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HALIFAX - 2007 EXPEDITION Trip report by Heather Knowles © Copyright 2007, Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
After 5 consecutive years of diving the Empress of Ireland, we decided it was time to check out a new area where we had not been before. Generally for these types of trips we try to consider places that we can drive to within 8-12 hours, give or take. Since we are often bringing lots of equipment, having to fly and ship equipment adds a layer of complexity that we reserve for the really special trips – and yes, there’s a list of those kinds of trips that are out on the horizon. Anyway, I had stumbled across a website chronicling one group’s exploration of deep shipwrecks off Halifax. After reading through the website and watching videos of divers scootering along these amazing shipwrecks in incredible visibility, in no time at all we were convinced we had to go to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I wasn’t sure though how interested others would be – it was far, going to be somewhat expensive since it was quite clear that we needed to provide all the supportive infrastructure needed to run technical dives, and since we really didn’t know anyone personally who had been up there, I couldn’t say whether this trip would be good or bad. But I called the captain of the charter boat, got the basic details and floated the idea to a group of friends and dive buddies that I knew would be the right kind of people for such a trip. I was shocked by the response – we had 11 enthusiastic people wanting to go, signed-up no questions asked, just like that. Once we knew the trip was feasible, we locked in the dates and began to plan. The planning was more complicated than most of the trips we had done in the past and this was mainly because we would need to do our own fills. In other places where the diving is shallower or less remote, it’s really not too difficult to either get air tops at a dive store, or whip up nitrox and top up O2 bottles "in the field" as we have done for the Empress trips and some others previously. Where these were deep wrecks (150-250 fsw) in a relatively remote location, we were going to be filling trimix and decompression gasses for up to 12 people in the field – and that required boosters, compressors, fill whips, filling hardware, etc – on a much larger scale. The charter boat – Ryan & Erin – a fishing boat set up for diving was going to be our main mode of transportation. The Ryan & Erin is operated by Dave Gray and crew of Skipper Dave’s Charters. They are based out of Sambro Head, which is about 30-40 minutes out of Halifax. The boat is a rugged 36 footer, with a nice wide beam and benches for divers. The boat can comfortably carry 12 technical divers with scooters and stage bottles. Other than the charter boat, that was pretty much it for infrastructure. Everything else we would need to bring. I should point out, there are dive stores in the area, but when I contacted one store that was the closest (about 40-50 minutes away), I got the standard response - $1 per cubic foot for helium, $0.50 per cubic foot for O2 – and at least 24 hours to turn around trimix fills. We couldn’t work with that arrangement considering the amount of diving we were doing and the size of our group – not to mention that there was no chance we were going to pay those prices for gas.
By March 2007 and the Boston Sea Rovers Clinic, the trip was still largely concept in terms of planning, other than having made hotel reservations and having locked in our gas supplier for helium, O2 and argon. We still needed to figure out where we would get the compressor. While many of us have our own compressors, they were either not high enough capacity or mobile enough to consider bringing. Interestingly, someone from the group that had done the previous Halifax trips was coming to Boston and doing a presentation on the very wrecks we were looking to dive. Brian Nadwidny was slated to present on the deep shipwrecks of Halifax and all of us were thrilled to catch that talk and learn as much as we could about the logistics. Over the course of the weekend we got to know Brian, and saw his presentation (which was awesome and had us all twitching in our seats as the camera panned across bridge equipment, taffrail logs, portholes and other artifacts). He had a lot of great information and tips for us to assist in our planning. And by the end of the weekend we had also found our 12th person – Brian decided to join our group. With the trip line-up fully completed we had also solved our compressor problem. Brian had access to the compressor and booster that had been used on the previous expeditions he had been a part of. Brian generously offered the use of this equipment and would arrange to ship it from Alberta to Nova Scotia. The only remaining piece of equipment that we needed was a low pressure compressor to run the booster, and Brian suggested a local rental tool place that had just what we needed. Over the next several months we finalized the costs for renting and shipping the equipment, planned the dives and gas needs so we could order the right amount of supply cylinders, and pulled together all the miscellaneous equipment. The summer flew by – with some fantastic diving done along the way – and in no time, the Halifax 2007 adventure was upon us. Halifax is an interesting place historically, with a long tradition of sea faring, fishing, as well as being a large port for convoys, ocean-going passenger travel, and shipping over the years. One of the more significant events in Halifax history is explosion that occurred on December 6, 1917 in Halifax Harbour when the Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship carrying munitions, collided with the Norwegian cargo ship Imo triggering a massive detonation of the munitions after a fire broke out aboard the French ship. A two-square kilometer area was obliterated by the explosion. The explosion was so intense it blew an 1100 pound anchor two miles from the Harbour and it resonated throughout the city, creating a domino effect of fires spreading from residences containing heating lamps, furnaces and oil that consequently caught fire. As if this wasn’t bad enough, a blizzard struck Halifax the following day dropping 16 inches of snow! The final toll of victims was estimated around 2,000 as a result of the blast and storm; Halifax and surrounding communities were devastated. Boston, Massachusetts, our hometown, played a key role in aiding the victims of this disaster that continues to be recognized today. The Boston Red Cross reacted swiftly sending much needed supplies – and doctors – to Halifax via train, arriving 30 hours after the explosion, providing crucial assistance. Since 1971 the city of Halifax has sent a carefully selected Christmas tree to Boston as a symbol of thanks for this effort. This is Boston’s official Christmas tree and is illuminated on the Common. Aside from the Boston connection, some of my own personal history resides in Halifax. My great-grandmother was originally from Halifax and where she met my great-grandfather, who was a German POW imprisoned there during the war. Both were wounded in the 1917 explosion, but after the war they married and moved to the Bronx in NY. The rest is history, as they say. Halifax also played an important role after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Two vessels based out of Halifax were chartered by the White Star Line to participate in body recoveries in the aftermath of the sinking. Of these, 209 bodies were delivered to Halifax where 150 were buried in several cemeteries throughout the city – the largest single burial location of Titanic victims in the world. Careful record keeping helped to identify and manage the personal belongings of many victims. In the end there remained 44 unidentified victims of those brought to Halifax. So in addition to great diving, we were looking forward to soaking up some of the history of Halifax, including a visit to a great maritime museum, the Museum of the Atlantic. Since Dave and I were bringing 8 sets of doubles, 12 aluminum 40s, 6 aluminum 80s, 2 argon bottles, 2 scooters, a video camera and a pile of other dive gear, we borrowed my father’s diesel pick-up truck and loaded it to the gills. Our dive mobile, a GMC mini-van, was not going to cut it for a trip like this. While this would have been the ideal trip for a rebreather (for many, many reasons) we weren’t quite ready to do these deep dives on our PRISMs just yet, so we opted to dive open circuit – but that meant lots of equipment to transport. Some members of the group opted to take the ferry instead of drive the whole way, which doesn’t seem to save much time or money, but if you don’t like long drives it is a good way to catch a break. We decided that the drive was reasonable and opted out of the ferry (the drive was about 9-10 hours).
Jeff, Peter and Dan enjoy the ferry ride. Photo courtesy of Tim Dwyer. Since we got a jump on the drive, we got to Halifax around 3 pm on the day before our first day of diving. So with some extra time, we drove out to the boat, got the route down, met Skipper Dave, nailed down a meeting time and plan for the first day. We hit it off with Skipper Dave immediately – he’s a laid back guy with a great sense of humor – and I knew right away this was going to be a good week. The next morning arrived soon enough and the group met at the hotel at 7 am for the pre-dive briefing and trek over to Sambro. The hotel was about 30-40 minutes from the dock and literally was the closest and nicest place to stay. Outside of the downtown Halifax area, there are some parts of town that are rather run down and not very inviting. Out further into the suburbs/communities like Sambro Head – the area is beautiful, but there’s no where to stay. Anyway, we traveled to the boat, got gear assembled and began the loading for our first day of diving, which was a double-header on the wreck of the Kolkhosnik, also known as "The Russian." The Kolkhosnik was a 364-foot long steel Russian freighter carrying war supplies such as munitions, tanks, and jeeps that sank on January 17, 1942 after striking Smithson Rock while en route from Boston to Halifax to join up with a convoy. The wreck lies on a sloping bottom that runs from about 120 feet (bow) to 150 feet (stern). As would be the case on all dives, visibility is generally excellent and the wreck, while broken up, is relatively easy to navigate if you stay on wreckage.
The Kolkhosnik. Dave and I splashed in together and headed for the bottom. Since this was literally the first time we had dove off this boat, there was a little learning curve in finding just the right way to get in. Since there is no walk-thru transom or swim platform on the boat, divers need to back roll, side roll or scoot off the side of the rail to get in the water. With heavy doubles and a bunch of stages on, this can be a challenge. I was carrying 3 bottles on this dive in addition to the double PST95s on my back – a bottom stage of 21/35, and my two decompression gases EAN50 and 100% O2. That plus a scooter was a lot of gear to manage. I dropped in with just 2 stages on and had the crew pass me my 3rd bottle and the scooter. Of course, the current was running and the seas were slightly choppy so it was the kind of thing where you bang those clips on and start the descent to get off of the surface before you get slammed against the side of the boat, then square things away. Once I reached the bottom I made some minor adjustments to get all my stages and scooter comfortable and off we went. As my eyes adjusted I began to quickly see that we were swimming amidst tanks that were part of the Russian’s cargo. It was very cool. The visibility was probably 40 feet, which is apparently just "ok" for this wreck. Since we were diving later in the season, the visibility is down a bit – but the upside is the surface water is a bit warmer, which takes the edge off the decompression. Considering the bottom temperatures were around 35-36 degrees on some dives, this was a small trade off with visibility given it already grossly exceeded anything we were used to back home. Dave had the video camera scooter rig, and one of the lights decided not to work, so that was disappointing. There was plenty of ambient light, but with only 1 video light it did affect the quality of the video slightly. I tried to shine my light on things without getting the tight 21 watt HID light beam in the way too much. As we swam along the length of the ship we poked around the debris spending most of the dive around the tanks where we were able to get some great footage. After about 30 minutes we headed up and decompressed comfortably. We did a relaxing 2 hour surface interval and headed back in for another dive. Since we used our bottom stages the first dive, we were running off our remaining backgas solely for the second dive – this meant one less stage bottle. We also elected to leave the camera behind and "play" on this dive. Dave, Peter and I splashed in together and scootered the whole wreck from stem to stern. The aft deck gun was a marvelous sight and I was sorry we didn’t bring the camera once I saw that. Heading back up towards the bow where the mooring was tied in, we cruised up and over and back down the boilers – a great scooter run! The current was running hard on the surface when we decompressed and getting stage bottles and scooters off and handed up on the side of the boat (the ladder is mounted off the starboard side) was difficult. I needed 3 hands. But we managed and it was a good day to shake out the kinks and learn the lay of the land. This was a good warm-up set of dives and we were ready for more.
Jeff Downing climbs aboard. We returned to the dock to begin the process of filling tanks – and this would be a process that ran until about 8:30 pm every night. Brian arrived the same day as our first dives so he didn’t make it out for the morning trip, but when he did arrive he was able to get a jump on setting up the compressor and filling hardware. We weren’t able to pick up the low pressure compressor until Tuesday because the rental place wouldn’t rent to any of us without meeting us in person first – bizarre – but it was what it was. This limited our ability to boost gas, but given that everyone was well prepared in terms of having some gas already brought with them, we could get through the first day or so without much need for boosting.
Boosting O2 and Helium on the pier. Photo courtesy of Scott Tomlinson. Basically the process of filling tanks went like this: we would arrive back at the dock sometime around 3 pm, offload the boat using a boom arm to winch all the tanks and scooters up, pass all the soft gear up in a human chain-gang and then cue up tanks for filling on the wharf. We would determine what tanks needed based on current mix and fill pressure, boost in Helium and/or Oxygen as needed, then ferry them over to the compressor for an air top. Argon bottles would be filled during this process in an area off to the side. Given the size of our group and amount of tanks needing to be filled, this process took several hours and generally a small skeleton crew wrapped things up each night as we listened to the rumble of the compressor and watched the sun sink into the horizon.
The boys "playing" in the tool shed - don't ask! The long hours filling made for very long days, which began at 6 am at the hotel. Once we made the ride to the boat, we’d load by winching gear down from the wharf; get underway at about 8 am, do 2 dives and return to the dock at about 2-3 pm depending on what exactly we did. The boat would be offloaded as described earlier, drysuits would be hung up, scooters put on chargers and tanks would be filled until the process was complete. This was an exhausting schedule and each night – for 6 nights straight – we were wrapping it all up at about 10 pm by the time we had cleaned-up, eaten and put the last of our batteries on chargers. To say that I was tired by the end of this week would be an understatement.
Loading - an interesting process with a winch and ATV involved! Anyway, day 2 of the trip brought heavy wind, which forced us from our intended destination (the British Freedom) to an inshore wreck. We decided to check out both the Salerno, a 275’ long freighter, and the Letitia, a 470’long hospital ship. Both of these wrecks are in shallow water and are fairly smashed up – so they are essentially large debris fields. The wind was really howling out of the Southwest, which made loading the boat a little tricky since the cove is totally exposed to the SW wind. For this reason the boat is actually chained to the pier! Anyway, we loaded up and headed out – it was a little wet and bouncy until we rounded the corner and headed up into the lee towards Halifax Harbour.
Rough seas off Sambro. The Salerno was a 275’ freighter that carried salt. It was originally built in 1884 in West Hartpool, England as the passenger steamer Lincoln City; and it was later the Chicago before being named Salerno. The Norwegian freighter wrecked on Litchfield Shoal on June 2, 1905. Today the wreck sits in on a slope in about 50-90 feet of water. It is mainly in the form of smashed up hull plates, with a few areas around the boilers that have some structure.
The Salerno. I was shooting video on this dive, trailing Dave and Peter as we scootered around the whole wreck a few times. Visibility was pretty good here at about 30 feet. We spent some time playing around the engine and boilers, which were the most picturesque parts of the wreck – along with the stern area. All in all it was a nice dive. From there we headed over to the Letitia, which would be a whole different ballgame if it were in deeper water and more intact, but unfortunately is smashed up quite dramatically in shallow water. The Letitia was a WWI-era hospital ship. The 470’ long iron hulled steamer was originally built as a passenger vessel in Greenock, England in 1912. The Letitia grounded out due to a pilot error – and onboard at the time were 564 patients, 84 medical staff and 137 crew. Of that, there was 1 fatality. The wreck starts in very shallow water – about 20-25 feet and is splayed out on a ledge in the form of scattered hull plates. Off the edge of the ledge the depth drops to about 120 feet where the stern section is located. This is by far the best area of the wreck, as it’s got enough shape to be discernable. We didn’t hit this part of the wreck until the end of the dive, but dropping over the edge of the ledge; it got markedly colder and a little darker, but was definitely my favorite part of the wreck. The steering quadrant is visible along with some of the wooden decking and a set of bitts. The wreck is not so easy to navigate (unlike the Salerno which was fairly contiguous even though it was smashed up) so if you don’t pay attention carefully – or run a line – it’s easy to get lost.
The hospital ship Letitia. Anyway, we had a good set of dives and headed back to Sambro Head with the hope the forecast would be better the next day. The ride in was pretty rough though as there was a hard 5-6’ sea running when we crossed the exposed waters. It was a wet bumpy ride for sure, but Skipper Dave’s boat plowed right through it nicely. Back at the dock we made plans to refill back-up sets of tanks with nitrox and top up O2 bottles just in case the wind didn’t come down and our plans for the Kaaparen were put on ice. As it turned out, the wind came down some, but not enough to get offshore. Tuesday we decided to check out another relatively protected wreck called the Isleworth, which became one of my favorite wrecks. The Isleworth was a 360 foot long steamer that
wrecked on rocks off Chebucto Head in heavy fog on March 12, 1912. The
steamer sits in 40-140’ feet of water – so it’s another one of those
dives where you are following the wreckage along a ledge or rock shoal.
Dave, Peter and I splashed in here – this time Dave was taking a turn
with the video rig. I was astounded by the visibility. It was easily a
solid 70 feet and really crisp. It was also… freezing. The bottom
temperature was about 36 degrees. And while it warmed up near the
surface to high 40s, that thermocline was a lot nearer to the surface
than we would have liked. Anyway, we scootered all down the length of the wreck and around the engine machinery. The hull overhangs a bit so there are some small areas where penetration is possible. The wreck runs stern-bow in terms of it’s orientation on the ledge – the bow tapers off out in the sand around 140 feet. Again, the wreck is largely hull plates, but the area around the steam engine and boilers is pretty cool. The large pistons are visible and in the fantastic visibility, scootering around this wreck is really fun. We played around for about 40 minutes until we were getting kind of cold and my bladder was becoming dangerously full. I was a little dehydrated in the morning, so to at least put the brakes on that process; I gulped down a few bottles of water before the dive. Well… that probably wasn’t a real good idea. Let’s just say that I was giving myself 2:1 odds that I wasn’t going to make it up the ladder without blowing a seal (and I don’t mean the latex kind). I did make it though – barely – and I have to say, that was very uncomfortable! We decided on just one dive this day so we could get back earlier since we had a lot of filling to do along some hardware set-up as well. We were pretty beat from the previous night’s filling and wanted to eat dinner before 9 pm this night if possible. Dan had picked up the low-pressure compressor from the rental place, so we needed to set up to get the booster configured. With any luck, we were going to dive the Kaaparen the next day, so we had a lot of trimix fills to do, which is always a bit more time intensive.
Tim Dwyer mans the compressor. We managed to finish up a bit earlier on the filling and made it out to a decent restaurant at a half-decent hour, so that was good. The next morning the weather was improved, but not really. The wind was out of the Northwest – which is a lot better than Southwest, but it was windy and at some point regardless of the wind direction, if the velocity is high enough, seas are going to be running. We glommed around Skipper Dave when he arrived to get his read on the weather, but things remained pretty inconclusive as to what we should do. Everyone stood around kicking the proverbial tires. A couple of the local guys were joining us, and one of them had traveled some distance, so if we could pull this off, we wanted to. It was basically boiling down to "poke our noses out and see" or "go shallow" – the latter of which was not the most popular option. Finally we just decided to go for it. Kaaparen or bust. But we threw a few bottom stages of nitrox on the boat just in case we did in fact "bust." The Kaaparen was a 354’ long Swedish freighter that sank following a collision with the Tungsha while forming a convoy on June 14, 1942. The Kaaparen carried a cargo of Nickel and Aluminum, along with a large amount of shell casings and other war-time supplies. This wreck was extensively salvaged from 1953 to 1955 by Risdon Beazley, raising 350 tons of nickel and aluminum, so while "intact" in the sense that the wreck is contiguous, it is low-lying and otherwise somewhat torn up. The wreck sits listing sharply to starboard in about 250 feet of water.
The Kaaparen. As we headed out to the wreck the seas were on our tail – and as we got further out, the seas progressively built until we were running about 3-5’. Once the boat turned up into the wind when we got on site, we could really appreciate the conditions. I had planned to take the video camera on this dive, but when I saw the conditions and thought about the prospects of trying to handle this thing getting passed to me or passed up at the end of the dive, I decided to leave the camera behind. I swapped out the weighting to configure my scooter for use without the camera. Others planning to bring cameras left them behind as well – a wise move. The little voice in my head was speaking to me, saying "don’t bring the camera," and I always listen!
Brian Nadwidny gets ready to splash in on the Kaaparen. Dave and I suited up once the line was tied in (one of the local divers kindly offered to do the tie in) and were in the third team to hit the water. It was a little dicey at the surface given the seas and since I was splashing in on 15/55, I wanted to drop to a comfortable depth fast if possible – it’s not the kind of mix you want to be hanging out on the surface breathing for very long. I hit the water and grabbed my scooter, clipped it off fast and started my descent. The current was moving a little bit so I drifted back to the drop line as I descended. At 20 feet where the PO2 was a little higher on my mix, I was able to straighten out things and get ready to descend. I had clipped my scooter over my light cord, which came un-stuffed when I hit the water, and things were twisted up. At the surface, it wasn’t the time to deal with it, but Dave untwisted and re-clipped it for me and all was good. As mentioned, there was a moderate current running and the conditions were still a little bouncy, but the visibility was good and we headed down. The conditions on the wreck were excellent with dim ambient light available and excellent – 30-40 foot – crisp visibility. At about 180 feet we could see the wreck taking shape – we were tied in along an edge and on what appeared to be the port side amidst a large debris field. When we got to the bottom we noticed right away that the hook was out of the wreck, swinging in the breeze. We were still tied in with a safety line, and while it looked "ok" it was a clear indication that we weren’t tied in as well as we could be in these conditions. Given the low-lying nature of the wreck, finding a good place to tie in can be a challenge it seemed, as I didn’t see any good wreckage close by that we could have lashed another line into. Dave clipped off the strobe and then we scootered off and began exploring around an area that may have been some kind of refrigeration unit as there were heat exchanger type coils in blocks near us. Again, where this wreck was mainly debris it wasn’t immediately apparent where we were on the wreck. In some areas there are piles of shell casings, but in this particular area, we simply following the edge of the wreck and then poked in around structure so we did not loose our way – easy enough to do. Dave started getting into something (surprise, surprise) and unclipped his scooter so he could get in tight – of course he just chucks it at me (been known to happen before), leaving me with 2 scooters and wondering if he is going to take it back or if this meant I am carrying it for the rest of the dive! He didn’t say! Anyway, fortunately I didn’t have to think about it too long since he finished what he was doing and took it back. We were getting pretty cold (it was 35 degrees at depth) and so we beat it, cruising back to the line and heading up. The ascent was going ok, albeit a bit awkward since the current and seas had us facing an odd direction relative to the line. We moved through our deep stops starting at 180 feet, got up to 70 feet and made our gas change. I had a minor free-flow from a loose first stage DIN connection that sent a wall of bubbles into my face, but it was nothing too serious – the connection to the valve just needed to be tightened up since the regulator depressurized during the dive. At 60 feet things were going fine and we were settling into the decompression – and then we felt something go wrong with the line – yup, we had just broken free. The boat’s line was poly and since there was no chain involved, it didn’t have a lot of weight on it (on the bottom that is, there was plenty of weight vis-à-vis the boat attached to the other end), so it quickly rose up some when we broke out (it didn’t float to the surface or anything, but we couldn’t stay with it if we expected to hold our stops). Dave, Mort and I grouped together and broke off – we quickly popped a bag on a reel to signal our position and establish a line to the surface. While I had been cold before, I wasn’t cold anymore, as that certainly got the blood pumping. Once we had the bag up and we got settled, the decompression was quite comfortable. Drifting with the current there was no longer any of that awkward positioning on the line, and the seas were not jerking us around either. Of course, I was wondering if the boat knew where we were or how long we might be drifting for before we got picked up. After all, there were others in the water at various points in their decompression – most were still deeper, including some likely still on the wreck when the line pulled out. I was wondering if I was going to get to use the flares I carry as we finished our decompression and rose to the surface. When we broke the surface I could see nothing but large waves and white caps – the seas had been building and were in the 4-6 foot range. As I scanned the horizon for the boat, it occurred to me that I was very glad I didn’t have the scooter-camera rig with me, especially since the prospect of getting back aboard the boat with the current gear I had was precarious at best, and factoring in a large and fragile piece of equipment would certainly not be helping things. Fortunately, the boat quickly emerged as they had immediately identified everyone’s location once bags started popping up. I turned to Dave, took my regulator out of my mouth briefly and asked, "How the hell are we going to get back on the boat?" The seas were running hard and not only did I need to get over the boat without being run over as waves pushed it around, but I had to pass up a scooter, possibly stages, and take my fins off since this ladder does not allow for climbing with fins on. And of course I was hoping I wasn’t going to get bent struggling on the surface, over-exerting myself after a deep, cold dive! Dave said, "You go first!" Oh, thanks. I timed the waves and then made a bee line for the side of the boat. The crew threw a surface tag line that I could hold onto and they pulled me in tight so I could hang on while I got gear off. I passed up my scooter and one of my stages. Then I stuck my feet up and had my fins plucked off. Once this happens though, maneuverability with a set of big doubles on is severely reduced, so it becomes a brut force kind of thing in terms of grabbing something, righting yourself, and hauling your body over to the ladder, which is just what I did. I took a couple of good whacks in the process but I got myself on the ladder, up the ladder and seated. I breathed O2 for a few minutes as a precaution, and everything seemed fine. After watching me, it was decided it would be a good idea to put a swimmer in the water to help strip gear off divers, so local diver Harvey Morash, who was in an earlier team on the wreck and had gotten out before the line broke, hopped in with a mask and fins on to help with gear and monitoring of divers decompressing. We wanted to make sure everyone was accounted for since some divers were grouped together under one bag – everyone was and it was just a matter of monitoring things and getting people on the boat safely from this point on. Fortunately the boat crew had reacted promptly when the line broke (some of our divers were still onboard getting suited up when this happened, so they were able to help with surface ops). Once I got out of my gear I casually and quietly went over to Pat and asked her if we still had a granny line – if we didn’t put a buoy on the bitter end of the drop line before releasing it, the whole granny system, which is all done up with nice stainless hardware and good nylon line, would be bye-bye. She laughed and assured me that she made sure a tuna ball was tied off before the boat the dropped the lines to chase down divers. Slowly but surely divers finished their decompression and were retrieved back on board safely. There were some stressful moments for everyone – from the captain and crew to the divers – but everyone handled themselves well and at the end of the day we had made a great dive on the Kaaparen! We returned to the wharf, and got to work filling tanks for the next day’s dive on the British Freedom, weather permitting.
The group unwinds after an interesting dive on the Kaaparen! Photo courtesy of Dan Bruso. The next day there was no wind and the weather was absolutely beautiful – this was the day we should have done the Kaaparen. But the weather is unpredictable and given what we knew at the time we made the decision we with the information we had, which was "now or potentially never" since the forecast for the latter part of the week didn’t look good. Anyway, we were looking forward to the British Freedom dive, and we were going to put in a mooring with chain, the way we normally do things. We are used to a somewhat different method of hooking and tying into wrecks than what appears to be done in Halifax. Back at home, we tie into wrecks one of two ways – in the first, we drop a weighted shot line, which is basically a 30 pound weight attached to a line with a segment of chain that is buoyed with a mid-sized tuna ball. The boat does not tie off to this. A team is splashed; they drop down the shot line and unhook the weight from the chain. They can then swim the line to a good place on the wreck, chain in and return to the weight to shoot this on a lift bag, which is the signal we’re tied in. The boat picks up the line and goes from there. In the second method, when current or conditions may result in the shot line pulling off the wreck, we will grapple in. In these cases we’ll drop a line in that contains chain, the grapple and a weight. We’ll drop it up-current or upwind of the wreck, and drag into it until we hook. The key to this is having enough weight on the line. Then we’ll send divers down and depending on the circumstances, the boat will either drop off so the divers can have slack in the line, or we’ll stay on and the team will simply lash in a safety line. The problem that we felt was occurring with hooking the deeper wrecks was the line didn’t have enough weight on it since there was no additional weight or chain – and as a result, a light poly line with a small grapple simply "skipped" over the wreck with the boat’s weight pulling on it. We decided to use a different method the next day on the British Freedom. We got out on site and dropped the line in as a weighted shot line instead of trying to hook the wreck. The boat remained live and Dave, Peter and I splashed to tie it in. I had the video camera rig and with any luck we’d get some good stuff. The ocean was like a mill pond and there was no current to speak of. It was awesome. What a contrast from the day before! The British Freedom was a 440’ long British tanker carrying 9,700 tons of fuel oil that was torpedoed and sunk by U-1232 on January 14, 1945. Also on that date, U-1232 torpedoed and sank the British tanker Athelviking and the American freighter Martin Van Buren. The Athelviking lies a few miles away in about 300 feet of water and from the video I have seen, is an amazing dive. We didn’t plan to dive this wreck on this trip, but it’s on the docket for a future trip for sure!
The British Freedom. The British Freedom is a "Hollywood wreck" in every sense. It’s upright, mostly intact, sports excellent visibility and it’s big – which for a scooter diver is just plain awesome. It rises up to within 165 feet of the surface, sitting in 200 feet of water. As Dave, Peter and I dropped down in still conditions, at 100 feet the wreck came into few. Skipper Dave nailed it with the drop, and the shot line landed perfectly on the wreck, in a high place and a good area for tying in. Visibility was fantastic – at least 70 feet with plenty of ambient light. When I got to the top of the wreck I set up the camera and began puttering around while Dave and Peter tied in. It took a little longer than usual since we somehow forgot the dedicated liftbag we bring along just for tie-ins, so we had to dig one out off our rigs and use that. Not a big deal, but it added a few precious minutes to the process. When we finally got going it was well into the dive and I was pretty cold. The bottom temperature was 36 degrees – a mind numbing kind of cold. We were tied in at the stern part of the wreck, not far from a large gun mount that reached up high into the water column. In this part of the wreck there was some good structure, though according to the locals, the wreck suffered badly from the effects of Hurricane Juan, a category 2 hurricane that struck Nova Scotia in 2003. The upper structure of the wreck was essentially torn off and crumpled. There were however still rows of portholes everywhere, along with the aft bridge auxiliary binnacle! I took a quick scooter run, shot some video, and started up a few minutes early. Dave followed behind shortly thereafter. It was a great dive, but definitely a frustrating one because the desire to stay and the need to go was in the favor of "go" unfortunately. In fact, everyone had such a great dive on this wreck that we scrubbed plans to wrap up the trip on the Russian and planned to do 2 more days on this wreck alone if weather allowed it. After this dive we planned to do a second dive on a shallow wreck to maximize diving opportunities. For these moderate deep dives, a surface interval of about 2 hours would clean us up enough for a shallower second dive. We brought along AL80s to use as bottom stages filled with nitrox. With a decent SAC rate, an AL80 could last 40-60 minutes depending on the precise depth of the wreck. For the afternoon, we were planning to check out the wreck of the Daniel Steinmann. However, for lunch Skipper Dave wanted to show us some of the sights of Sambro so we headed over to Sambro Head lighthouse, apparently the oldest lighthouse in operation in North America. We tucked into a small cut out section of cove, and piled out to walk the island and enjoy some lunch. We walked around all over the island checking out the abandoned houses where the lighthouse keepers used to live – the lighthouse is automated and the island is uninhabited now.
Sambro Lighthouse The lighthouse was built in 1758 and the tower was originally white in color. In 1906 the height was raised 22 feet to make it more visible in fog. Soon after in 1908 it was painted with red and white stripes to make it more visible in snow! The view from the island was breath-taking, especially given the gorgeous weather that day. Anyway, checking out the lighthouse was cool and it was a relaxing and interesting way to spend the surface interval.
Lunchtime on the island! For the afternoon we headed out a short distance to the wreck of the Daniel Steinmann, which lies in 80 feet of water. The Steinmann was a 277’ long iron-hulled Barquentine-rigged steamer carrying German immigrants that sank on April 3, 1884 after striking Mad Rock Shoal in heavy fog. There were 121 fatalities among the crew and passengers. There were only 9 survivors, including the captain. Few bodies were recovered and those that were recovered were found to be terribly disfigured, almost unrecognizable due to the trauma they had suffered when the Steinmann ran up on the shoal and sank. This marked another terrible tragedy in the wake of the SS Atlantic disaster in 1873 that resulted in 562 fatalities off Halifax.
An artist's rendition of the Daniel Steinmann. Dave, Peter and I splashed in here first. I manned the video camera rig and we struck out exploring the wreckage. This site is pretty heavily degraded – not surprising given the age of the wreck and location where it’s very exposed. As is the case with many of the shallower wrecks, there were patches of hull plates, machinery and semi-intact boilers. The Steinmann had a cargo of wine and champagne bottles and some of these can be seen around the boilers in various states. Some are still intact and corked. When everyone finished up their dives we headed back to Sambro Head, off loaded and began the process of filling once again. We were kindly invited to dinner at Skipper Dave’s home that evening so we had to get a jump on the filling since it was going to be another late night. Skipper Dave’s wife Nancy is a fantastic cook and had been treating us each morning with different types of cookies. Cookies that were supposed to be saved for later during lunch – but one morning when a batch of chocolate chip cookies arrived "still warm" – they were pretty much demolished in about 10 minutes. We hadn’t even made our first dive yet, it was barely 8:30 am, and we had finished off the batch. Other days Jimmy, who was part of the crew, brought fried halibut cheeks. Now, 8:30 am is a little early for me to be breaking into fried fish, but this was not the case for others. Let’s just say that aboard the Ryan & Erin, we ate well.
Pat Morton tries sea urchins for an in-between-dives snack - apparently people really do eat these things... The next day we had hopes to return to the British Freedom, but the weather didn’t allow it. Instead we were able to pull off a dive to the Isleworth again. I made sure I hit the head before putting my drysuit on this time! And I broke out my 3-finger mitts since my hands were getting pretty cold on some dives with 5-finger neoprene wet gloves. We were able to pull off a comfortable 45 minute bottom time on this day. Scott took a turn at driving the video rig, so Dave, Peter and I were free to tour the wreck unencumbered. The weather for our final day of the trip was a real question mark. It was actually calling for Northeast winds, which as Skipper Dave aptly put "is poison." We were hoping to be able to dive anything at that point. But in typical odd-weather patterns fashion, the conditions turned around and Saturday was a beautiful day with moderate fog and light winds. In other words, we were closing out the trip with a final dive on the British Freedom!
Getting ready to get to work on the fills... Everyone had ambitious plans to do all kinds of things on this wreck. The Freedom really is an awesome dive – I mean, how can you go wrong with a 440’ long tanker? We were thrilled to see the mooring had survived the last few days (the wreck is in a busy traffic area and moorings are cut frequently). Arriving on the site we picked up the mooring, which unfortunately appeared to have fouled on some high wreckage (this mooring was initially set up for a much deeper dive and we didn’t trim it back enough so too much slack was left in the line) and when the line went through the hauler taking the scope out, the strain broke it. We should have just had the first team freely descend on the line, and untangle it before the boat tied off. Oh well. That development revised our plans somewhat disappointingly. So Peter, Dave, Brian and I splashed in to tie in a new line and shoot video. Again, we didn’t try dragging into the wreck, we instead deployed the hook like a shot line, and Skipper Dave dropped us right on top of the wreck, in virtually the exact same spot as the day before! Brian had his video camera; I had the scooter-camera rig, and we cruised around trying to get some good shots that Dave pointed out while Peter lashed the line. The visibility was good, but there was less light because of the foggy conditions, so it was much darker (still dim lighting) on the bottom. There was also an annoying current. We scootered up the starboard side a short distance and videoed an area where the auxiliary helm station binnacle and some portholes were located. We also scootered outside the hull looking back at the wreck – it’s massive. We mainly stayed in the stern area, which is a sizable part of the wreck. All of these wrecks were very clean of nets and lines compared to what we’re used to – so that was nice. Next time we’d like to scooter out to the bow, but I’d like to do it the first time without the camera since it’s a good ride and time is precious. It takes several minutes scootering to reach the bow, and because the wreck is broken down in the middle, you have to drop down to the sand around 200’ and then come back up. This will be first on the list next time! We had run about 25 minutes bottom time and were starting to get cold so we headed up and did a nice comfortable decompression. These are the kind of dives where it pays to be conservative with your decompression, and generally take care of yourself – stay hydrated, rested and warm. Doing a week’s worth of repetitive dives, many of which are decompression dives and/or shallower dives following decompression dives in rather cold water, can certainly get you into trouble if not careful. Anyway, I climbed aboard the boat after the dive, feeling good and put my gear away for the last time on this trip. We arrived back to Sambro a little later than planned – about 2 pm in fact – and Dave had another group patiently waiting on the dock for an afternoon charter. We unloaded quickly, took care of business, and said our good-byes until next time.
The wharf ... where we spent a lot of time! When planning the trip I had honestly expected we’d completely blow out of at least 2 or 3 days of diving, which would give time to tour the city and visit many of the museums or sights that interested us. Surprisingly we did not loose a single day of diving, though some days the destination was revised. Given our schedule and late days filling tanks, we didn’t see or a do a single tourist type thing in Halifax. We’ll save this for another time I suppose. In the final tally, we logged 10 dives in 7 days and the only casualty was a lamp post! Not too bad, if I may say so.
"Hello lamp post, wa-cha knowin' ...?" It took a little while for us to re-pack the truck and it was about 4 pm when we hit the road. We decided to grind straight through and made it home in 9 hours that night. All in all it was a fantastic trip – not necessarily an easy trip to pull off given the logistics, but the diving is amazing and certainly makes it all worthwhile. Skipper Dave runs a great operation and all of the people we met were friendly and laid back – as it should be. It was great meeting Al, Harvey and Jason. And many thanks to the crew – Dave, Nancy, Jimmy, Stephen and Murray. Until next year!
The 2007 Halifax Team: (from left to right, back row: Peter Piemonte, Dave Gray, Dave Caldwell, Dan Bruso, Tim Dwyer; from left to right, middle row: Dave Morton, Steve Sobczak, Roman Ptashka, Jeff Downing; from left to right, front row: Heather Knowles, Patricia Morton, Brian Nadwidny, Scott Tomlinson.
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