DULUTH, Minnesota (21 July 2004) -- After more than five years of searching, shipwreck hunters have found the remains of a bulk freighter that sank in the frigid waters of Lake Superior more than a century ago. The Robert Wallace was detected in more than 300 feet of water about 13 miles south-southeast of Two Harbors. Experts say the find itself - not to mention the condition of the ship - is rare. "We were amazed. It's so intact," said Jerry Eliason, a longtime scuba diver who lives in Scanlon. "None of us had ever seen a wooden steamer that looked like that before. There's very little debris. Just about everything is still on the wreck. It's even sitting upright on an even keel." The Robert Wallace was carrying iron ore when it sank on Nov. 17, 1902, in relatively calm water. "There was no loss of life," Eliason said. "It hit a log or something, is what it did, and tore out its stern post." The wreck, which was believed to be on the Minnesota side of the lake, was actually found in Wisconsin waters. Thom Holden, director of the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Duluth, said the historical record will need to be adjusted. Jay Hanson, owner of Superior Scuba Center in Duluth, said the find has been "the buzz" of the scuba diving community. "It's pretty rare to find a wreck in Lake Superior." Eliason's last discovery, with longtime hunting partner Kraig Smith of Rice Lake, Wis., was in 1990, when he found the freighter Judge Hart, which sank in a storm in November 1942 in Canadian waters. His search team includes Smith, Randy Beebe, of Duluth, and Ken Merryman, of Fridley. Eliason's son, Jarrod Eliason of Colorado Springs, Colo., designed the torpedo-looking side-scan sonar that first detected the Robert Wallace. "We were all excited when we first saw it. We'd been working on this mystery five years," said Merryman, a shipwreck hunter of more than 30 years and a member of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society. "We drive around in circles a lot. It's nice to finally have a place to stop." The team plans to dive to the Robert Wallace in August when Lake Superior warms up. The water is only about 42 degrees now, Merryman said. Diving to the wreck will take about five minutes, and the team will spend about 10 minutes videotaping and photographing the ship before returning to the surface, Merryman said. The Wallace appears to have sunk slowly and landed softly on the bottom. It's one of only a couple of wrecks in Lake Superior with its smokestack still in place. | | "It's like nothing we've ever seen before," Eliason said of the wreck's condition. "The only thing we can detect missing is the wheelhouse." The search team is worried about the amount of silt on the wreck. If disturbed, a cloud of slow-settling silt could obscure their view. SOURCE - Duluth News TribunePartners in crime: Grave robbers Leigh Bishop and Brad Sheard. Following the lead of dive industry-endorsed shipwreck looters Bishop and Sheard, scuba diving thieves around the world are destroying wrecks for bragging rights, coffee table displays and internet auction profits that amount to a fraction of the revenue shipwrecks can generate as fully protected underwater museums.FROM THE EDITORS OF CDNN Scuba looters around the world aggressively compete for bragging rights, product endorsements and profits from the sales of stolen artifacts that are now on a par with those from smuggling humans and drugs. "The vast majority of the global scuba diving community opposes shipwreck looting and underwater grave robbing," said CDS President Evan T. Allard. "For scuba divers, every shipwreck is an underwater museum to be fully protected for our children, our grandchildren and all future generations of divers who will dive deeper and longer thanks to ongoing improvements in diving technology ," Allard added. "It is absolutely imperative that the global scuba diving community, archaeologists, coast guards, police and tax authorities act now to prevent Leigh Bishop, Brad Sheard, David Morton (of the Boston Sea Rovers) and other shipwreck looters from exploiting and destroying sunken ships for their personal coffee table displays, internet self-promotion schemes, commercial 'museum' profits and tax-evasion scams." CYBER DIVER ALERT | If you have information pertaining to the theft and/or sale of wreck artifacts, or desecration of underwater grave sites by Leigh Bishop, Brad Sheard, organized crime gangs or anyone else, please contact CDNN immediately and your information will be passed along to appropriate authorities. REPORT SCUBA LOOTER |
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