Ships and Shipwrecks | Great Lakes Now Full Episode

not in this edition of Great Lakes, I go out on the only boat in the country with its own zip code, look at that, just incredible, we take you aboard a 740 foot Great Lakes freighter and dive into some incredible

shipwrecks

that don't necessarily you know. I need a scuba tank to see I mean, it's one of the best collections of freshwater

shipwrecks

anywhere in the world and people don't know that Great Lakes is now presented by Fred a and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation Lauri and Tim Wadhams the Richard C Deveraux Foundation for Energy and Environment Programs in Detroit Public Television the pulk family fund even jerry young the American Foundation the Brooke B Foundation and Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan by preserving our natural resources state and the livelihood of our future to business continuity growth academic achievement and community involvement learn more at consumer energy.com slash Foundation and viewers like you, thank you hello, I'm war Detweiler, welcome back to the Great Lakes, now where we explore the five

lakes

and what they mean for our lives, one of the most The impressive sights that we all see in the

lakes

are the enormous crater through which it moves cargo.

Most of the time we see them there on the horizon, but today I have the opportunity to see one up close. I'm in Detroit, on the banks of the Detroit River, and this is the headquarters of the JW Westcott company, home of the country's only floating submarine. Baker Jim Hogan owns the business today, but it's been in his family for generations, so Jim tells us who was watching on the wall here. on the wall is the founder of the company, my

great

grandfather, Captain JW Escott, he was born in 1848 and created this company in 1874. Jim's

great

grandfather started the business delivering messages to passing

ships

in a rowboat almost a century ago and a half later.

Letters to Great Lakes merchants are marked 80222 and are delivered on the ship named after Westcott and today I am able to accompany the deliveries. I'm with the Captain reading the bill through the crew who are collecting mail from a freighter that's running out of fuel. on the Detroit River, the process is low-tech but effective, a bucket is lowered into the Wescott without sending mail. If there was mail for the ship's crew, they would go to the bucket and get them back up. I'm surprised Standing right next to the hull of this huge freighter, I'm already like a wide-eyed child, but the Manitowoc was docked for refueling.

What Westcott is known for is delivering to freighters that move regardless of the conditions Brian Chicory started with. the company just last year already saw the river get angry made a delivery last year delivered a crew member right from the west to a freighter down here in 8 foot waves and you can see how far the bow was of the father out of the water. it was sinking oh wow and we did a crew change with that out here it was like my third or fourth day here scared the shit out of me but I came back the next day and I've been here since the Wescott will deliver just about anything the freighters need, they deliver a lot of packages and store some essential supplies that sailors can't do without, they will even deliver pizzas, they will come here, there will be no order at the pizzeria down the street and then they will not be delivered to We take it, we put it in your delivery box and we send it right off the side of the ship with a rope, but they, the guys love that, yeah, before we get back from the Manitou hike, another call comes in for the men's victory, an hour. under the tug, victory will be pushing a barge in about an hour and they are wondering if there is something waiting for them, yes, I will let you know here in a few minutes, but there is another race to do before victory arrives, captain Sam Buchanan is making sure everything is okay in the engine room with you here on bail, that's the ship we're taking to meet this Dagon, yes, and this time we're delivering it on a ship that's moving, but this.

When we're not delivering mail, this ship needs a pilot. Ships coming to the Great Lakes from abroad have to hire a pilot to navigate. Pilots like Brett Walker are basically captains who specialize in sailing across the Great Lakes. Sure they have skills with duraline, but. They can't be expected to know every nuance of every waterway and along the way and that's where we can become quite important, especially when you're meandering down the river. We are cheap insurance for the public because we make sure that there will be no accidents or groundings or pollution and inside there will be no cost to the government everything is on board by the carrier now we get closer the closer we get to 400 feet today Gagne is more smaller than the 50 feet here in Belfield Captain Sam adjusts the Huron Bell to the freighter transport this is pretty much what I do all day I run into the face I perform controlled collisions for the jws guy open to the rhythm of I've done it about 50,000 times, now they imagine that they are not all controlled unfortunate or no damage you know just a small bump you know where you know you feel it if you can feel it I rate myself poorly but you know that sometimes it is uncontrollable if you have a day of very bad weather you are going to rebound up and down and you just can't control that, luckily I've never caused any damage, nothing significant.

It turns out that delivering a pilot is a lot like delivering mail, but instead of a bucket, the freighter crew falls down a rope ladder. and the pilot goes out so we've left our pilot on the ship here and he's going to the bridge right now to go get the pilot we're taking off so they're making a little change right here. you gotta forget we're moving right now, I mean you look at that, you look at the freighter and we're still, then you look at the water and we're actually still sailing down the river, that's cool and watching it go up. the ester ladder we're going on I mean it's a lot creepier for my job today things are pretty calm can you imagine doing this with six foot waves?

I think I'd call in sick, but for these guys it's just another day at the office, so you deliver the mail and cargo, you deliver the pilots, yeah, did you ever see anything? A rescue at sea rescued so many people. I really should have kept count. We have actually rescued quite a few people over the years. They already know. I think the last rescue we had was a guy who jumped up the river and all the rescue boats missed him. I don't know, it's night and he heard someone screaming from the river, so we said to God, yeah, so you caught him like him.

I was passing by you oh wow no time to rest the tanker coming up something Scotland needs a pilot so let's do another race oh there are the Scotias hey I just wanted to confirm their feet this is great Captain Sam brings the Huron doll We are ready for another perfectly controlled collision and the pilot climbs aboard safely. They said seven and a half knots, but we seem to be going faster than a gun. I've never been next to a freighter flying across the river like this. I'm going to take my own video real quick if there's a group look, that's cool, okay, that's just amazing, that's the freighter climbing the ladder that we're passing under the Ambassador Bridge that connects the US and Canada. , yeah, I mean, it's great to go. low passing with the freighter I've been tied not seen tied just pushing things along the freighter going under the bridge I mean it's a sight you don't see very often it's great but remember the victory, the tugboat that called for the mail from earlier, well, it's about to push the barge past, mommy, so we go back to Wescott to deliver your mail, this is so much fun, it's amazing, we see our town as all kinds of people, you know, the dream of childhood is being an ADA, right here it was. there on the port side we'll go to the port dovetail in the cockpit behind the barge, so we'll sneak up on it, we'll sneak up behind the barge.

If this barge looks like a freighter to you, it's because it was a freighter before it was modified to be. used as a self-unloading barge integrated with the Victory tug pushing it from behind tell everyone to hold on the hardest maneuver I normally do and it gets quite choppy it can be a tricky maneuver Captain Sam makes this It may seem quite easy. the male is delivered directly because the tugboat is much shorter than what the freighters carry in a moment we are clear, Captain Sam and the tugboat say goodbye with their horns, so what are they basically saying to each other?

It's a big shout out to the lake or so it is. our way of saying just you know, thank you, see you next time and we also use it as a safety tool to let him know that I'm clear and ready to go and with that my time with the crew has come to an end, but I think I will be back. I can't get enough of this, it was an amazing experience and something I've wanted to do since I was a little kid, having grown up on the river and watching the freighters go behind you, you wouldn't realize it.

What an integral role a company like JW Wescott plays in shipping on the Great Lakes. It's just amazing to see it in action in our next story. Partner station W PBS in Watertown, New York takes us aboard one of these huge freighters that we will arrive at. Meet the crew and get a glimpse of what life is like on board. We've all seen those huge

ships

sailing the Great Lakes in st. Lawrence Seaway transports cargo to various ports such as Thunder Bay Buffalo and Montreal they are huge, majestic and mysterious what happens on these ships what happens behind the scenes what the crew is like in summary what it is like to live and work on one of these freighters my name is Wilson Walters I am the captain of the boat 2 CSL Wellum and I have been with CSL for 25 years I grew up in a small town in neukölln Canada and you grow up in this town Your Honor fish or leave I went to look for work and fishing was starting to disappear so that a lot of people from my town had come to the Great Lakes and found work and enjoyed it, but they were doing it, so I thought I'd come and see what it was all about.

I think the first day they sold me, I got on a boat and went, you know what? I think this is for me. The CSI Welland is a Seaway Max boat, meaning that at 740 feet long and 78 feet wide she is as big as a boat can be. and she still passes through the locks of st. Working at this huge Laker, Lawrence Seaway creates a unique routine and lifestyle. Much of the 15-member crew was pulled away from a typical nine-to-five job to pursue a career on the water for good pay and something different, albeit weeks. If not, months away from home can be a challenge, we spoke to several crew members, most who came from northern Canada, but some who traveled as far as the Philippines and a couple of cadets in training to learn about life at home far from home. deck cadets rather than apprentice officers, so we try to learn as much as we can every day about basically all the operations that happen on the ship, so that when we are on deck we learn both about general navigation practices and the use of the winches, you know. installing walkways, accommodation ladders, how to launch lifeboats, you know how to use survival craft, when we are on the bridge we learn everything we can about navigation and how to use navigation equipment to its

full

potential and yes, we just try to learn so much. as we can every day and yes, there is no limit to what you can learn, that's for sure.

I usually work 8-10 hours a day and then since I'm a cadet I have to do some homework for my school so that probably takes up an hour or two of my day and then I'll probably try to work out for about an hour a day and Then I have two or three hours left for me, either as free time or to watch a movie or simply to relax. I started as a cadet and went to third officer and then second officer for a while and then first officer for ten years. Now I will start training and hope to be captain later.

This fall, you're going to different ports and no two ports are exactly the same? You might come back to the same port, but it might not be the same conditions, so every time you load a ship or load something old, it's basically a new experience. we have access to many things there is a gym where you play darts you watch television Internet the rooms are nice we have Wi-Fi I work to meet until five at the engineer I get up in the morning, have breakfast, go into the engine room and I ask. There is a surveillance engineer, so tell me what I am going to do today.

I wake up in the morning and just to know that I am going to do something that I like to do every day, I can remember my first day. It was quite positive. I got into you, it was a big difference from what I did before. I mean, obviously, seeing this huge ship, I start work at 4 or 4 a.m. m. and finished at 8 a.m.m. and then I start again at 4 p.m. m. but on the boat we say it's 16:00 and we finish with Eddie and we do security rounds, we blow the tanks, we make sure there is no water, we clean, we maintain the ropes, we make sure everything is secured, we help in what happens at the dock to unload if they need something. or if they need to open some shaft, we open the arches, clothes, dachas, in my free time, I talk to the family, any possibility that I can get my wife, my two children, my mother, my father, I am the third officer, so I am the representative of the security officer.

So I'm in charge of the watch for about eight hours a day, usually around the twelfth, and usually in my free time I'll do checks around the ship for safety, like checking fire extinguishers, fire hoses, anything oriented. to safety. I got a check and make sure it's good and working. I have an alarm that goes off around seven o'clock and I usually take about 20 minutes to get ready and then come down at 7:30 to have breakfast and then head out. to the wheelhouse on the lake and be attentive and make sure we don't run into anything and keep the boat safe as best I can and just get us to our destination safely, in general, as a partner, when you get in, you're distances from detection for the captain above, since we are over 700 feet away and he can't see 700 feet away, so you are basically his eyes, so you are detecting from the shoulder, which is right where we're standing and you're tying up, giving him distances, he's off the wall, how close he is coming in and then when I was here coming in the lock, you tell him when the bow was about on the center line so he has a rough idea how fast it's coming in.

He's coming in slowly so it doesn't come too fast or too slow, like if you do a job you love, you don't feel like you're working. I have been working on boats for 40 years and I can. I didn't find five days of my life and say I don't like what I do I don't love what I do I love my job I enjoy being here I enjoyed the free time I love working with the people I have by my side my boat so for me it's work but it's a great job the sacrifices by all means this was not easy this was not an easy road for my family he sacrificed a lot to see me leave a lot and then come home and go to school My children, my wife, they sacrifice immensely, but I always convinced them that it was a medium for a track.

That's when I became captain. They had seen the means to reach the ends. They had seen that you know what it was worth. Now I have a lot of free time. We travel We do a lot of things together We are one big family The next time you see a freighter on the Great Lakes or the St. Lawrence Seaway, look beyond its mighty ride across the waves, think of people like Captain Walters and his crew, who use your technical and navigation experience to help carry this multi-billion dollar international industry on your shoulders, but also remember that they may not be much different.

If you have questions about life aboard the Great Lakes freighter, you now have a way to ask them. Go to Great Lakes now.org and tell us what you want to know. We'll select some questions to ask a Great Lakes freighter captain. I will inform you of the answers. People have been sailing the waters of the Great Lakes for more than 12,000 years and the lakes have claimed their share of boats. Hundreds of those shipwrecks are preserved within the unique Great Lakes National Marine Sanctuary in Thunder Bay. What I like most about diving is that it is so calm and peaceful.

I mean, it's one of the best collections of freshwater shipwrecks in the world and people don't know that, believe it or not, this is Lake Huron, right off the coast of Alpena Michigan, where the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. The Stephanie gondola is one of the shrines of maritime archaeologists. Accessibility is what's really special about the shipwreck collection here in Thunder Bay, so we have super deep shipwrecks that are very intact. with their masts standing 90 feet in the calm water, then we have the very shallow wrecks that cannot be accessed by divers, if paddlers, kayakers, fishermen, divers, sailors can get out and access these wrecks and visit these sites, including glass-bottom boat spectators.

The cold, fresh water of Lake Huron preserves nearly a hundred identified shipwrecks within the sanctuaries. 4,300 square miles. Visitors can view shipwrecks in the water and on land at the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, a museum that is part of the sanctuary. You know the fact that you have a federal resource like that with archaeologists and historians and that kind of knowledge and experience that they're teaching us about them, they're teaching us what our way of life was back then, a lot of the important work that we do It is, of course, on land we have our 10,000 square foot Visitor Center, where we are right now.

Almost one hundred thousand people visit us every year from all over the world and we also hold many educational and outreach events. Nick Meyers works as captain of a dive boat that goes to shipwrecks today he and some of the sanctuary staff are helping students learn about careers in diving and marine archeology. Our goal today is really to allow these children to experience weightlessness and breathing underwater. Sanctuary class science for high school and We're doing our scuba diving class and we're learning how to do underwater archeology and all the things that are going on at the NOAA Center, as I told someone the other day, when I'm on this, my mask is always leaking because I can't stop smiling while I'm underwater watching these kids.

I mean, it's great to see them experience this. Most of them, you know, it's the first time, even with a mask and fins on their feet. After training in the pool, these students can move on to the waters of the nearby sanctuary, but they will not need to become expert divers to visit some of the shipwrecks. Some like Nord Mir are just below the surface. The Nord mer is the most recent shipwreck within. Sanctuary waters ran aground in 1966 and was in such shallow water that for decades much of it was still protruding above the surface of the water.

Today it has finally collapsed just below the surface and is a wonderful site for snorkeling and diving. It's over 500 feet long and over 30 feet wide, so there's a lot to see. Toledo Blade diver and cameraman Andy Morrison has filmed and photographed Nord Mir extensively. You can stand at the back of the boat. You can look down. You can see. the motors you get on, you're on the motors, lots of swims and rounds of swimmer and swim over and under and it's just a huge playground of twisted steel for the divers, the writing of the name on the hull It is still visible and the gauges can still be seen, so the preservation makes it a really exciting sight even at shallow depths.

The monkey phone is an older shipwreck that is also found in shallow waters. The Mana Telephone is probably the most visited shipwreck within the waters of the sanctuary. It is an old shipwreck on which it was built. 1872 burned to the waterline in 1907 it was a wooden ship carrying coal and in the middle of the night a lantern overflowed into the engine room and of course there was a fire, the mana telephone burns the waterline flotation and it's still there today There's kind of a flat spot on the hull, I think it's only in about 18 feet of water, but the water most of the time is very clear, there's a little bit of fish on top, there's a nice propeller that sticks out of the sand.

Many people like to take pictures and videos there, and everything that is even older and a more advanced dive is the EB Allen, which sank in 1871 and lies about thirty meters below the surface. As you descend over the wreck you can see the

full

outline of the ship's hull beautiful wooden hull and from the port bow you can see the collision hole and it is big enough if you have the training to swim through that hole of collision and then you're inside the hull of the ship, you're inside the ship and it's a great sight swimming along this wooden schooner, it stands upright, it's pretty intact, it's got that classic look, you know, freighter bow, bow of wooden freighter when you go down And that's something I think I'll never get tired of seeing when you're going down on a shipwreck and the Ebee Islands and one of those that are like that, it stays high even though it's sitting 100 feet deep , you know, but you can still see that it's a proud shipwreck, a special shipwreck, one of the key things that I think the sanctuary brought to the preservation of these shipwrecks is that it's really the awareness, I think, of the people of Alpena.

They're lucky to have the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary there, but I also think that not only them, but the state of Michigan and the entire Great Lakes region are lucky to have NOAA there, so you know it's really important for NOAA to have a presence here in the Great Lakes. There are dozens more shipwrecks at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and staff continue to map and research the shipwrecks, but there are shipwrecks all over the Great Lakes and we may soon have more national marine sanctuaries in the waters off Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and In New York, the success we have seen here in Alpena with the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has inspired other communities around the Great Lakes to advocate and nominate their communities for National Marine Sanctuary status and we are very excited to be a part of that. and to inspire this in other Great Lakes communities, that's our program for now, thank you for staying tuned for more information on these stories and the great lakes in general, visit Great Lakes now org when you get there, you can follow us on the social media or subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates on our work see you in the lakes Great Lakes now is presented by the Fred a and Barbara M Erb Family Foundation Laurie and Tim Wadhams the Richard C Deveraux Foundation for Energy and Environment Programs environment on Detroit Public Television the pulk Family Fund including jerry young the American Foundation the brook B Foundation and the Consumers Energy Foundation is committed to serving Michigan from preserving our state's natural resources and sustaining our future to the continued business growth, academic achievement and community involvement.

Learn more at Consumers Energy.com slash Foundation. and viewers like you, thank you