Wreck Diving Magazine

Shipwreck Tales of Georgian Bay By Cris Kohl and Joan Forsberg Georgian Bay is situated in the northeastern arm of Lake Huron and is located entirely within the borders of Ontario, Canada. Georgian Bay is beautiful with rugged bedrock and white pine forests to the north, sandy beaches in the south, has more than 30,000 islands, and was formed by glaciers some 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The bay has clear, blue water, is quite deep, and is a huge body of water with almost as much surface area as Lake Ontario, with some calling it the “Sixth Great Lake.” Georgian Bay is also rich with underwater maritime history that is slowly being revealed year after year. Cris Kohl and Joan Forsberg, Great Lakes maritime historians, authors,…

Wreck enthusiasts are invited to submit short pieces of information about a shipwreck currently in the news in their general area. Perhaps there is not enough information, or not enough archival and/or underwater images, to submit it as a full-length article, so this From the Debris Field… column becomes the ideal venue for a short piece. This, however, does not preclude it from becoming a full-length article in the future. We welcome short, written submissions, ideally, but not necessarily, accompanied by a photo or two, for future issues of Wreck Diving Magazine. Please send them to joe@wreckdivingmag.com A Biblical Anchor? Several books have been written about the voyage and shipwreck during Biblical times of St. Paul, who, while traveling to Rome on a large cargo ship in about the year 60 A.D., was…

Imagine what you could see if we were to drain away the oceans to reveal what lies beneath them? That simple premise, first asked as a question to television executives several years ago, led to the top-rated National Geographic international television series, Drain the Oceans. Created by British filmmaker Crispin Sadler, the show aired its second season in 2019. Its origins date back to an initial special, “Drain the Great Lakes,” which Crispin and Canadian filmmaker Wayne Abbott created for National Geographic and Discovery Canada. It aired in 2011. As National Geographic summarized it, using data collected from years of surveys, the special employed computer graphics to show what would be revealed “if all the water were to suddenly disappear from Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie and…

In February 1931, a huge ship slid down the slipway at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia. The 653-foot-long hulk, which moments later splashed into the water, had a tonnage of 21,936 GRT (gross registered tons) and was to be outfitted as a luxury ocean liner for the Dollar Steamship Lines. She was christened SS President Coolidge after the 30th President of the US, Calvin Coolidge, and she was the largest merchant ship in the US at the time. Her sister ship, SS President Hoover, had been finished a year earlier. After months of outfitting and preparations, SS President Coolidge was ready to sail later the same year on a route from her home port of San Francisco to Manila via Kobe and Shanghai. Among other amenities, the…

DOVER CLASSIC During my first visit to Dover in 2011, we were diving on virgin shipwrecks, but Tony Goodfellow wanted me to dive a real classic too, so he took me to the Pommerania. The Pommerania was an iron sail-steamship of the HAPAG line, which made the first crossings from Germany to the U.S.A. The “Pom,” as she is called locally, lies in an area which is often blessed with good visibility (by Dover standards). FIRST DIVE With the rigid inflatable, we headed out about eight miles to the site, and soon we were hooked into the wreck. Eddie went in first to set the hook, and after he sent up the anchor, I went. It was a neap tide, so with my rebreather, I had plenty of time to explore the wreck. When I came down…

In the year 1906 a dramatic revolution befell the world’s navies. Great Britain, the world’s preeminent sea power, made her own fleet, and those of her rivals, instantly obsolete by launching HMS Dreadnought. All existing battleships quickly became known as “pre-dreadnoughts,” rendered inferior by an entirely new class of warship ushered in by the British namesake—“dreadnoughts.” Dreadnought’s instant superiority to all existing ships was accomplished by removing nearly all small-caliber weapons and replacing them with as many 12-inch guns as the ship would hold. This revolutionary armament concept made the ship capable of lofting a larger broadside at distance than any other ship afloat, making her the equivalent of two, or even three, of her rivals. This massive firepower was combined with thicker armor plating to resist enemy shells, and steam…