I was also on that dive on Sunday (I was on the boat all weekend), I wrote a trip report for our board down here, but you guys might like to see it also.
Milwaukee Trip Report
Robert Todd and I drove to Milwaukee on Friday October 14th from Decatur Alabama; the drive lasted about 13 hours. Unfortunately, we arrived in Chicago at 4:59pm and it took about two hours to get around the city, otherwise the drive was uneventful.
We arrived at the Nordic Diver, which is docked on the river in the old downtown part of Milwaukee, and were greeted by Captain Bill Prince. Bill is a very experienced wreck diver and a really nice guy. We stayed on the boat Friday and Saturday night.
First dive Saturday morning:
A group from Chicago joined us for a dive on the Milwaukee Car Ferry. This is a 300+ foot long railroad car ferry loaded with 27 railroad cars of general freight that sunk in a storm in 1929. It now lies in 120 of water about 3.5 miles off Milwaukee in Lake Michigan. We moored on the bow and rolled off the boat and about 9:30am. The temp was 52-54 on the surface, and 48 degrees on the deck. There was about a half knot current running from stern to bow. The visibility was probably about 50. I dropped on the bow and Robert landed on the pilot house which is off of the bow in the sand. The forward part of the wreck is intact and the forward chain locker is an easy swim through and has an impressive winch. It was obviously a major wreck and Robert and I used this as an orientation dive. I returned to the bow and ascended after 25 min and started deco. I surfaced after 44 min to whitecaped four-foot waves; getting back on the boat was the hardest part of the dive. We sat out for an hour.
Second dive Saturday morning:
Similar to the first dive, except Robert and I did some more exploration towards the midship to stern area. I swam to the stern and dropped down to the sand. The ship has twin massive screws (which we were told is very unusual for any Great Lakes ship). I found the stern mooring line and attempted to find the entrance to the crews quarters, but failed. Many more details of the wreck became apparent, and we were able to make out some of the cargo in the rail cars, wheels from rail cars, etc. You could probably spend a whole week, or more, on this wreck and not see it all. Began ascent; I could tell by the mooring rope that it was going to be rough on top; surge was readily apparent at 50. Had a Jon-line this time, which helped enormously on my hang, but doing deco and getting back on the dive boat was still a real experience.
Saturday Afternoon:
--- Blown out ---
Saturday evening:
Captain Bills friend Tom Doubleday and Beth (?) showed up separately Saturday Afternoon and stayed on the boat with us Saturday night. Tom is a kind of a famous diver in that part of the world (he has been on the Doria before) and an all around great guy. We got to sit in while he and Bill traded war stories about finding wrecks, other boats jumping their wrecks, etc. This was my first time to be around any serious hard-core wreck divers and, to me, the cultural experience was almost, if not more, interesting than the diving. Bill went way out of his way to make us feel welcome into their group.
Sunday Morning:
Waves were coming from two directions, they were more like swells instead of chop, I have probably been out in the ocean over a hundred times on a boat and have never been seasick, but I was feeling pretty bad by the time we got to the dive site. You could look out of the side window and see water and then sky. We moored to the bow of the wreck and started to put people in the water, but the bow mooring line snapped underwater and we had to move to the stern mooring.
Robert and I split up at the bottom of the mooring line, he went forward, and I went at to look for the way in. Captain Bill had spent some time going over deck plans and pictures of the wreck with us and had given me fairly good instructions on what to do. Just aft of the mooring line was a pile of large debris with an opening under it. I clipped my stage bottle to the mooring line, and crawled around the debris and under a collapsed radio mast to a 2 x 5 hole in the main deck with a ladder going down. I kind of sucked in and made a headfirst decent down the ladder and came out at the rear of the crews quarters deck. The crews quarters are like little wooden dorm rooms each with a door, a glass window, and bunk beds; some of the windows are still intact. There is fairly narrow wooden hallway that goes forward and eventually loops back to the other side of the crews quarters and then back to the starting place. The outer wall of the hall is broken out along most of the starboard side, so you could see the ribs of the ship as you swam along.
There was a lot of fine sediment on the floor so I stayed close to the ceiling and finger-pulled and glided slowly, without kicking, along some s shaped coiled piping, which was probably part of a steam heating system at one time. I looked around in each cabin as I headed forward. The place was cold, still, and dark with near perfect visibility. The frozen-in-time look of the place and the shadows cast by my wide-beam UK1200 made it kind of surreal, and I took a moment to reflect on the 52 souls that had been lost when the ship went down.
Around forward of the crews quarters, there was a large opening where the wooden decking had collapsed, and I was able to drop down to an area below the crews-quarters deck, which turned out to be the propeller shaft gallery complete with two massive propeller shafts just above the silt on the floor. There was probably about four feet of clearance between the silt and the ceiling above but the area was otherwise open, and I could easily see the ribs of the ship on both sides tapering back to the stern. There was a solid watertight bulkhead forward, so I was not able to get to the engine room from there. The depth below the crews quarters was 118. I came back up through the hole, and wrapped around the wooden hall to the port side of the wreck and headed aft. There were identical little rooms with beds on this side as well. For some reason, I noticed that most of the simple porcelain light sockets still held intact bulbs. I cant remember exactly, but it seems like there were probably between 8 and 12 rooms all together as well as the remnants of a bathroom. There was supposed to be an unopened suitcase laying on one of the beds, but I didnt see it.
Heading back to the staircase, my manifold hung up on some overhead piping and I had to spend a bit getting backed off of that. I then headed up the stairs and outside to the main deck.
I was 20 min into the dive (air) and had planned for 25, so spent the remaining 5 min examining a set of nearby rail cars, before retrieving my stage bottle and heading up. I spent 22 min in deco, where I caught up with Tom Doubleday at the 20 stop. So I can now honestly say I have hung out on the deco line with someone who has dove the Andria Doria.
Sunday Afternoon:
The wind died down a little and we went out to the Prins Wilhem V or the Willey as most of the locals called it. It is a completely intact 250 Dutch freighter lying on its side in 85 of water. Robert was a little green around the gills, and sat this one out. I dove with Beth, and did a 67 min swim-around/through dive. This is an easy wreck, but the visibility was good enough to make it a very visually impressive wreck.
One minor mishap:
Beth and I went into the engine room and. Since she is a very experienced wreck diver, I was, of course, trying to do my very best perfect buoyancy, horizontal form, fins-up, tech-diver kind of swim and was in fact moving pretty well until an unnoticed piece of braided nylon line dangling from somewhere overhead wrapped around the center knob on my manifold on the way out. Well, 175lbs of diver, and 150lbs of dive gear snagged by a stretchy nylon line doesnt just stop right away. She went out before me, and I was about halfway out of the hull opening when the line decided it had stretched far enough and sucked me backwards into the opening like something on a cartoon. Needless to say, that was a very disturbing event as far as trim is concerned as all of the gas in my wing and drysuit shifted forward and my feet went down. A big ball of silt bellowing from the hull opening ensued. Beth, not having previously noticed any large sea-monsters or other such things that might have grabbed me, correctly deduced that something wasnt quite right and came in and unlooped the line from my valve. With no harm done, except to my pride, we continued our exploration.
There was a cold surface current running and the water at the 20 and 10 stops were about 44 degrees and I had developed a leak in my left leg which kind of sucked. Good dive altogether.
Sunday Night:
Left the boat about 7pm, drove home. Got back to Decatur at about 5am, got to bed at 6am, phone rang at 8:30am, got up. Needless to say I slept good Monday night.
Sammy Crawford
We DO need to get back out there and do the Willie together though.
