Shipwrecks - Time Capsules of Human Civilization

Bad Weather Spoils Underwater Expedition to the Empress

The poor weather and rain that has plagued the Northeast of the USA was readily apparent up in Rimouski, Quebec where our diving to the Empress of Ireland was severely curtailed. The amount of dives that we were able to get in were around 30% of our projected schedule. Undeterred, we were able to get a few notable dives to various areas of the ship that included the complete bow section of the wreck site, a visit to the anchors and ship name, a tour of the forecastle and cargo holds and penetration to the first and second class dining areas. The visibility was horrible as we averaged between 4 -10 feet all week and there was very little ambient light coming down to the wreck site - which made it pitch black. The best visibility on the wreck was when we penetrated her dining room and social room compartments.  Due to the bad weather, ripping currents and limited visibility, we were unable to do much photography or video on the wreck. This was our most devastating aspect of the entire expedition as the purpose of the expedition was to catalogue and chronicle the deterioration of the ship.  Unfazed by this year's lack of success, I am even more excited to be leading a group out next year to mark my twentieth year of diving on this famed Lost Liner.

Empress of Ireland Side-Scan Sonar Imagery

On the Internet are fascinating side-scan sonar (SSS) photographs of the Empress of Ireland taken some years ago by the Canadian Navy Route Survey Office using a Klein 5000 SSS. The web site's URL for seeing these photos are at: 

http://www.northernatlanticdive.com/empress_sss.htm

It looks like the Empress is literally melting into the bottom of the St. Lawrence. What you are seeing is in fact the way she is lying on the sea floor. The upper decks have collapsed and have slid down the starboard side of the wreck exactly like the Klein SSS is showing. It is very difficult to get a view of the whole wreck because you would have to capture small glimpses of the wreck over multiple dives. Visibility is very bad and the lighting is extremely dark. These Klein sonar pieces are dated as the wreck has deteriorated much more than what is seen on these sonar pictures. The center portion of the ship where salvage was undertaken to remove the teak decking in the mid-1990's causing most of the long term damage. I would suspect that the removal of this teak has accelerated the demise of this shipwreck by about 75 years. Additionally, it has caused the stern to partially "cave-in" and its once pristine section where I once sat in a wrought-iron ship deck chair, paying my respects to over 800 still entombed in her wreckage, now totally gone. I will be leading a dive expedition out to the wreck site beginning next weekend with the purpose of capturing video and photographs of the ship's current state of decay.

Busy, Busy, Busy..... New Shipwreck Information Gathered

It has been quite a busy time for me over the past month.  I have logged over 25,000 miles, been to 5 different countries on three continents, given 5 Shipwreck presentations on three different ocean liners and presented a scientific research paper on Titanic.  All of this travel has enabled me to provide my blog readers with firsthand research materials for shipwreck study - so it was extremely productive. Even though the amount of blogs has decreased this month, the quality of materials gained through my travels will allow me present you with new, unique and relevant information on the latest developments on shipwreck exploration in the immediate future.

Much of my work has been focused on the Andrea Doria of which I have made many dives and have done over 25 years of research. The 50th anniversary of the Andrea Doria's collision and sinking is being remembered by many throughout the globe and I have been inundated with media requests. Three of this month's presentations have been about the Andrea Doria and were viewed by over 800 people. In addition, I have been working on the Andrea Doria Survivor's Reunion, two Andrea Doria documentaries, a consultant on PBS (Public Broadcasting Systems) Andrea Doria website  and started publicity on a new Andrea Doria book entitled Alive on the Andrea Doria by Doria survivor Pierette Simpson. Yesterday, a newspaper review by the Daily Collegian of my presentation to a scientific crowd at the Pennsylvania State University's Marine Science Program was published. Although the article did not contain the science behind the collision and sinking of the Andrea Doria, I had a great time interacting with students, professors, administrators and guests at this event. In July, I will be leading the Official Andrea Doria Diving Expedition to the wreck site and will be doing some high definition filming of the current morphological changes to the ship.

The final presentation of this week was to an organization of Lockheed Martin retirees about the tragic sinking of the Empress of Ireland at their group's luncheon. They were treated to a brief historical account of the tragedy and a forty-minute, high-quality digital virtual dive to the shipwreck. The Empress is considered a very dangerous dive due to its cold water temperatures, limited dark visibility and ripping currents. It was great to talk to this group about the Empress as this ship is the most tragic ship accident that most people have never heard about.  Later this summer, I will be leading a diving expedition to the Empress and look forward to broadcasting LIVE from the dive site as I did last year.

I will be continuing the series on my expedition to Turkey on the next blog. I look forward to chatting with you about this adventure to ancient nautical times. Look forward to a new Titanic story from a Titanic passengers' family with a unique twist that we will exclusively broadcast later this month. There is so much to write about!

Comparing Titanic's Decay with the Empress of Ireland, Lusitania, Britannic and Andrea Doria

Although Titanic is deteriorating while subjected to the natural force of the Atlantic Ocean, it has been preserved relatively well throughout the past ninety-three years. More recent shipwrecks, like the ill-fated Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria which sank in 1956, is in much worse shape structurally than Titanic. The Doria lies in 260 feet of water about 40 miles southwest of Nantucket Island. The relatively shallow depths, strong currents, aluminum-alloy- based superstructure and weather conditions have battered the Doria to the point where the top five deck levels have fallen down to the bottom of the ocean. With its entire superstructure gone, the Doria is now a huge steel hull with all of its once-beautiful infrastructure lying next to it on its starboard side in a vast heap of metallic wreckage.

It is important to put the decay of Titanic in the context of other contemporary twentieth century ocean liner shipwrecks. These once-opulent liner shipwrecks like the Lusitania, the Empress of Ireland and Titanic’s sister, Britannic have all sunk in different parts of the world and been exposed to a variety of different environmental factors. Despite their environmental differences, all of these fine liners are in relatively similar states of deterioration to that of Titanic. Judging by these many differences in environmental conditions, the fact that their states of deterioration are similar may prove to be a mere coincidence.

Empress of Ireland-Need a Good Read but have No Time? Audiobook!

One of the best underwater adventure books of 2004-2005 is the dangerous diving to the famed Lost Liner Empress of Ireland called Dark Descent by Kevin McMurray. This book is a no-hold-barred glimpse of the very deadly diving that is done while exploring the Canadian Pacific liner that collided with a Norwegian collier named Storstad in 1914 and sank in 14 minutes. This tragedy killed more passenger lives than both Titanic and Lusitania in the St. Lawrence River near the Quebec town of Rimouski. I have been very fortunate to have more dives to the Empress of Ireland than any other American (currently 124 dives over 18 years); however, this pales in comparison to fellow Canadian divers Steve Brooks, Phillippe Beaudry and Dany St-Cyr. This year, I brought a group of fellow American ( Tony Granata, Ray Stine and Charlie Howlett) divers to the wreck site and our diving logs, videos and other assorted resource information can be found on our web log ( blog) archives .

Dark Descent by Kevin McMurray has been a tremendous success and has received five stars (highest rating) by its reviewers on Amazon. I have contributed several of my diving adventures to this book and have had many people rave to me about my exploits on this famous ship. This book is considered a MUST HAVE from the diving community and this success has been heard by the famed McGraw-Hill Publishers to create an abridged account of the book on audio (Four CD's) that was released a couple of weeks ago. Follow this link to Amazon and order your set of these audiobook CDs as a wonderful Holiday gift. Please note that this extremely popular audiobook is going very fast and you need to get your order in soon! For those that do not have the time to read, this audiobook is a perfect way to experiencing the drama and dangers of diving such a historic shipwreck.

Titanic Logs - July 14th Back in the Saddle

This is our series of supplemental logs that were taken from our scientific research expedition to RMS Titanic earlier last month. I hope that you enjoy!

'Dive Day 4' and everyone is excited to be back in the saddle again! As for me, I will be spending a relaxing day reporting on the dives via this weblog and preparing my lecture tomorrow on the Empress of Ireland. Today's divers are quite the characters and having them all down on Titanic during the day will make for a very quiet Keldysh.  In MIR I will be my original dive partner, Trevor Montgomery AKA Monty from Melbourne Australia and the other diver is Steve Wickens, a UK engineer currently working in the Middle East. Fresh from 'walking' last evening's "red carpet", Anatoly Sagalevitch will be piloting MIR I. Once again, we have had excellent weather and MIR I launched around 9:50 am followed about 30 minutes later by MIR II with Victor Nescheta at the helm. The divers in MIR II are two of the Arizona boys named John Lennon and Chris Vinger. Both of these fine gentlemen brought with them pictures of their wives, children and pets. All throughout the expedition, these great guys talked very fondly of their families and it was nice to see pictures of their home life.

As MIR II was launched, a large pod of pilot whales were seen off our bow. There must of been over a hundred whales that were seen jumping through the water. Following the launch of the submersibles, our resident deep sea organism biologist, Dr. Peter Batson gave us another fantastic lecture about the deep-sea animals that reside at 12,000 feet and include many of the 'critters' that we routinely encounter while down on Titanic. Following lunch, we had some videos of Deep Ocean Expeditions trip to French Polynesia and a viewing of James Cameron's documentary on Bismarck. Bismarck is a wonderful dive and the battleship is in great condition. For those into doing things to the extremes, Bismarck is even deeper than Titanic by almost 1000 meters. I look forward to the day that I get a chance to visit this wonderful remnant of World War II.

Getting Ready for Titanic

Normally it takes us many months to plan a diving expedition but the Titanic research expedition has taken us two years of operational planning, consulting and equipment preparation. Even with this amount of time and effort, there always seems like we might forget even the simplest of things. Once back at our New Jersey home base, a very quick turn-over of gear is necessary as we go from the Lost Liner Empress of Ireland to another Lost Liner Titanic.  Very little of what we brought to the Empress will end up going to Titanic and I am thankful for all the initial preparation that we did before we left for the Empress. All of the cameras and videocams have been packed, the new services prepped and I believe that we are ready to go. I have a direct flight from Newark, NJ to St. John's, Newfoundland where I will pick-up our home for the next two weeks-the Russian research vessel, Akamedik Keldysh. While enroute and on-site over Titanic, we will be beaming live daily reports via satellite.  We have spent months testing this technology and have received direct live feeds during Keldysh's June 2005 dive expedition to Bismarck from our good friend, Belinda Sawyer of Deep Ocean Expeditions. It is time now to execute our plan and I look forward to having you 'on-board' with us as we explore and research the wreck site of RMS Titanic.

Saying Au Revoir to the Empress of Ireland

Following a 3:45 am wake-up call by Captain Jean-Pierre Bouillon, we got great news that the weather had subsided and that we would be getting an early start out to the Empress. Leaving the marina by 6:00 am we were quickly out to the dive site and the Empress. The surface currents were strong and the teams were divided into two groups based on our dive project plan. I was in the first group and took Charlie, our videographer, on a trip to the third class dining room area. Ray and Tony, our photographer, went up towards the crew’s quarters to get some photos of the shoe that I discovered the other day, the cargo area including the winches and the forecastle area.

Entrance to the third class dining area is achieved by access through the hull. It is a bit tricky to find this area but I have spent many years accessing this area and had no problems coming right to it. The day before, I spent plenty of time with Charlie describing the wine, beer and mineral water stores and let him go into this area first, so I would not mess-up his visibility and he could film. It took him about 6 minutes to completely film the stores and he came out of the ship. From that point, I accessed the third class pantry and the third class dining hall. The attached fixtures where the chairs and tables once were are still in the dining room. The room walls back into the food stores and passageways were still in very good condition. At about 15 minutes, I decided to take Charlie over to the grand staircase so that he could film the lower step and the remaining banister.

Because the seas were starting to build, Charlie and I were the only ones to get in a second ( and our final) dive to the Empress. I decided that I wanted to re-explore the first class dining room and carving table. Going through the upper portions of the 1914 explosion hole, there is much damage to this area from the teak salvage operations of the early 1990’s. I was stunned to see all the teak planking uprooted and in some cases, actually block passage in this area. I did not want Charlie to access this part of the ship because it was too dangerous. I spent about 5 minutes in this area and did a quick visit to the carving table and then decided that I would take Charlie back to the second-class pantry for a final visit. After a slow return to our tie-in point, where we saw the remnants of a beautiful leather sofa, it was time to say goodbye. Throughout the course of the dive day, Charlie and I had visited all three dining rooms. During our decompression ascent, I sang my best rendition of ‘Oh Canada’ ( like my good friend,  Dr. Steve Brooks of Burlington, Ontario) through my closed-circuit rebreather that even Charlie complimented me on. 

Nautical Research Group, Inc. has had a great trip to the St. Lawrence and the wreck site of the Empress of Ireland. We would like to thank Captain Jean-Pierre Bouillon and Dany St-Cyr for all their support and assistance. I would like to thank my excellent dive team of Tony Granata, Ray Stine and Charlie Howlett for a wonderful experience diving and filming the Empress. Once we have had a chance to process the data, Nautical Research Group will share portions of our study results to you via this weblog and our corporate website. We hope that you have enjoyed our Live from the Dive Site Coverage of the Empress and encourage you to pick-up a copy of Forgotten Empress by David Zeni and Dark Descent by Kevin McMurray. Another wonderful book that describes this tragedy in detail is Fourteen Minutes by James Croall. We look forward to starting our Live from the Dive Site Coverage over the wreck site of the famous RMS Titanic later this week. After a 14-hour drive back to New Jersey with the diving gear, it is off to St. John's, Newfoundland to board the Russian research vessel, Akademik Keldysh on July 7th for departure to the Titanic. We look forward to having you 'on-board' for this next adventure!

Tiny Bubbles - "Raiding" the Empress of Ireland's Champagne, Beer and Wine Stores

As we finish up our diving expedition to the Empress of Ireland, I thought that it would be appropriate to visit the storage area for all the ship's beverages that include mineral water, beer, fine wine and champagne. This area has many intact pristine bottles of your favorite bubbly drink that is forever preserved in a heavy coat of mud. It is nearly impossible to get the bottles out of this mud intact, as the suction of the mud on the bottle would surely break it.  Underneath this mud is cases and cases of fine wine that still has its straw packing in place.

I have had much fun diving the Empress of Ireland over the many years. Although it has changed quite significantly over the years (as have I-unfortunately), she is a beautiful ship and a throwback to the age of early transatlantic crossings and immigration to the New World. I hope that you enjoyed our dives to the Empress of Ireland. Our goal for the expedition was to capture as much digital video of the ship as possible and compare it to the photos and videos that we collected in the 1980's. It is through this comparative photometric analysis that we can observe the decay and deterioration of the Empress and preserve it for many generations.

Time to pack up the car, drive 15 hours back to New Jersey, in time to drop off my gear, board a plane to St. John's, Newfoundland to board the Russian research vessel Akademik Keldysh and the wrecksite of RMS Titanic.

Batten Down the Hatches – Winds Blowing Hard on the Empress

The weather front has finally arrived with full 35-knot winds and even higher gusts. I was hoping for another 4 am start but never got the call from our boat captain, Jean-Pierre Bouillon. Although I had my gear ready at this early hour, it was not to be :^(  Small craft warnings and raging seas with whitecaps greeted us this morning.

Because of this extreme weather, we will have our first "down" day of diving. We have been extremely fortunate to get in 9 dives to the Empress already on this expedition-so I can not complain. It is time for me to catch-up on my writing and sleep. We are all disappointed in the blown-out day as tomorrow will be our last diving day on the Empress of Ireland for 2005.