lost for two centuries on the floor of Lake Ontario, a revolutionary-era vessel is found by two zealous engineers

PATRICK WHITE

June 14, 2008

The last time anyone laid eyes on it, the Ontario was the most-feared ship on the Great Lakes.

It was 1780. Yankee militias were threatening to storm across Lake Ontario and seize Montreal from the British. And if it weren't for the intimidating profile of the 226-tonne Ontario - 22 cannons, two 80-foot masts, a beamy hull with cargo space for 1,000 barrels - they just may have.

But six months after it launched, the pride of the Great Lakes fleetsailed into a Halloween squall with around 120 passengers on board and was never seen again.

It remains the worst-ever disaster recorded on Lake Ontario, according to Kingston historian Arthur Britton Smith.

For 228 years, the Ontario eluded countless shipwreck-hunters, thwarting any explanation of its disappearance and fanning rumours of a priceless booty on board.

On a flat-calm morning two Saturdays ago, the Ontario reappeared.

Yesterday, two Rochester engineers revealed their discovery.

"I can't tell you how excited we are," said Jim Kennard, 64, who has spent more than half his life pursuing the Ontario. "This is the holy grail of lost ships on the Great Lakes."

The find provides a denouement to one of the region's most intriguing historical mysteries and validation for Mr. Kennard and Dan Scoville, 35, who have braved years of early mornings, rough waters and snooping shipwreck thieves in their quest for the Ontario.

At first, the twosome wasn't sure what they'd found. The Ontario appeared as a mere blip on the side-scanning sonar system that Mr. Kennard, a retired Kodak engineer, designed and built himself.

After a few more soundings, "we could see this blip had two masts, each with a crow's nest," said Mr. Kennard, who has discovered seven of Lake Ontario's estimated 500 shipwrecks in the past six years alone.

"There was only one vessel we knew of that was built like that."

Their next step was to video the ship up close using a microwave-sized remote submersible of Mr. Scoville's design.

"Right away we saw the quarter gallery, the windows in the stern, the cannons," said Mr. Kennard.

"There was no mistaking. That's when we started getting excited."

As final confirmation they summoned Mr. Smith, author of the definitive book on the Ontario.

He showed up early Tuesday. The men were soon popping champagne.

"What I saw was far beyond my wildest dreams," said Mr. Smith. "I thought she'd be covered in silt, but she looks like she might have sunk last week."

In the pitch-black water of around 4 degrees Celsius, the Ontario has aged remarkably well. Leaning on a 45-degree angle, its masts still jut straight up from its decks where several guns lie upside-down. Zebra mussels cover much of the woodwork, but a brass bell, brass cleats and the stern lantern are perfectly visible. Seven big windows across the stern still have glass.

"This is the only revolutionary-era vessel in such perfect shape," said Mr. Smith, who speculated from the positioning of the wreck that Captain James Andrews may have been racing the ship west toward calmer waters at Niagara River when hurricane-force winds knocked it over.

There was no evidence of the roughly 113 Canadian men, women, children and American prisoners who went down with the ship.

Six bodies washed ashore the year after the Ontario sunk, but the rest of the passengers - mostly Canadian soldiers from the 34th regiment - were never found.

Nobody knows for sure how many passengers perished; the British kept their prisoner counts secret.

Out of worries over looting, Mr. Kennard and Mr. Scoville are keeping the ship's location hush-hush.

"You get a bit paranoid," said Mr. Kennard. "There are all sorts of games that go on out there and this is a British Admiralty war grave."

As for the rumours of gold treasure, Mr. Smith said it was all a myth.

"Other than a bit of loose change on the captain, there would be no money on board," he said.

"Nobody has seen anything like this. That's her true value."

[Taller, Better]

ok, for history buffs, here is the beautiful ship "Ontario". I wonder if it will be raised?

[urban 2.0]

Could such a ship seriously take a fortifications like Montreal?

I'd put my money on those on solid ground.

[Taller, Better]

22 cannons was a LOT in those days.. firearms were pretty primitive. A boat like this could stop a smaller attack boat from the US and therefore protect Montreal.

[DrT]

I want two things out of this.

1. A National Geographic Special.
2. A new museum in TO to house it!

Seriously, this is not something you find everyday, and it would be a huge tourist draw if shown to advantage and in proper historical context for both Canadians and Americans.
The preservation is amazing.

I hope that it lies in the Canadian side of the lake, so that there are no ownership issues with the US.

[Taller, Better]

So.... what happens when you raise wood (if you will pardon the expression) that is 230 years old? Does it disintegrate quickly? Can it be preserved? My guess is because this is an Admiralty graveyard, that everything will be documented and left insitu, much the same way they have left the Titanic. If they did raise it, we could put it in the Roundhouse, where I hoisted a few Steamwhistles this very afternoon!

[DrT]

Originally Posted by Taller, Better

So.... what happens when you raise wood (if you will pardon the expression) that is 230 years old? Does it disintegrate quickly? Can it be preserved? My guess is because this is an Admiralty graveyard, that everything will be documented and left insitu, much the same way they have left the Titanic. If they did raise it, we could put it in the Roundhouse, where I hoisted a few Steamwhistles this very afternoon!

Heh, heh, Beavis, he said "raise wood",

I've seen similar civil war wrecks preserved. It is a very time consuming proposition. I believe the wood timbers are very slowly dried in chambers with controlled humidity or the water that is in the wood replaced with another compound. I'll have to research it, but I think it's possible.

Preservation of these historically important artefacts was entrusted to the Fort Fisher Preservation Laboratory, located on the Fort Fisher Historical Site. To date, fifty-five different methods of preservation have been used and the large number of duplicate artefacts allows for the testing of the best preservation method. Cleaning, impregnation, freeze drying, electrochemical reduction, electrolytic reduction, sandblasting, plastic embedding and sonic cleaning all have to be done before an artefact is ready for display at the state of North Carolina's official museum site.

[DrT]

Here is a little more on how wooden ships can be preserved.

Wood must be kept wet after removal from the environment. If it is allowed to dry it will shrink and split. Let wood soak for one to twelve months in fresh water, depending of the size of the artifact.
Hard woods can handle a mild solution (5%) of Muriatic Acid. Make sure no steel or iron is attached, as muriatic acid will destroy these items.
If muriatic acid is used, soak again in fresh water. It will help remove the acid smell.
In order to preserve water logged wood, steps must be taken to replace the water in the wood cells with an compound. Polyethylene glygol (PEG) is the best choice. It forces the water out of the wood cells and forms a molecular structure throughout the wood artifact. When drying after this treatment, the most shrinkage is about 10%. PEG is available in liquid and powder form with different weights, 4000 MW is the best choice, but 3500 MW is readily available. I paid $30.00 for a gallon of PEG 4000, your price may vary. If you are using power, make sure distilled water is used for mixing. This will ensure no impurities get into the mixture.
Soak the wood in a covered container. I soaked wood handles from a seven spoke ships wheel in PEG 4000 for about a year. After air drying, they fit back on the spoke ends like a glove. The handles are about six inches long, one inch thick with a half-inch hole down the center. Very large objects may take two to twenty years, as in the case of the sixteenth-century warship Mary Rose.
When the object has soaked for about half of the expected time, remove the cover to allow some water to evaporate. This will increase the concentration of PEG over time, thus increasing the structural strength of the finished object. Don't let the PEG dry out too much. Of course, keep the open container away from pets, children, and dirt.
When the treatment has completed, rinse the object in warm water to remove excess PEG reside.
The wooden object can be sanded and coated with linseed oil or left in its natural state.

[Taller, Better]

That is such a slick process.. would never have thought of all that. Would be very intensive and $$ but what a tourist attraction it would be!

[urban 2.0]

Upper Canada has great heritage - it's almost embarrassing how little attention we've given to it.

[Waterloo_Guy]

Thanks for posting this!

[Taller, Better]

More news!! from the National Post. link:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/can...html?id=743282

War of 1812 shipwreck discovered, diver says

Sonar images said to reveal sunken hulks

Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service Published: Saturday, August 23, 2008
Related Topics


A Lake Ontario shipwreck hunter claims to have discovered a legendary vessel from the War of 1812 -- the 32-metre sloop HMS Wolfe, the star of one of the most dramatic naval battles on the Great Lakes at the height of the U. S. invasion of Canada.

The ship, which was renamed HMS Montreal later in the war, was the Canadianmade flagship of commodore James Yeo, commander of the inland British fleet during the crucial struggle against the Americans for control of the lakes.

In a famous 1813 engagement known as the Burlington Races, a damaged Wolfe was under intense fire near present-day Toronto, but just managed to escape the enemy assault by retreating rapidly westward to a gun-protected shore near Burlington Bay.

A defeat in that battle -- which came just days after a major U. S. victory on Lake Erie -- could have given the Americans free rein in the lower lakes and, according to a leading War of 1812 naval historian, made certain Ontario became "a state of the American union."

The ship, which was involved in numerous battles throughout the 1812-1814 war, was scuttled years after the war in waters off Kingston, Ont., along with several other vessels that had outlived their usefulness in peacetime Upper Canada.

But Kingston-based diver Kenn Feigelman says he has found, on the murky lake bottom at an undisclosed location near the city, a ships' graveyard with four War of 1812-era wrecks -- including, he believes, the Wolfe.

He told Canwest News Service yesterday that he expects the discovery to generate international interest ahead of the bicentennial of the war in 2012.

"Although these were derelict vessels, they are a very, very important part of not only Canadian but North American history," he said.

Depending on the outcome of the battles fought by the Wolfe -- which carried 20 cannon and 200 crew -- and the other ships in Britain's Lake Ontario squadron, the "political geography of North America could have been completely different," said Mr. Feigelman, a Montreal native who now runs Kingston-based DeepQuest2 Expeditions.

He and his dive team have captured sonar images and photographs of the sunken hulks and adjacent debris fields, but Mr. Feigelman insists the wreck sites have not been disturbed and that all information gathered is being shared with Parks Canada archeologists.

The find follows the discovery this year of the Revolutionary War-era HMS Ontario and a major Parks Canada-led probe of the Hamilton and Scourge, two American ships from the War of 1812 that went down in a storm near Hamilton.

Marc-Andre Bernier, Ottawa-based manager of operations for Parks Canada's underwater archeology unit, said government scientists have conducted surveys off the Kingston shore in the past and identified some potentially significant wreck sites.

He added that any War of 1812 wrecks would be considered "important" and worth investigating, but added that there's "nothing conclusive" yet to determine whether the ships spotted by Mr. Feigelman are the same ones already known to Parks Canada, or to prove they include the Wolfe and other vessels under Commodore Yeo's command during the war.
If one of the ships is the Wolfe, its discovery recalls what naval historian Robert Williamson has called "a pivotal engagement that would determine the outcome of the War of 1812."

In a 1999 essay published in Canadian Military History, Mr. Williamson reconstructed the events of Sept. 28, 1813, using the logbooks of the Wolfe, which had only recently been opened to researchers by the U. S. national archives in Washington.

The logs had apparently been seized by the Americans after an 1814 battle in which a British officer was killed -- apparently enroute to Britain to deliver the Wolfe's records to admiralty headquarters.

The logs offered a wealth of new details about the Burlington Races, which had appeared to observers on shore more like "a yacht race" than a naval battle, Mr. Williamson wrote.

The historian debunked a popular tale that the British ships vaulted a sandbar to escape their U. S. pursuers, but Mr. Williamson concluded that the survival of the Wolfe and the other vessels was a true turning point in Canadian history.

"Yeo's Lake Ontario naval squadron survived the scrape of 28 September as strong as ever," Mr. Williamson wrote. "In fact, it went on the offensive in the following spring and helped to capture Fort Oswego.... By maintaining the integrity of his squadron, Yeo played a far more important role in the events of the War of 1812 that shaped our future than generations of historians have been prepared to grant him."

[current]

msnbc online article:

Long-lost Shipwrecks Discovered in Lake Huron
'Project Shiphunt' documents remains of ships that went down in 1889 and 1905



msnbc.com staff and news service reports
July 14 2011

PRESQUE ISLE, Mich. — A team of underwater explorers has found two long-lost shipwrecks in northeastern Lake Huron.

Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary on Wednesday announced the discovery of the schooner M.F. Merrick and the steel freighter Etruria in deep water off Presque Isle.

They were detected during an expedition called "Project Shiphunt," which involved scientists and historians from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and five high school students from Saginaw, Mich.

Both ships sank after colliding with steamers in dense fog.

The 138-foot-long Merrick went down in 1889. Five crew members were killed. The intact hull was found resting upright on the lake bottom.

The Etruria, which was 414 feet long, sank in 1905 — just three years after it was launched. Today the steamer sits upside down in deep water.

NOAA said the wrecks are being documented in 3-D imagery for the first time. A documentary about the expedition, sponsored by Sony and Intel, is to air Aug. 30 on the Current cable network.

"This research will help us protect the Great Lakes and their rich history for future generations," Jeff Gray, superintendent of Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary, said in a NOAA news release. "It is also an extraordinary opportunity to inspire the next generation of explorers and introduce them to technology and experiences that could shape their futures."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43760175...ience-science/

[neilio]

Wow this is really cool, thanks for posting!

[icemachine]

Another Shipwreck found, includes some nice video

Shipwreck hunters find 150-year-old schooner in Lake Ontario

Jim Kennard kept a secret under wraps for two years.

The fact that his big find was under water didn’t make it any easier.

“Sitting on something like this for two years is really hard,” the undersea explorer said about his latest discovery — a fully intact 150-year-old schooner sitting upright on the bottom of Lake Ontario, about 150 kilometres east of Toronto.

He and his underwater exploration team — Dan Scoville and Roland Stevens — were almost certain they had found the three-masted Queen of the Lakes two years ago.

The team has found about 12 wrecks in Lake Ontario using sonar- and remote-operated vehicles. Their first step is to research the boat they are looking for and the route it would likely have taken to transport goods such as salt and coal from New York to Canada.

[Paul29]

I can only imagine the huge satisfaction in finding these old ships.
Just out of curiosity, who pays for all of this? It can't be cheap researching then searching for 2 years with a crew like this.