The NOAA lab I work at happens to be right on Narragansett Bay in RI (same place as the URI Bay Campus and Graduate School of Oceanography). December 23, 2004 I was sitting in my office, when I got a phone call from a grad student I know across the street at URI, "Chris, you won't believe what I just saw out my window!"
A tug towing a crane barge had been steaming south in pretty foul weather down the West Passage of Narragansett Bay. They got into trouble and the barge started taking on water so the made a u-turn and tried to run back up the bay, but they didn't make it to safety. Just off of Ft. Getty outside of Dutch Harbor in Jamestown, the barge started going down and the tug was forced to cut it loose less than a minute before the barge tipped over and sank.
Today we went out and dove this now 7 month old wreck. The wreck is sitting in about 50 ft of water, laying its side with the deck and the barge's flat bottom forming shear walls at a 90 degree angle to the seafloor. The starboard side is sitting at about 20-25 ft deep. The port side is at 55 ft deep. Because of the way it is sitting, sort of like a coin on its edge, it makes for a really neat wreck. The crane is still attached to the barge and the boom extends probably 50 feet out before you come to the end which is driven into sand. Even though the wreck is only 7 months old it is already heavily encrusted. There is also a small fishing net on the wreck already. There were some very large tautog hanging around wreck.
This dive should definitely be done at slack tide as there can be a pretty strong current when the tide is running. The visibility was about 8-10ft but it was overcast and it was extremely dark at depth (definitely needed the dive lights). Water temps were about 66 degrees F. By the end of the dive the current was definitely picking up on us.
Finding the wreck is quite easy. The Coast Guard has placed a red can (WR6) just west of the wreck (this buoy is too new to be on the charts yet). The wreck is probably about 60 ft inside of WR6 towards Ft. Getty. If you have sounder the vertical relief is 30 ft straight up off the bottom so it it is a really clear sonar target when you go over it. It is too far out to be a shore dive, but close enough that you could easily do it from any small boat or a kayak. At the time we dove it, there was also a small white buoy tied to the wreck that says "Crane Barge" on it.
A tug towing a crane barge had been steaming south in pretty foul weather down the West Passage of Narragansett Bay. They got into trouble and the barge started taking on water so the made a u-turn and tried to run back up the bay, but they didn't make it to safety. Just off of Ft. Getty outside of Dutch Harbor in Jamestown, the barge started going down and the tug was forced to cut it loose less than a minute before the barge tipped over and sank.
Today we went out and dove this now 7 month old wreck. The wreck is sitting in about 50 ft of water, laying its side with the deck and the barge's flat bottom forming shear walls at a 90 degree angle to the seafloor. The starboard side is sitting at about 20-25 ft deep. The port side is at 55 ft deep. Because of the way it is sitting, sort of like a coin on its edge, it makes for a really neat wreck. The crane is still attached to the barge and the boom extends probably 50 feet out before you come to the end which is driven into sand. Even though the wreck is only 7 months old it is already heavily encrusted. There is also a small fishing net on the wreck already. There were some very large tautog hanging around wreck.
This dive should definitely be done at slack tide as there can be a pretty strong current when the tide is running. The visibility was about 8-10ft but it was overcast and it was extremely dark at depth (definitely needed the dive lights). Water temps were about 66 degrees F. By the end of the dive the current was definitely picking up on us.
Finding the wreck is quite easy. The Coast Guard has placed a red can (WR6) just west of the wreck (this buoy is too new to be on the charts yet). The wreck is probably about 60 ft inside of WR6 towards Ft. Getty. If you have sounder the vertical relief is 30 ft straight up off the bottom so it it is a really clear sonar target when you go over it. It is too far out to be a shore dive, but close enough that you could easily do it from any small boat or a kayak. At the time we dove it, there was also a small white buoy tied to the wreck that says "Crane Barge" on it.