Trip report by Heather Knowles

© Copyright 2004, Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

Several years ago I heard about a wreck called the St. Augustine – and sounded like a dive we just had to do. The story on the wreck was unique – the USS St Augustine was a 272' long luxury yacht originally owned by Norm Woolworth. The "Auggie" had been purchased by the U.S. Navy and outfitted for coastal patrol and anti-submarine operations in 1941. Though she served well in her short career, on January 6, 1944 while escorting a convoy off Ocean City, MD, the St. Augustine collided with the tanker Camas Meadows, sending her to the bottom in less than 5 minutes. The Auggie sat quietly on the bottom for nearly 52 years until 1996 when the wreck was located by local divers resting 50 miles off Ocean City in about 250 feet of water. Over the next few years the wreck was actively dived and many artifacts were removed, though comparatively this wreck remains quite pristine – due in part to the depth of water and the distance offshore. In fact, the wreck is quite ornate, as it was first a pleasure yacht and then a warship. Later while going through archival papers researching the USS YF 415, sunk off Boston in May 1944, I was struck by a connection between this wreck and the 415 – the man considered to be the hero of that disaster had also previously served aboard the Auggie. It was a small world.

I had tried, unsuccessfully, to begin putting a trip together back in 2002 for the 2003 season, but the interest just didn’t seem to be there. So, Dave and I signed up for a trip on the John Jack out of Cape May over Labor Day weekend 2003. Well, that’s a different trip report, but suffice it to say, the weather was quite marginal and we elected not to dive once we got out to the wreck and assessed the conditions. When I got home, only having been over the top of the wreck, I was even more determined to make a trip happen. I began to troll the internet for local boats running to the St. Augustine regularly. I happened upon the 35-foot “OC Diver” and Capt. Ted Green - and a few phone calls and emails later, the Ocean City 2004 trip was on the books.

The OC Diver.

We had a full boat and a great group lined up – but a few unfortunate injuries resulted in three divers having to cancel out of the trip last minute. With much disappointment, we received a call from our sidekick Lee while en route to Maryland telling us he wouldn’t be making it due to a last minute issue. So, those of us with functioning bodies pressed on and by the end of the day on Monday, Peter Piemonte, Paul Scarpa, Dave and I had made it to Ocean City, Maryland no worse for wear.

We loaded the boat and began our dining adventure in Ocean City. For those who have never been, Ocean City is a typical beach town, part honky-tonk, part tinsel town, with too many large people wearing too few clothes. Interestingly, there seemed to be a relatively sizeable population of scantily clad Eastern European women working as waitresses and hostesses in many of the area restaurants. The marina, Sunset Marina, where the boat was berthed was probably one of, if not the nicest marina we’ve ever seen. It was immaculate, well maintained and had pristine shower/bathroom facilities. Just about every boat in the marina was a large Sportfish – looking brand new and decked out with all the bling-bling, as they say. In fact, the OC Diver was the only dive boat allowed to remain in the marina when it changed ownership, as all the rest were expunged with other undesirables. The owner of the marina reportedly paid 100 million cash for the place. Cash.

This trip was going to be all about being resourceful and that was apparent early on when gear was being stowed. The way the benches were laid out, Peter’s rebreather couldn’t rest on the bench without falling through. A milk carton located on board seemed to work – but when the words “dead meat” were uttered when we asked if Peter could use it, we figured we needed to run a little recon and find another. Sure enough, we found one and Peter was set for the week. We retired to the boat in preparation for our first day of diving – the weather was looking a bit iffy so we were going to try for the Ethel C or Marine Electric since they were going to be slightly more protected from weather.

When morning broke the weather had improved enough that we felt good about getting to the Ethel C, a Lebanese freighter in about 180 feet of water. This wreck is a good artifact producer and has been known for that as well as excellent visibility. We were looking at some seriously long runs to get to these wrecks from Ocean City – the Ethel C was going to be 60 miles one way and at 15-18 knots, we were facing a four hour run to the site and then another 4 back. As such, we only had time to make one dive each day on these offshore sites.

We all hit the bunks going for that deep space sleep where you hibernate for a few hours and then wake up over the wreck. Four hours was a long way. The seas were roll-y and there was a good ground swell running making things a bit uncomfortable with the boat riding into it. There wasn’t much wind so the sea-state was confused. It didn’t look that bad, but about 3 hours into the ride we were all feeling kind of sick. I tried changing places on the boat several times but the sand was running out of the hourglass on this one – and soon Dave, Paul and I were all on the back deck looking out at the sea going, “It’s not that bad out there – what’s the matter?” I was losing the battle and I knew it – I told Dave I couldn’t get the camera because I couldn’t look at anything. He said he couldn’t get it and that he was not doing well either – that was a first. Dave never gets sea sick or even feels sort-of bad. This was not good. At that point we were about 3 minutes from the wreck and I just lost it. I headed for the transom and that was it.

It was hot, there were no clouds in the sky, there was no wind and we were laying beam-to in the sea. It still didn’t look that bad out there but somehow, in this 35-foot Bruno Stillman, things were bad. I stopped throwing up long enough to put my drysuit on and take a quick dip – we were all scrambling for the water to cool off. But the water was about 70 degrees and it wasn’t cool enough. We bobbed around for a few minutes and scrambled back aboard and into our gear.

We hit the water and descended down; the visibility was a gorgeous aqua-blue in color and easily the better part of 80-100 ft. There were lots of jellies in the water and one managed to sting me on an exposed area of my face. It hurt like hell for a few seconds but it was just one of those little wispy ones so it didn’t seem to be a big deal once I cleared it away. “God damn,” I thought. Once we hit about 80 feet, the water cooled off and relief from the hot, nausea abated. But so did the visibility and by the time we reached the wreck, the visibility had diminished to a fuzzy thirty feet or so. Not bad by our standards, but Ted commented it was the worst visibility he’d ever seen there. Great, I love it when someone says that. “Wow, this really is bad”…

Surface visibility was best - Paul and Peter (right) decompress.

Ted had hooked us into a good spot so we were able to explore a bit of the remaining deck structure. Unfortunately the visibility wasn’t good enough to give a good picture of the wreck and allow us to venture without concern for finding our way back. Though Ted had “blinky” – the world’s biggest strobe (epileptics – beware) it wasn’t going to penetrate throughout the water column to support distant ventures without a reel. This strobe was made from a bus light and is about the size of one of the old AUL cannister lights – in other words, it’s big and blinds the shit out of you if you look at it from a short distance. But it definitely throws some light, and was a nice piece to have.

The Ethel C is a beautiful wreck – largely intact and covered with anemones this wreck is definitely a choice dive. She was a 2,847 ton Lebanese freighter and sank while transporting scrap iron from New York to Newport News, VA. The ship's cargo shifted in heavy seas, resulting in excessive strain that broke the back of her hull. On April 16, 1960, the Ethel C came to rest sitting upright in 180-190’ of water. Lots of portholes are to be found and some previous jaunts out to the site by other divers have yielded as many as 19 portholes amongst the group. We spent much of the dive just poking along, though a few “chink-chink-chink” sounds could be heard as I watched Dave look at something inside the wreck under a piece of superstructure. Must have been some weird kind of whale… There was a decent current running throughout the water column and we enjoyed the dive, despite the lackluster visibility.

The Ethel C in better days.

I wasn’t looking forward to returning to the surface but after completing my decompression I lumbered aboard, stripped off gear and laid in the shade. As soon as I re-boarded the boat, I felt like crap again. I had questioned whether my ills were the result of sea-sickness or something else (food poisoning?) but it seemed pretty clearly to be the old mal-de-mer, especially since we had all shared in the food the evening prior. I managed one bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and had to hand it off. Once Ted completed his dive and we pulled the hook, we settled in for the long ride home. Fortunately as we got closer to port, a breeze had picked up and the seas had improved. Things were looking good and the forecast was even better. We were good for the St. Augustine the following day and the weather was going to be nice.

After swapping out gear amidst a thunderstorm and a bit of rain at the marina, we decided to grab a hotel room instead of sleep on the boat. The humidity was oppressive and having been beat up pretty good on Day 1 of the trip, I wanted to recoup and make sure I was well rested and well hydrated before the St Augustine. That was a deep dive done and another was planned – and I was no doubt pushing it on the Ethel C considering there weren’t any liquids left me by the time I got in the water. A good night sleep and a lot of water were a must.

That night at dinner, I had the worst chicken parmesan ever. Actually, I am not sure what it was but it wasn’t good. We should have known better, especially since the restaurant was painted bright pink with painted strawberries all over the building – including the parking lot stops. The Bayside Skillet – scary. Though again, there was no shortage of high-heeled “Daisy Duke” wearing foreign girls with water pitchers. We crashed out and made ready for our second day of diving.

We departed at 5 am for a 50-mile or so run out to the St Augustine. This was a short run comparatively and would only be about 3 1/2 hours out to the site. Fortunately, the conditions were good and everyone, including me, was feeling great. We power-slept on the trip out to the wreck and woke up about 5 minutes from the site. By the second day, the group was discovering the nuances of the head and the word “splash back” took on a whole new meaning. You needed to wear your scuba mask to safely use the toilet, and at least Paul found that out the hard way. “Well at least it’s sterile…” was repeated a few times. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that…”

Anyway, I digress. We hooked into the St Augustine and found the conditions to be pristine. There was no surface current as the tide and wind were running opposite. We suited up in the shade and in a refreshing breeze. I had all of my gear on except my mask and gloves – and as I reached over my head to put my mask on, bang, the strap broke. Fortunately I had a spare strap readily accessible in my little red box I tote everywhere and in no time at all Ted swapped out the straps and got me on my way. There was going to be a big surcharge for this one Ted told me, especially since I was strapped into pressed steel 95s, an AL 80 and 40 at the moment. In fact, we were racking up surcharges left and right, especially since the conditions were so good today. I asked Ted if he was thinking of running for state Senator in Massachusetts, because he’d be great. Them’s was fighting words…!

We hit the water and dropped down the line. Ted rigs his drop lines so that the line coming off the transom goes about 100 feet straight down and then a granny line runs forward to the main downline. I liked his set up quite a bit. Ted’s the kind of guy that really does things with a lot of thought – it’s sensible and makes things as easy as possible. I liked that. There was no granny line that ran back to the surface to contend with on hypoxic trimixes or in current. You got depth fast and smoothly. Dropping down the water column the visibility diminished quite a bit below 80 feet – it was a hazy, green murky color all the way down to about 180 feet. From there it opened up to at least 50 or 60 feet of dark visibility. The fuzzy anemone covered St Augustine came into view – and it was spectacular.

The USS St. Augustine - first a luxury yacht, then a Naval vessel.

We were tied in just forward of the “break” in the wreck, which was the point of collision with the Meadows. The deckhouse and superstructure are mostly gone having been carried away by friendly dragger nets, but the decks are intact with lots of swim-throughs to poke in and out of. The large break area itself is an interesting place to visit – lots of things have spilled out of the wreck there, not to mention it’s really breath-taking. We were content just to survey the wreck on our first dive and not get too wild – Ted recommended trying to stay on the deck and see as much as possible. And whenever possible, we try to follow the advice of those who’ve been there and know the routine. The average swimming depth, without dropping into the sand at about 240-245’, was 230 feet. It’s a deep dive and on open circuit, gas goes quick at this depth. Many other deep wrecks like the Doria or even the U-Who have some relief – on the Doria you can stay around 190’ and the U-Who around 205’. But on the Auggie, you’re committed to a working depth of 230’ if you intend to get near the wreck.

We open-circuit divers were gobbling our gas – but Peter was living large down there with his rebreather – zipping all over the wreck, woth not a worry about the time or a dwindling gas supply. Hmmm, I thought… this isn’t fair! We were certainly very interested in that KISS rebreather by the end of the dive. For sub-200’ dives, a rebreather can be really nice - but, these things are not without advantages and disadvantages. 

Peter diving his KISS rebreather.

Anyway, the Auggie is loaded with artifacts – portholes, cage lamps, etc are all over the place as well as piles of broken dishes. You need to dig a bit for intact ones but stuff is really just everywhere. The wreck is still quite untouched compared to other wrecks that have been around for even less time. The St Augustine is, in my opinion, one of the premier deep wreck dives in the mid-Atlantic.

When it was time to go, we began our ascent and deep stops starting around 170’. There was not much current near the surface, but midwater and down on the wreck there was a mild current running. Once we hit about 80’ the current abated and the water had lit up to a bright blue again. 

Heather decompresses (left) while Peter works his way up - visibility was in excess of 100 feet.

We decompressed comfortably and returned aboard the OC Diver to pony up for all these surcharges. Everyone was on a high after this great dive. The only disappointment was that some moisture formed on the inside of the video camera housing lens and created a quarter-size white spot in the video. Assembling the camera in the warm, humid surface air had resulted in condensation forming in the housing (which has a decent volume of “dead space”) when we descended into the cooler water on the bottom. It had all cleared up by the time we ascended to the warm, shallow water – but the video was a loss. I had been warned about condensation, but I had forgotten to bring a desiccant pack that I had intended to add to the housing. Oh well, learning curve.

While we lamented the video, Peter had a slightly larger problem to address – during the dive the rebreather’s ADV had malfunctioned. Nothing seemed to fix the problem. After placing several calls to KISS to help troubleshoot, they sent him off on a scavenger hunt through Ocean City for the technical equivalent of bubble gum and sticky tape – a special kind of crazy glue and tubing that would not adhere to the glue. Ah, what? It was about 5:30 pm at this point and finding a “special” type of glue and “special” type of tubing in Ocean City was going to be a challenge. Peter’s first stop was an ACE Hardware store. As he pulled in and walked to the door, the last employee of the day was locking up. Peter explained that he absolutely had to get in there, that there were things in that store that he needed to buy. The employee said, “Sorry, we’re closed.” Peter offered him $50 cash to let him in the store – still no dice. It was clear that this person was not inspired by Peter’s situation – or money. Peter, amazingly, did find all the items he needed to “glue” an o-ring back into a seat at a Home Depot – I guess they really do have everything. Yet, something still just seemed peculiar about using crazy glue on a $4600 rebreather to glue in a major seal.

The next day we were headed for the Merida, a 6,207 ton passenger-freighter sunk in 210' of water after colliding with the SS Admiral Farragut while traveling from New York from Cuba on May 12, 1911. Amazingly, none of the 320 passengers and crew perished in the sinking. The ship was rumored to have been carrying a large cargo of silver and copper, which has lured many salvagers to the site. However, like many rumored treasure ships, nothing of great monetary value had ever been recovered from the site. Instead, the wreck itself has suffered from the salvager’s technique – blunt dissection. The wreck is a large semi-intact debris field with little relief, located about 65 miles from Ocean City. Getting out to this wreck was going to be a haul.

The Merida - now a large debris field.

We left bright and early at the usual 5 am hour. The seas were pleasant and the weather was looking good. Again, we all slept for most of the 4-hour ride out to the wreck. We hooked in and noted a bit of current running and that we seemed to be shifting around a bit. Ted felt pretty good that we were still in the wreck, though we had clearly swung about 180 degrees. He decided against re-setting the hook and the four of us splashed. Peter had been getting in first since with the rebreather, on these deeper dives with the extra time he could finish securing the hook and clip off “blinky” upon reaching the bottom.

The four of us descended – the visibility was good on the surface as it had been (80-100’), but diminished to a dull green 30 feet or so by the time we reached the bottom. As Dave, Paul and I reached the bottom at 210’ it suddenly seemed that the Merida strongly resembled a bunch of scallops. The grapel was hooked into a cable, which was stretched across the bright sand bottom like a bow and arrow. Peter had already tied off a line was conducting sand sweeps to locate the wreck. Paul and I waited in the area of the hook while Dave began to swim out on Peter’s line. After swimming out a short distance, Dave later said he realized that this line was going way, way out and it was moving – upon his return Dave gave us that “we’re screwed” look. We were no where near this thing based on what we could ascertain.

It seemed that you could just pick a direction on the cable and hopefully it intersected with the wreck, but at the same time, it wasn’t clear that this cable was even part of the wreckage. We waited to see Peter return, when he didn’t, we called the dive and headed up. At 210’ even if we had succeeded in finding the wreck, given the probable distance we were away, we’d have to turn around by the time we found it. Peter did find a portion of the wreck eventually but it took over 12 minutes just to reach the wreck with a reel, since he had picked the wrong direction to head in when beginning his search. There’s no way of knowing which way to go – it’s a coin toss. In the end, it turned out we were the better part of 50 or more feet from the wreck.

We headed up, decompressed and told Ted this scallop dive was not going to look good on a comment card. Just kidding – these things happen. Debris-like wrecks are very hard to hook into and Ted had done a superb job on the previous two dives, so it was just the luck of the draw on this one. It was an awfully long ride and deep dive to look at scallops, but they were some damn nice looking scallops.

We arrived back at the dock and prepped our gear for the Marine Electric – our last wreck of the trip. The Merida was a non-wreck dive, the Auggie video was a bust, and we were too nauseous to take the camera on the Ethel C … so we had to get the camera fixed for the Marine Electric. Peter’s successes in locating his items made me think that there was a chance I could get some desiccant put together for the camera. We brainstormed for awhile and the best idea we could come up with was putting rice in pantyhose. Rice absorbs moisture and pantyhose would be a perfect way to package it. Then it could be taped inside the housing and not spill out all over. But there were doubts – would it really work? We decided to think it over while we had dinner.

We decided to live dangerously and try this Italian restaurant that looked ok. I went in first and conducted some recon – looked at the menu, checked out the place. It was a bit warm in there but I waved everyone in; I had scanned a few tables and the food looked pretty OK.

I gave the girl at the counter my name and the number in our group and she all but went into a meltdown – she was having a bad day I guess. She handed me the clipboard and a pen and told me to fill out the wait list and walked off. Okay. We finally got seated, but they had to scare up some menus before we could get too far. At last a waiter appeared and it looked like someone had hit him with a fire hose – he was saturated. I mean, seriously, he looked like he had just climbed out of a swimming pool, except he was fully dressed. Ah… hello?

Peter asked him if he was hot and the waiter replied that he had been in the kitchen fixing the oven. What? Oh, you’ve been in the kitchen fixing the what? … oh great! Oh God… Fighting a strong desire to flee, I ignored the dripping man standing over the table and ordered some food. The meal was ok, not too bad really so long as you didn’t think about where it came from. While dining on our Italian cuisine we noticed a Marshall’s department store across the street. Ah ha… Marshall’s sells pocketbooks … which always have a little pack of silica gel desiccant in them. Problem solved.

Since things were going so well we decided to top off the evening with a little go-kart racing. Ocean City has a go-kart park with 3 or 4 different tracks and various types of go-karts. We picked the fastest, curviest track and bought two rides each. We were going to cause trouble, there was just no doubt about it. Right out of the gates we were bumping, cutting off, spinning out, and running each other (and anyone else who got in the way) off the track. Paul got hauled off the track about a minute into the first 3-minute session and the rest of us were regularly scolded. But we had a blast and really tore things up, though before we could leave, some kid’s dad who probably calls the teacher when his kid gets beat up at school instead of teaching him how to fight came up to Peter and gave him the usual harangue… “There are kids on this track, buddy, and you ran my kid down” … Peter had mowed down some “innocent” child apparently. We laughed the guy off and we told him to take his kid to the wimp track across the way if he didn’t like it. After all, he started it….

We returned to the boat and retired for the night. At about 5 am I woke up to someone nudging me, “Hey, get up, we gotta make a decision.” Hmm… this usually translates to “get your shit off the boat” so I got up and Ted gave us the weather report – 4 footers outside the inlet and worsening. The Marine Electric, a 30 mile run, was out. I asked about alternatives like the Northern Pacific – there were none. The weather had turned and the trip was done. We got our shit off the boat and cleaned up at the marina. We stopped for breakfast with Ted before hitting the road for the 9 1/2 hour haul home. It was a great trip and an adventure to be sure!

Heather and Dave with a choice find - a cage lamp.

Many thanks to Ted Green for running such a great trip – we really enjoyed ourselves and were impressed and pleased with the top-notch quality with which he runs his boat. Ted also keeps the most important thing in mind when running trips – having fun. Thanks also to 7-11, Home Depot and Marshall’s.

The group clockwise from top - Ted Green, Dave Caldwell, Heather Knowles, Paul Scarpa, Peter Piemonte, Blinky.

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