Wreck of schooner found in Lake Ontario

July 16, 2011|Associated Press

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - After 105 years, the three masts of the Queen of the Lakes still stand erect - all the more remarkable because the 19th-century Canadian schooner has sat in the dark depths of Lake Ontario since it wrecked in 1906.

“We think it hit bow first because the bowsprit is broken off, but the rest of the ship looks pretty nice,’’ underwater explorer Jim Kennard said yesterday.

Kennard and fellow shipwreck enthusiasts Dan Scoville and Roland Stevens located the 129-foot-long vessel using side-scan sonar in 2009. They confirmed the find and captured images of it in early July using a remotely operated submersible.

Loaded with 480 tons of coal, the 53-year-old ship ran into a stiff gale in November 1906, sprang a leak, and sank rapidly some 10 miles off Sodus Bay on the lake’s southern shore.

The crew of six clambered aboard a yawl and rowed to safety.

The ship sits on the lake bed at a depth of 200 to 300 feet. Its masts extend as much as 100 feet upward in calm, frigid waters deprived of oxygen, conditions that account for how well it’s preserved.

Its rigging and sails have long since disintegrated and the large, tapered spar extending forward from the bow is gone.

But both anchors and the mussel-coated wheel are firmly in place. Cables that held the masts in place lie in coils on the deck and a steam-powered winch that might have been added in the early 1900s is visible in the bow section.

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