Shipwrecks
anyone wanting to dive the wrecks. They cautioned any unauthorized diving could lead to arrest and confiscation of equipment. At that time no law prohibited diving these wrecks or empowered any authority to arrest and confiscate. About this time the original Hamilton and Scourge crusaders, author Gary Gentile, and marine archaeologist Scott McWilliams, tried in vain to get permission to dive the wrecks and, failing, launched suit against the City of Hamilton in 1999. The scope of Gary’s efforts far exceeds the limits of this article. For more information read Gary’s book, Stolen Heritage: The Grand Theft of the Hamilton and Scourge. Check out this site:
www.ggentile.com
That year I also concluded the MTCS and the City of Hamilton were obstructing the diving public. My group of friends, which would become the Hamilton and Scourge dive team, had planned to dive the shipwreck Gunilda in Lake Superior, a 195- foot (60m) luxury steam yacht that sank in 1911 in 270 feet (82m) near Rossport, Ontario. Like Hamilton and Scourge, the Gunilda is an Ontario Heritage Site, though in this case it’s a person, Fred Broennle, who holds title. In preparation I wrote Broennle and the MTCS for permission and permits. Both replied that neither was required to dive Gunilda. Really. My posture now is that “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.” Call it civil disobedience in the face of an immovable bureaucratic authority denying access to two world-class shipwrecks right in our own back yard.
Having concluded that we were free to dive Hamilton and Scourge, I also realized that no one at the City of Hamilton was going to tell us their locations. We’d have to find them first. So I spent much of the winter of 1999-2000 poring over countless documents and every clue was plotted on a chart, including two sets of coordinates offered on the Internet though they proved considerably inaccurate. Neither are the coordinates on the city’s Hamilton and Scourge website a match with my own. They’re likely a ruse. Eventually, our plots formed a distinct cluster. It was time to call a meeting.
Covert Caper
I had five friends whose combined skills could safely pull off the dive project I had in mind. All of them were keen and wanted details. I expressed confidence that the wreck location
42 Magazine
We did not want news of our secret mission to spread because we did not want the City of Hamilton to interfere
information compiled was solid for the search phase of the plan and with this conversation behind us we devoted the remainder of our first meeting to the details of dive planning. Key to the search effort was Todd Ziegler, an expert with computers and geographic information systems (GIS). He put my Lake Ontario search grid scribbles into a navigational computer and selected a hull mounted side- scan sonar unit for purchase by the team. Though an experienced technical diver Todd was not trimix certified so he volunteered to be our primary safety diver.
From the outset we agreed the project would be discussed only among team members. We did not want news of our secret mission to spread because we did not want the City of Hamilton or the MTCS to interfere. We never docked our boats
The Team
Te MAREX-Group Hamilton and Scourge divers were: Michel ‘Frogman’ Guerin, Scott Stitt, Ray Stewart*, Ray Thwaites*, Richard Hertz*, Todd Ziegler* and Wayne Kerr*. Sponsors include: Amphibico, Ocean Management Systems (OMS) courtesy of John Griffiths and Sartek, courtesy of Carl Saieva *Some names have been changed to protect the identity of the divers.
John Doe and Scott Stitt
ready to splash on one of their covert dives
at the same marina twice. If anyone asked, we were simply conducting trimix training dives. We even gave the wrecks code names: they were Chuck and Di. Hamilton was Di and Scourge was Chuck. Out of habit we still call them Chuck and Di. We gave ourselves a name: Marine Exploration Group or MAREX-Group, a non-existent dive organization. Our efforts at secrecy were so successful it surprised even us.
Documents indicated that the site was continuously monitored by radar. After a little research I considered such surveillance was unlikely but to be sure we twice visited the wreck area, had lunch, soaked up a few rays, and waited to see what might happen. Nothing ever did. No one showed up.
Our first real search day was July 8, 2000. Our five-man team set out from Pickering, Ontario, navigating over to the western end of Lake Ontario and the search area. Within 45 minutes we’d located our first promising target. We knew the wrecks were 500 yards (457m) apart so we continued to ‘mow the lawn’ and got another strong hit at exactly that distance. It was convincing but not conclusive. The only way to know for sure was to dive.
During the next week many hours were spent in my garage filling tanks and preparing all the gear we’d need to make a 300-foot (92m) trimix dive. We decided the first dive, described at the beginning of the story, would be on July 15 and would be on the target we found first. Three weeks
Photos: Scott Stitt
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