Shipwrecks lure divers to Great Lakes
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A diver examines the propeller of the Frank O'Connor, a coal-carrying steamship that sunk off the coast of Door County, Wisconsin in 1919.
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MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Like tourists in an underwater museum, divers in the Great Lakes explore shipwrecks searching for remnants of clothes, containers of food or even floating human remains.
Divers say it's becoming a popular hobby to journey into the thousands of schooners, steamers and other sunken ships embedded in the depths of the Great Lakes.
"It's kind of like exploring a haunted house underwater," said Michael Haynes, who teaches diving lessons in Menomonee Falls. "You start to imagine what it was like aboard that ship. You're touching history."
Although shipwrecks are often associated with oceans, the Great Lakes hold an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 sunken ships. About 1,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks have been identified, and about 10 new ships are discovered annually.
Divers say the five Great Lakes are one of the top places in the world to see shipwrecks because their frigid freshwater preserves ships better than the ocean's corrosive saltwater. The lakes -- Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior -- are located in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.
"It's magnificent exploring," Haynes said. "The sport is definitely growing."
More than a century ago, the Great Lakes served as the nation's freeways, teeming with ships carrying people and goods throughout the Midwest.
Not every ship reached its destination.
Paul Creviere Jr., author of "Wild Gales and Tattered Sails," said most Great Lakes wrecks are 19th- and early 20th-century commercial ships.
Creviere said storms, fire and human error caused most wrecks. Sometimes, he said, captains intentionally sunk aging ships to collect insurance money.
He said much of the iron, wood, beer, butter and other cargo often stayed with a ship's wreckage.
"A shipwreck is like a crime scene," Creviere said. "If you know how to read the clues, you have a drama right in front of you."
'A lot of new faces'
An archaeologist sketches a portion of the Christina Nilsson shipwreck in Lake Michigan near Door County, Wisconsin.
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Gert Grohmann, co-owner of Deep Blue Dive Center in Milwaukee, said improved equipment and better training have made diving accessible to a wider audience of teens, the elderly and even the physically handicapped.
Grohmann said it took three months to get his diving license in 1977. Today, he said it takes as little as two weekends.
"Ten years ago there was a very dedicated but small group of divers," he said. "What you're seeing now is a lot of new faces."
People are also better able to find wrecks as Web sites list the locations, description and difficulty of diving in individual shipwrecks.
Divers say each wreck is unique and can range from the skeleton of the century-old Appomattox to the timbers of a 70-year-old ferry that was lost in a storm.
One of the most popular Great Lakes diving sites is the Prins Willem V, which went under 50 years ago near Milwaukee. It sunk after colliding with a tugboat that left a 20-foot hole in its side. Today the wreckage is easily accessible in less than 90 feet of water.
Another favorite site is the Rouse Simmons, a 200-ton schooner that went under near Sheboygan in 1912. The boat disappeared in a storm while delivering Christmas trees from northern Michigan to Chicago.
The ship, discovered in 1972, still holds its Christmas tree cargo. A musical called "The Christmas Schooner" based on this story is often staged near the holidays.
For years, divers erased such stories by scavenging the wrecks for personal trophies. That's now illegal.
"When I started diving it was the manly thing to come up with a prize, or else you weren't much of a diver," said Dick Boyd, who has been diving in the Great Lakes for 50 years. "Now you take photos, not souvenirs."
Though he leaves most wrecks intact, Boyd, of Madison, once pounced on a century-old crock of spreadable cheese found in a Lake Michigan wreck. The retired microbiologist couldn't resist testing a sample in the lab.
First he rinsed the black silt away and tried a bite.
"I just wondered what the heck a sailor's snack from the 1800s would taste like," he said. "It didn't taste too good."
Copyright 2003 The
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