Mysteries of Lake Ontario-shipwreck!

Twenty some years ago I published a 96 page booklet “Mirages Monsters Myths and Mysteries of Lake Ontario.” Awkward title notwithstanding, it sold well and has been out of print for sometime. I’ve since revisited some of the more mysterious and puzzling phenomena described in it with several other books including “Legends and Lore of Lake Ontario” ( published by Arcadia Press, 2013).

Humans need a bit of mystery in their lives. If they don’t have it, they invent it. Aliens, dark conspiracy theories and other ideas appear like the groups of shaggy mane mushrooms that so unexpectedly appear by the driveway on a fall morning.

here is a photo of the “mysterious” bottom of Lake Ontario at 80 feet off Fair Haven taken with the trusty Go Pro camera. Lots of zebra mussels!

Certainly mystery is a big contributor to the shipwreck industry. People want to know what happened and why. Some people even want to see for themselves what the wreck looks like today. Numerous books have been written on famous disasters on salt water and many millions have been spent on wreck hunting expeditions. The first Titanic expedition was funded by the U.S. Navy that hired oceanographer Robert Ballard to locate a couple of lost nuclear submarines.

Today you can participate in an ongoing effort to “document” the Titanic wreck through OceanGate if you have a nest egg in urgent need of disposal. One website mentions a cost of $59,000 for the eight day expedition, another option listed the cost of joining the “crew” at $120,000 plus.

This fascination with wrecks has given rise to a Great Lakes “sanctuary” in Thunder Bay off the Michigan coast. A draft plan for another official federally funded “Marine Sanctuary” for the east end of Lake Ontario on the New York side and perhaps part of the St. Lawrence River was released last year. The purpose of these efforts is wreck preservation and awareness of the cultural significance of same. ( more information is at this link https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/lake-ontario/ ). There is, of course, a well developed sport diving industry on the Canadian side of the lake, between Long Point and Kingston, too. The image below depicts possible boundaries of the U.S. “sanctuary”. The dots represent known and approximate wreck locations.

Digital age technology has given the wreck business a huge boost. You don’t have to be a millionaire now or an electronics wiz to find a wreck today thanks to side scan sonar, GPS, and other sophisticated underwater mapping equipment that are available at the price of a well used auto. Even non divers can explore shallow water wrecks of the lake with the aid of an inexpensive tethered ROV. (Though I’m told it’s illegal to use one on a wreck in Canadian waters these days.)

Other digital technology is making it possible for specialists to explore the context of a wreck in great detail using recovered artifacts and analysis of the materials of the wreck itself. Dendrochronology and the use of microscopy, CT scans, and mass spectrometers allow researchers to pin point the very forest from which timber for a ship’s construction was harvested. Other research reveals ancient trade patterns and details of daily life from the ships’ cargoes. What the folks on board had in the way of dinner provisions four hundred years ago or the colors of their fabrics and the metalurgy of their weapons can now be documented along with a wealth of other information. Each wreck’s intersection of history and human drama is a unique story. So they fascinate.

Lake Ontario’s shipwreck history is far shorter than that of the Baltic Sea or the U.S. East Coast. But the lake’s cold waters have preserved several famous wrecks. The events that led to one, that of two 1812 war gunboats, the Hamilton and Scourge were vividly detailed in a contemporary eyewitness report documented by none other than James Fenimore Cooper. I wrote at length of the loss of these twin vessels in “Maritime Tales of Lake Ontario” ( another Arcadia press book still in print).

This artist’s rendering shows the capsized “Scourge” just before she settled to the bottom. She and the other gunboat were knocked down by a sudden summer squall on the night of August 8, 1813.

The gripping account of Ned Myers as told to Cooper, certainly contributed to interest in these two wrecks. An amateur underwater archaeologist named D.A. Nelson with funding from several sources including the National Geographic Society documented the wrecks back in 1982 using a remotely operated vehicle.

Another famous Lake Ontario wreck that has inspired at least one full length book is that of the British warship HMS Ontario. She was sunk in a Halloween gale back in 1780, and Jim Kennard’s team located and documented her in 2008. Like the Hamilton and Scourge this wartime wreck was gruesome for the large number of casualties. There were no survivors. HMS Ontario was acting as a transport during the French and Indian War and was evacuating a number of men, women, children and prisoners when a sudden fall Northeaster sent her to the bottom.

HMS Ontario was built on Carleton Island and was a 22 gun two master rigged as a“Snow”. She lived less than a year and never fired a shot in combat.

A more recent wartime wreck, that of a B24 bomber is still being searched for today by hobbiest wreck hunters. The plane was on a training mission when it was lost during a intense lake effect snow storm. Known variously as Getaway Gertie or Gateway Gertie the bomber was based in Massachusetts at the Army Air Corps Westover base, but went down somewhere on Lake Ontario. A floating section of one wing was the only trace of the lost plane. It was recovered a few days after the loss. As far as I know, the location of the plane and her eight man crew’s remains is as yet undiscovered. On that February night in 1944, eye witnesses recalled hearing the distinctive sound of the four engine bomber flying low over Oswego and the remote countryside to the north. They knew the plane’s crew, like that of many a ship before, was searching in vain for safe refuge while blinded by intense lake effect snow. Presumably the B 24 ran out of fuel while over the lake and ditched though no one knows for certain what happened.

The B 24 “Liberator” had a longer range than the B 17 “Flying Fortress” more than 18,000 were built. According to Laura Hilldenbrand’s book “Unbroken” the plane was a beast to fly.

There is little doubt that today’s technology will solve the mystery of where “Gertie's” grave lies. Thanks to Lidar, sidescan sonar, autonomous and tethered ROV's and GPS accurate to a cm of resolution, the lake will give up her mysteries and human intellect will prevail.

I do understand the excitement of the hunt, and the allure of discovery and the drive of curiosity as to what the wreck looks like. Yet, we need a little mystery in our lives to ponder, and the plane’s wreck, like others on the bottom of the lake, is also a grave. Many wrecks once discovered prove irresistible to lure looters and ghouls that profit from selling relics they manage to retrieve. Perhaps by now the lake’s sands have shifted in Mexico Bay to cover the plane and its crew. If so, I would say let them rest in peace.

In future articles we’ll explore some of the better known wrecks of Lake Ontario cargo schooners and the unfortunate Canadian government schooner HMS Speedy that like the B 24 above went down in a snowstorm. She sank off Prince Edward County in 1804.