Exploration
Extending The Envelope Revisited: The 30 Deepest Tech Shipwreck Dives
The advent of mixed gas usage by sport divers—the so-called “Technical Diving Revolution”in the early to mid-1990s—greatly expanded our underwater envelope, while arguably improving diving safety. In order to appreciate how far, err, deep, we have collectively come, we thought it would be illustrative to contrast the deepest tech shipwreck dives today with those in the 1990s when technical diving was just getting started. InDepth chief Michael Menduno has the deets.
By Michael Menduno Header photo by Barry McGill
The advent of mixed gas usage by sport divers—the so-called “Technical Diving Revolution”—in the early to mid-1990s greatly expanded our community’s underwater envelope, while arguably improving diving safety.
In order to appreciate how far, err deep, we have collectively come, I thought it would be illustrative to contrast the deepest tech shipwreck dives today from those in the 1990s when technical diving was just getting started.
Back in the early to mid-90s, technical diving pioneer Capt. Billy Deans, owner of Key West Diver observed that mix technology enabled us to “double our underwater playground.” Deans was contrasting the then existing recreational diving limits i.e. No stop dives to 130 ft/40 m to the new technical diving envelope that was made possible with the use of helium-based bottom gas and accelerated decompression using nitrox and oxygen. Note that during this period, the words Deep (beyond 40 m) and Decompression i.e. “The D-words,” were considered four-letter words by many in the recreational diving establishment.
At the time, we considered open water decompression dives with 15-25 min of bottom time to depths of 260 ft/79 m to represent a reasonably safe envelope for mixed gas tech dives, hence Dean’s comment about doubling of our recreational playground. Because of the ability to more easily stage bailout and decompression gas in the cave environment, the envelope there was considered deeper/longer. That is not to say that tekkies weren’t diving deeper than 260 ft/79 m and staying longer, but at that time, we considered these dives as “exceptional,” requiring special methods and work.
Deep Shipwreck Dives in The 1990s
The first table (below) highlights the ten deepest tech wreck dives from 1989-1999, including the location, depth, dive profile, technology used and the technical divers who first dived the wreck in question. The majority of these dives was reported at the time in my magazine aquaCORPS Journal.
The deepest tech shipwreck dive at the time was on the Edmund Fitzgerald lying in 530 feet (162 meters) of fresh water in Lake Superior the equivalent of 514 ft/157 m of sea water. The shallowest was the RMS Lusitania near Kinsale, Ireland at 310 ft/95 msw.
Note that the depths listed in both tables should be considered as relative metrics. In most cases, the depth indicates the depth at the bottom of the wreck. In some cases, divers actually dived to the bottom. In other cases, the depth indicates the depth that divers actually reached. In other words, the depth numbers are a bit fuzzy.
There are several observations to be made. First, all of these dives but one, were conducted on open circuit scuba. At the time literally, only a handful of technical divers had rebreathers, which were either modified Carleton Mk 15.5s, Dr. Bill Stone’s handmade Cis-Lunar rebreathers, the Halcyon PVR-BASC semi-closed rebreather aka “The Fridge,” the predecessor of the RB80, or various prototypes. AP Diving’s Inspiration, the first production rebreather, wouldn’t be released until 1997. In the case of the RMS Niagara (392 ft/120 m), Tim Cashman and Dave Apperly were using rebreathers made by Apperly. Though mixed gas technology was a necessary precursor, rebreather usage would not hit its stride for another decade.
Two of the dives shown on the chart, the SMS Frankfurt (420 f/129 m) dived in 1994, and the Ostfriesland (380 f/117 m) dived in 1990, were conducted by wreck diving pioneers Ken Clayton and Gary Gentile on heliox. Clayton also dived an experimental Neox mix (02 and Ne) for their last dive on Ostfriesland to 340 f/104 m with 20 min BT.
In 1989, the Clayton, Gentile and their team also conducted a deep air dive, with air decompression—can you imagine??—on the USS Washington (290 ft/89 m), which would have been #11 in the 1990s table. Ironically, though cave divers quickly embraced “special mix” technology, the majority of dedicated U.S. Northeast wreck divers were slow to adopt mix technology to replace their deep air diving though they did add oxygen and or nitrox for decompression.
In terms of divers, Terrence Tysall, now the training director for National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), made the two deepest dives on the list in 1995, first on the Fitzgerald in 1995 with Mike “Zee” Zlatopolsky, and then on the Atlanta with Aussie pioneer Kevin Denlay.
Though the rumor was that Tysall and Zee had made a “sneak dive” on the Fitzgerald which was a grave site, the two were able to obtain a permit, but it did not allow them to tie into the wreck. They ended up using the drop camera umbilical as a downline, and left a plaque on the “Fitz” to commemorate the sailors that had been lost. However, they were only able to make a single dive due to the weather.
Clayton, Gentile and their teammates accounted for three of the ten deepest wrecks while Gentile was involved with four of 10, and Deans and his team accounted for two dives on the list. Note also that British tekkie Polly Tapson, one of the first female tech expedition leaders, and her team Starfish Enterprise captured the imagination of the community at the time with the preparations and their successful dives on the “Lucy” in 1994.
Three years later, British tech pioneer and inventor Kevin Gurr launched the first technical expedition on the Britannic with Dave Thompson, founder of JJ CCR, Al Wright, Global Underwater Explorers’ (GUE) Richard Lundgren, his brother, photographer Ingmar Lundgren, photographer Dan Burton, and British tekkie John Thornton. Of course, the wreck was first discovered and dived by Jacques Cousteau and his team in 1976, see footnote.
In terms of depth, the average depth of these 1990s wrecks is 389 ft/122 m average bottom time: 16.7 min, and average run time: 192 min or just more than three hours.
The Deepest Shipwreck Dives Today
The second table shows the 30 deepest technical shipwreck dives as of this year identifying the first tech teams to dive on the wrecks. Note that only the eight deepest shipwreck dives from the 1990s made it on the list. The deepest tech shipwreck dive, was on the Milano lying at a depth of 774 fresh water (236 mfw) in Lake Maggiore, Italy, (the equivalent of 751 fsw/176 msw), conducted by Pim van der Horst, Mario Marconi, and Alessandro Scuotto in 2008, with the help of diving pioneer Nuno Gomes who was a consultant and witnessed the dive.
August 14, 2022—Editor’s Note: Leo Fielding reports that he and his team explored the SS Mahenge located in the English Channel at a maximum depth of 121msw /395 fsw, which would make it the 27th deep tech shipwreck dive. The dive was conducted on CCR using a trimix 8/80 diluent; bottom time was 28 minutes, runtime was 238 minutes.Expedition team: Leo Fielding, Joe Colls-Burnett, Andrew Colderwood and Luke Sibley skippered by Ian Taylor on the boat Skin Deeper. The wreck was reportedly dived in 2006 by a UK team skippered by Grahame Knott on the boat Wey Chieftain III, and dived again in the 2010s by a UK team led by Jos Greenhalgh and skippered by Ian Taylor. Thank you for the update Leo Fielding!
The 30th deepest wreck dive is now the SMS Ostfriesland (380 ft/116 m), which was just slightly shallower than the average depth of the Ten Deepest Shipwrecks from 1990. The deepest wreck dive in the 1990s, that being the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, aka ‘The Fitz,” laying at 529 ffw/162 mfw, is now #11 when viewed from today. That is to say that the top ten deepest shipwreck dives were all conducted after 2000.
Note also there is one high altitude shipwreck dive on the list being the SS Tahoe at 471 feet of fresh water/144 m, the equivalent of 457 ft/140 m of seawater, which lies in Lake Tahoe at an altitude of 6224 ft/1897m. The altitude makes the SS Tahoe a no-man’s land in terms of decompression knowledge; there is almost no data to validate procedures for aggressive dives at that altitude. Only Sheck Exley and Nuno Gomes’ series of sub-500ffw/153mfw open-circuit cave dives in 1992-1996 at Boesmansgat sinkhole that lies at an altitude of 5000 ft/1500m in South Africa were possibly more extreme.
Also interesting, 9 of the 13 wreck dives in the deepest 10 today (there were multiple shipwrecks at the same depth) were conducted on rebreathers vs. four on open-circuit scuba. All but one of the 10 deepest shipwreck dives in the 90s were conducted on open circuit. All the 30 deepest dives but two, were made using trimix as a back gas or diluent, the exception was the Frankfurt and Ostfriesland first dived by Clayton and Gentile and team as noted above.
Closed-circuit technology is largely responsible for the deeper depths and longer dives we see today. The average depth of the ten deepest shipwreck dives listed in chart two is 576 ft/176m, or 178 ft/75 m deeper than the ten deepest shipwreck dives from the 1990s. Average bottom time for the deepest 10 today was 15 minutes compared to 16.7 min for the 1990s wrecks, however average run time was 316 minutes or more than five hours, compared to a little over three hours in the 1990s.
The amazingly prolific Italian diver Massimo Domenico Bondone and his team accounted for six of the dives in the 20 of the 30 deepest shipwrecks! Wow! He is followed by Irish tekkie and photographer Barry McGill, his colleague Stewie Andrews, and their various teams who were responsible for four of the deepest dives shown on the table. Aussie tekkies Dave Bardi, Craig Challen, Richard “Harry” Harris and their colleagues from the “Wet Mules,” who were prominent in the Thai cave rescue earlier this year, were responsible for three of the dives as were Ken Clayton and Gary Gentile (from the 1990s). Tysall
Was responsible for two dives on the list, the Fitzgerald and the Atlanta.
Have we bottomed out our depth capability as self-contained divers? If history is any judge likely not. My long-held belief is that self-contained atmospheric diving systems aka Exosuits or hard suits, such as those pioneered by commercial pioneer Phil Nuytten, founder and CEO of Nuytco Research, represent the next wave of technology that promises to extend our envelope even further. However, given the slow pace at which diving technology evolves (it’s a matter of economics), it may be a while before divers will have access to $10,000 swimmable Exosuit.
Even so, it will be interesting to see what the list of the 10 deepest tech shipwrecks dives will look like in 2029.
For the deepest cave dives see: Diving Beyond 250 Meters: The Deepest Cave Dives Today Compared to the Nineties
Editor’s Note: This post evolved based on input from our readers. Here were the two earlier versions:
Resources
How Deep is Deep? The 20 Deepest Tech Shipwreck Dives and How They Compare to Dives in the 1990s
Extending The Envelope Revisited: Correcting The Record of the 30 Deepest Tech Shipwreck Dives
A printed version of this article was published in the “Journal of Diving History, Third Quarter 2019, Vol 27 Number 100.
Footnotes
Table 1: 1990s
Deepest 10 (1989-1999): Average depth: 398 fsw/122 msw, Avg Bottom Time: 16.7 min Average Run Time: 192 min
*Note that Tysall & Zee’s dive on the Fitz was not a “sneak” dive. The two obtained permits to dive the wreck but they didn’t allow the divers to tie in.
** Denlay & Tysall’s first dive in 1995 was to 361 fsw/110msw on the shallow stern of the Atlanta. They returned in 1997/98 where they made their deepest dive to the bow.
** Jacque Cousteau, Albert Falco (team leader), Raymond Coll (camera), Ivan Giacoletto (lights) and Robert Pollio (photo), were the first to dive the Britannic in 1976. Their first recon dive was on air!! Subsequent dives with BT: 15 min were made with Trimix 14/54. The team deco’d in a bell. GUE launched its own expedition in 1999 which included the Lundgren brothers.
Table 2: 30th Deepest
Deepest 10 (1990-2018): Average depth: 576 fsw/1176 msw, Avg. Bottom Time: 15min, Avg. Run Time: 374 min
*The Jolanda sits vertically from 70-150 msw. According to M. Ellyat, Gregory ‘Banan’ Dominik found and dived the deep bit of the Yolanda in Sharm 3 years before Mark Andrews and Leigh Cunningham.
** According to M. Ellyat When he found the Victoria in 2004 it was almost intact in 156m. Subsequent dynamite fishing has blown the inner decking down to the seabed making it appear 144m.
***Rizia Ortolani set the then Deep Wreck Female record on this dive.
**** Scuttled in Operation Daylight, Operation Deadlight Type VII.
*****Denlay & Tysall’s first dive in 1995 was to 361 fsw/110msw on the shallow stern of the Atlanta. They returned in 1997/98 where they made their deepest dive to the bow.
****** The wreck had been dived previously in September 2000 by Richie Stevenson, Chris Hutchison and Dave Greig but only as a bounce w/ 2 min bottom time. Subsequent dives with BT: 15 min were made with Trimix 14/54. The team deco’d in a bell. Greek commercial diver Kostas Thoctarides followed Cousteau in 1995 making a solo 20-min dive, and returned in 2001 with a submersible.
********Clayton dived Neox mix (O2 and Ne) for their last dive on Ostfriesland to 340 f/104 m with 20 min BT.
Michael Menduno is InDepth’s executive editor and, an award-winning reporter and technologist who has written about diving and diving technology for 30 years. He coined the term “technical diving.” His magazine “aquaCORPS: The Journal for Technical Diving”(1990-1996), helped usher tech diving into mainstream sports diving. He also produced the first Tek, EUROTek, and ASIATek conferences, and organized Rebreather Forums 1.0 and 2.0. Michael received the OZTEKMedia Excellence Award in 2011, the EUROTek Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 and the TEKDive USA Media Award in 2018.
Exploration
Finding the Wreck of the “Admiral Knight”
Professional archeologist and tech diver Ewan Anderson recounts the tale of finding the early 1900s steamship the Admiral Knight in British Columbia waters in the spring of 2020—a collaboration of the British Columbia Underwater Explorers (BCUE) and the Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia (UASBC). It’s a tribute to the power of “Citizen Science,” and the joys of diving with purpose. Here’s how they found it.
By Ewan Anderson
“Well… I might have a target for you,” read the fateful email that led to our search for the wreck of the early 1900s Admiral Knight steamship.
It was 2019, and Craig Lessels of the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS) had been reviewing multi-beam sonar bathymetry datasets — basically, maps of the seafloor — when he noticed a cluster of features lying on the otherwise sandy seafloor, east of Galiano Island in the Salish Sea off the west coast of Canada.
Thinking the Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia (UASBC) might be interested, he forwarded what he had found to UASBC Explorations Director Jacques Marc.
As it turned out, the UASBC had, since 2006, been looking near this location for the Admiral Knight, a steam-powered freighter that sank after an explosion in its engine caused a catastrophic fire on board.
The Search
The UASBC search began, as usual, with some serious background research. The research turned up a wealth of information about the vessel’s origins and destruction in 1919. Launched by the Westward Navigation Company of Seattle in 1916 as the Kuskokwim River, the 43 m/142 ft long wood hulled, diesel-engine powered vessel was built to provide freight service between Puget Sound and Alaska. It was re-powered with steam engines in 1917 and renamed the SS Portland, and then renamed the Admiral Knight in 1919 after purchase by Alaska Pacific Fisheries, who may have used it to supply their canneries in Alaska.
On July 26, 1919, a fire broke out in the Admiral Knight’s engine room while the freighter was underway from Seattle to Ketchikan. The crew of 21 barely made it off the ship before it was engulfed in flames; the last six men leaped off the foredeck onto a boat dispatched by the local steam ferry just in time to be saved. Three days later, mariners were still being warned of the burning hulk drifting between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, but there was no sign of the ship by July 30.
The Admiral Knight was forgotten until the late 1950s when a group of divers explored a site near Galiano Island where a local fisherman reported to have snagged his gear on a wreck. In an interview in 2006, one of the divers remembered seeing an intact wooden hull and some machinery matching the Admiral Knight’s description at depths of 55-64 m/180-220 ft; although this firsthand account came with the caveat that they were “narked out of their minds.” This general location became the focus of the UASBC’s field surveys over the next few years, including searches using towed side-scan sonar in 2006 and a multi-beam sonar survey by Parks Canada’s research vessel, the MV David Thompson. Those searches did not locate anything resembling the Admiral Knight wreck, and its location remained a mystery until CHS’s review of data from deeper water in 2019, just beyond the UASBC’s previous search areas.
The CHS target sits in 57 m/187 ft of water, which puts it beyond the range of the UASBC Explorations “regulars” group, some of whom have been exploring and documenting underwater maritime heritage sites in British Columbia and Alaska since the early ‘80s. As a UASBC Explorations regular myself — albeit with only 15 years’ worth of expeditions in my dive log — and member of British Columbia’s close-knit Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) technical diving community, Jacques turned the project over to me and wished me luck. I had been bothering Jacques for several years to give up his wish list of deeper shipwreck targets, and it appeared that this was my chance to prove that GUE tech divers on Vancouver Island could make a significant contribution to the underwater cultural heritage record on B.C.’s coast.
The Plan
We were ready! In short order, I had a team of qualified and enthusiastic GUE divers, a dive boat, and a dive date in April 2020. And then we were interrupted by the pandemic. Organised diving took a big step back while everyone tried to figure out how to navigate a variety of restrictions and act responsibly in the face of this century’s biggest global health scare. Focus shifted to community-building through impromptu dives, and the big projects, like our plan to identify the Admiral Knight, took a back seat.
Dive boats available for projects around south Vancouver Island changed, too. GUE instructor evaluator and Vancouver Island resident Guy Shockey bought a boat, the Thermocline, brought it up to the island from Puget Sound, then learned how to drive it (possibly in that order). While the boat was still just a twinkle in Guy’s eye, he told me he hoped to make Thermocline a platform for divers to do world-class diving, but for that to happen it was up to the local GUE community to demonstrate that we had interesting project dives to do. He and I agreed that identifying the Admiral Knight fit the long-term community goals perfectly. Soon after the Thermocline arrived at its permanent home in Vancouver Island’s Maple Bay, Guy started referring to himself as “The Boat Driver,” so I knew he was seriously committed.
The Dive
By early 2022, our diving activities on the west coast were back to their pre-pandemic norms, and the way seemed clear to dive the Admiral Knight. So, on a sunny weekend this past August, with water as calm as glass, I found myself dropping through the cool, emerald-green depths towards the bold future of underwater archaeology in my backyard.
Dropping down the shot line with me was Jason Cook, an instructor and fellow rebreather diver. As we descended, I had a head full of plans and checklists, and handfuls of equipment. Try as we might to keep things simple, we were determined to complete a minimum number of tasks and needed the gear to pull them off. In addition to our JJ-CCR rebreathers and bailout cylinders to do the dive, we had a full-frame camera and two pairs of large video lights to document the wreck (if it wasn’t just a pile of rocks we were dropping onto). Jason had a 120 m/400 ft reel in case The Boat Driver dropped the shot in the middle of nowhere and our identification dive turned into a search for, well, anything. I had an additional large surface marker buoy (SMB) stuffed in my left thigh pocket, which we planned to launch without a line attached to signal the next dive team that we’d found something worth diving. We each had a diver propulsion vehicle (DPV) to drag all this stuff around if the current picked up (strong currents are common in our region, but also highly localised, and nobody was sure when slack tide was at this new site).
The visibility on the descent was just over 20 m/60 ft, which is fantastic no matter where you are in the world. As we passed 40 m/130 a huge grey shape swam right in front of me — a shark! — no, just the biggest lingcod (Ophiodon elongatus) I had ever seen. As the monster fish disappeared, we hit a layer of low-visibility water hovering about 5 m/15 ft off the seafloor. It appeared we were going to be diving in the dark — and the cold, since it was also suddenly only 9° C/~48° F. Finally, the shot appeared below us, lying on a featureless, sandy plain. There wasn’t even a pile of rocks pretending to be a wreck in sight.
Like the optimist he is, Jason quickly got out his reel to tie-off and start a search. I, on the other hand, stared dejectedly into the gloom, where I could just make out some white blobs in the distance. But wait a second — the blobs must be plumose anemones (Metridium farcimen), and anemones must be attached to something! I got Jason’s attention with a flash of my light, and we headed off towards the anemones.
It turned out that our search for the wreck was brief — the anemones were only about 10 m/30 ft away, attached to a driveshaft just forward of a small steel propeller. It was a convenient place to tie off the reel, and an auspicious start to our dive. I deployed the SMB, which, unencumbered by a line attached to a spool, careened to the surface, and launched, like a small pink ballistic missile, out of the water beside the waiting Thermocline. The second dive team — Lee Critchley, Conor Collins, and Colin Miller — were into the water in moments to start their dive.
Back at the wreck site, Jason and I started the next phase of our dive: a visual survey of the site. Firing up the DPVs, we followed the driveshafts forward from the propeller. The shafts disappear under a jumble of machinery that will need a more thorough survey to sort through. The large water-tube boilers appeared next, standing upright on their fire-boxes about 2-3 m/6-10 ft proud of the seafloor. Patches of the relatively thin steel encasing the boilers had corroded away, revealing intricate tubing that was cutting-edge boiler technology in the early 20th century. Winches and engine parts formed another pile forward of the boilers, beyond which was the relatively featureless expanse of seabed corresponding to what was once the vessel’s hold. About a minute later, we rounded the forecastle which sat upright about 3 m/10 ft high, the foredeck winch still in its original position. We completed our circuit with a straight run back to the stern, spotting the second drive shaft and propeller.
As the second team arrived on the bottom, Jason and I lit up the wreck with our video lights. I wanted to document the visual survey we’d just completed, so I coordinated with Jason to do a re-run at slow speed. He led and illuminated the wreck, while I followed with the DPV-mounted camera and lights. Keeping Jason in frame made for a good scale reference as we slipped slowly past century-old rust and watchful fish. The end of our video captured the other team swimming around the boilers. Conor was taking still photos while the others inspected the machinery and puzzled out what they were looking at.
And just like that, it was time to go. Leaving the reel for the other team to collect, Jason and I headed back to the shot line and had the usual brief conversation confirming our decompression plan before leaving the bottom. The ascent took us back up to the relatively crystal-clear water above 45 m/150 ft. We crossed the thermocline around 15 m/50 ft and completed our deco in 18°C/64° F water and dappled green sunlight.
The Rediscovery
Back onboard the Thermocline, we all agreed that the first day of diving was a great success. We had identified a wreck and concluded that it was worth diving again; but was this definitely the wreck of the Admiral Knight? We thought so: it is a steam-powered, twin-screw vessel of the correct size. And we knew the burning hulk was seen by several witnesses drifting in the vicinity of our wreck site in late July 1919. More definitive evidence of the wreck’s identity lies in a closer inspection of the surviving equipment and the cargo. We surfaced with about 10 minutes of good-quality video and some still photos, which Jacques will want to review and comment on.
The two-hour sail back to the dock, and lunch at the marina pub gave us plenty of time to debrief and discuss the details of our dives. We sketched out the goals for diving the next day, and I included a somewhat ambitious list of items to measure and a plan to create a 3D model of the boilers.
Jason and I were back in the water 24 hours after our first dive on the wreck. The shot line had landed right behind the boilers, so we got to work immediately. This time, we planned to document the boilers using photogrammetry. Issues with camera float arms the previous day meant we were not able to carry as many big lights, so I had the camera while Jason handled most of the lighting.
The somewhat poor visibility and missing lighting (though we still had a lot of lights) meant we had to get relatively close to the wreck for well-lit photos. And since the boilers don’t cover a very large area, I decided to park the DPVs and kick. In hindsight, the DPVs might have made things easier, but I didn’t notice the current sweeping across the wreck until after the kicking started. I’m not beyond second-guessing myself underwater, but with only 30 minutes of bottom time to set-up and complete the photogrammetry, there wasn’t a lot of time to reorganise and restart the work. In the end, we managed to get about 470 reasonable photos for our modelling project.
The second dive team, Guy and Jim Dixon, arrived on the wreck a few minutes after Jason and I started taking photos. Guy and Jim had the straightforward task of just enjoying the dive. This seemingly simple job is a common assignment on UASBC dives: divers who are unencumbered with cameras, lights, measuring tapes, and other documentation equipment are free to explore and are likely to notice important features that busy diver-photographers might miss. This team spent some time inspecting two “block” features that I had noticed the previous day; sitting forward of the engines and boilers, the blocks could have been the remnants of the vessel’s cargo, which would be an unusual find because we don’t often see intact cargo on our wrecks. We didn’t manage to solve the mystery on this expedition, and even with Guy and Jim offering detailed descriptions, we’re all still scratching our heads.
Although there were only a handful of divers who made it down into the wreck in August, dozens of people have contributed their time and energy over the last decade and a half to making these successful dives possible. To dive into the unknown just to see what’s there is one thing, but to dive with purpose and come back with valuable information requires dedicated research and planning. Credit for our success (and the pressure to succeed!) in search for the Admiral Knight is largely due to Jacques Marc and other researchers at the UASBC who laid the groundwork for the project.
There is much more to come. We’ve proven that we can add deeper sites to the list of the UASBC’s potential expeditions. Jacques and other UASBC volunteers are turning to the archives to find more targets. By extending the range of what is possible for the local community, we also open the door to exploring deeper into history. Indigenous peoples have lived around the Salish Sea since time immemorial, as indigenous elders and cultural leaders say, and their cultural inheritance includes documented sites spanning the last 14,000 years. The connection Salish peoples have with the sea around us is undeniable, yet tangible underwater heritage sites other than shipwrecks have barely been explored.
As for the Admiral Knight, any uncertainty about the wreck’s identity may be beside the point. The wreck still makes for a great dive, and although it is relatively deep for most divers, many in our local dive community are qualified – or will be soon – to dive it. It’s worth the effort just to see the intact boilers and the entire vessel’s contents laid out on the seafloor, just as they were 103 years ago. The intact sections of wreck and potential cargo provide opportunities for further study and research as well.
See companion stories:
Building Community Through Project Diving By Guy Shockey
Introducing GUE’s New Project Diver Program By Francesco Cameli
Dive Deeper
InDEPTH: How to Become an Explorer: Passion, Partnership, and Exploration
Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia
Marc, Jacques and Warren Oliver Bush (2021) Historic Shipwrecks of the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia. Underwater Archaeological Society of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.
Ewan Anderson is a professional archaeologist whose work focuses on assessing and mitigating development construction impacts to cultural heritage sites in British Columbia. A consultant for all levels of government, a variety of industries and Indigenous communities, his expertise is in cultural heritage law, cutting edge archaeological methods and Indigenous peoples’ relationships with archaeology and those who practise it.
Ewan is passionate about diving – especially when combined with underwater cultural heritage projects. He is a GUE certified JJ-CCR diver and IANTD certified cave diver. His diving has taken him around the world, even though everything he needs – from wrecks to caves – can be found within a few hours of his home in Victoria, on Vancouver Island.
His professional work and diving almost never mix, for which he is often thankful. Ewan pursues his interests in underwater photography, underwater photogrammetry, and advocating for conservation of marine environments and underwater heritage, free from the yoke of capitalist overlords. He is a regular volunteer on Underwater Archaeological Society of BC expeditions and has served on the Society’s board of directors since 2018.
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