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Wednesday, July 18, 2001 We splashed a team of six today to work the wreck. We had planned to lay a central baseline through the engine room and then survey for artifacts revealed since the recent recovery of the engine. We were again fortunate to have calm seas, and we all hit the water off the edge of the Navy barge and finned for the bottom. As I hit 100' I turned and looked up to check out the rest of the team. I had gotten a good lead on the others and could see all of their silhouettes as they worked their way down. We were just approaching the edge of the massive shadow of the barge -- an impressive sight. I eventually flared out above the bottom and soon saw the bow appear in the gloom. The others above me worked the advantage of the current better and set down amidships. We had good visibility of approximately 60-70' and we could still see the dark shadow of the barge 230' above us. My buddies and I swam aft over the bow and to where the engine used to be. The engine area used to comprise the most relief of the wreck, with a neat swim-thru aft of the boilers. Now, just aft of the boilers is a large pit. I quickly secured the zero end of the baseline as another team member reeled it out. Once deployed, my buddy and I worked the "high side" (portside -- adjacent with the turret) of the wreck amidst the remains of the engine room. Wow. The Navy had really worked the area. The armor belt above and in the vicinity of the turret has been hydro-blasted clean, revealing the rivet lines and appearing much like the vessel's armor plating was almost 140 years ago (though a tad rusty). There were copious amounts of coal and iron/coral debris from the armor belt cleaning piled up throughout the engine room. Hmmm. Any artifacts are now buried under several inches of this material, complicating our task. Steam pipes and other plumbing are scattered around the site as well. Aside from the steel and coal debris, the most other abundant material was Navy trash. Zipties, hawser lines, torch rods, etc. were everywhere, evidence of the salvage work the Navy has been conducting the past months. During the sweep, I ran into the saturation diver who was torching the topside of the armorbelt, aft of the turret. This work is being done in preparation for the planned turret removal next year. The saturation chamber is suspended above the armor belt and turret at around 190', with one tender inside. After working a bit longer and getting chilled -- the bottom temp was cooler than yesterday at around 66 and I only was wearing a t-shirt under my drysuit -- we began to rally for decompression. As the team hovered near the turret, the sat diver walked back to the chamber for more tools and gave us all a wave. Swimming with the current, we worked our way off the site at 25 minutes in order to avoid all of the mooring lines of the barge above us before shooting our bags, eventually heading up for warmer waters (83 degrees). Decompression was boring and uneventful, aside from a frisky cuda that snapped at a couple of us. Stay tuned... Michael C. Barnette Association of Underwater Explorers Because it's there...somewhere...maybe. http://www.mikey.net/aue _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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