Bremerton ShipWrecks with CaptnJack

boydski · Post by **boydski** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:51 am

Richard and I spent a nice (blustery) day on the water around Bremerton, looking for new wrecks. Our primary search targets were a couple of 35' pleasure boats that sank near the Bremerton Yacht club. We located both of those and a couple of barges, but while en-route to a charted wreck, we stumbled upon (aka blind dumb luck) a 130' long steel hulled wreck:

The wreck has two diesel engines in it. The original engine (pictured below) as well as a smaller diesel that was used to re-power the vessel as a motorized scow. You can just see a bit of the smaller engine at the bottom of this photo.

There wasn't much left of the cabin topside, but it was pretty easy to drop down through the forward cargo hatch and swim all the way through the vessel and exit through the engine room. It is fairly safe and open inside the wreck, you just have to watch out for hanging cables.

There is a large deck winch forward (crappy picture below) and a really bizarre external rudder fitted to the stern of the vessel. The original shaft location had been plated/bolted over and a smaller auxiliary shaft was run to the side for the new engine. The ship has obviously been re-purposed and rebuilt for something other than its original design.

We do not have a name for the vessel yet, but are referring to it as the "Transport" at the moment since that is the only cargo vessel that I know of that sank in the same area. I'm pretty sure it is not actually the Transport, but we have to call it something for now.

spatman · Post by **spatman** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 9:57 am

Very cool find!

Dusty2 · Post by **Dusty2** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:10 am

Wow! Great find.
An actual iron wreck big enough to swim thru in puget sound. That's a rarity in recreational limits! How deep?

I'd sure like to see you do a survey in Discovery bay. We spotted a couple of things on the depth sounder that looked promising and I'd love to see what they were.

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:10 am

Uber cool! Depth?

BDub · Post by **BDub** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:14 am

Awesome find, guys!

boydski · Post by **boydski** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:15 am

John Rawlings wrote:Uber cool! Depth?

It is very shallow. Something like 35 - 40'.

kdupreez · Post by **kdupreez** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:18 am

Awesome find!!!

Very cool what you guys are doing!

Tom Nic · Post by **Tom Nic** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:29 am

Schweet!!

CaptnJack · Post by **CaptnJack** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:23 am

Wow you got more pics than I thought before your housing leaked.

I am still going with some sort of motorsailer as its original incarnation. Mostly based on the canoe stern and external rudder with what might have been fittings for vane steering as well. What it was used for later, its anyone's guess. The duel engine and lack of any cabin was bizarre. Its definitely been down a long time.

I had a max depth at the mud of 30fsw. Top of the deck was at 17fsw. Was a pretty good day considering the winds, I'm willing to go back sometime when those frigates are gone and Navy security will be less touchy to dive some of the barges we saw earlier.

boydski · Post by **boydski** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:35 am

CaptnJack wrote: I'm willing to go back sometime when those frigates are gone and Navy security will be less touchy to dive some of the barges we saw earlier.

We'll definitely have to dive the one that was closest to the Carriers, it was a very big barge!

BTW, if you look on the photo of the engine, you can see the water drops on the inside of the dome port... :angry:

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:36 am

boydski wrote: BTW, if you look on the photo of the engine, you can see the water drops on the inside of the dome port... :angry:

Ouch! SO sorry to hear this, bud!

CaptnJack · Post by **CaptnJack** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:38 am

boydski wrote: We'll definitely have to dive the one that was closest to the Carriers, it was a very big barge!

Sure, its my turn to drive though. If you can cope on a RIB without heat, the head, and artichoke dip :luv:

oldsalt · Post by **oldsalt** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:43 am

Scott, Thanks for sharing this. Whenever I encounter a wreck its history flashes through my imagination: the proud designer, skilled builders, conscientious crewmembers who sailed it and maintained it, and the circumstances which brought it to where I found it. This adds a bit of mystery. Even more intriguing. What kind of sonar produced that image?
-Curt

p.s. I watched a video of one of my ships sunk as a target. It was painful. I, along with all the crewmen who served on her throughout the years, gave so much of ourselves to keep her operating. This also occurs to me when I look upon a wreck,

boydski · Post by **boydski** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:47 am

John Rawlings wrote: Ouch! SO sorry to hear this, bud!

And that was after spending $700 to have Light and Motion repair and service the housing! :angry:
Looks like I'll have to fix it myself in order to fix it right.

CaptnJack wrote: Sure, its my turn to drive though. If you can cope on a RIB without heat, the head, and artichoke dip

I'm getting much too old and lazy to go without a cabin, heat and the head. Besides, the Admiral won't go out without the stand up head being available and someone had to drive the boat while I goof off underwater....

oldsalt wrote: What kind of sonar produced that image?

Curt, the image was produced with a Lowrance HDS sidescan. It uses a transom mounted transducer and works quite well up to about 200' of depth.

airsix · Post by **airsix** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:58 am

Very awesome, guys! Thanks for sharing.

Zen Diver · Post by **Zen Diver** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:11 pm

Very very cool!

H20doctor · Post by **H20doctor** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 2:39 am

very cool... but why do the photo water marks say 2011 ?? if this was shot last week .. looks like another addition to your wreck dive book Mr B

boydski · Post by **boydski** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 7:27 am

H20doctor wrote:very cool... but why do the photo water marks say 2011 ??

The photos were shot on Sunday, I just haven't updated the watermarking action in Photoshop yet for 2012. Thanks for picking that up, I didn't even notice.

LCF · Post by **LCF** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:02 am

Great story, and beautiful photographs! Happy serendipity!

seainggreen · Post by **seainggreen** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 1:41 pm

+1 on all the comments about the coolness factor. Looks like y'all had a great day both on and below the water.

Sorry 'bout the housing Scott... oy. Hope it is easily fixed.

Happy diving,
Laurynn

diverden · Post by **diverden** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 2:03 pm

Awesome that you just happened to run over this thing!

CaptnJack · Post by **CaptnJack** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 3:03 pm

diverden wrote:Awesome that you just happened to run over this thing!

No no no it' all an evil plot to take over the world!!!

Actually neither of us had been anywhere near this thing before, who knows what we'll stumble across next time

Only with more dives we might be able to figure out exactly what she is, but we're guessing an unfinished WW2 hull repowered with an auxillary engine into a work skow. There's no main shaft for the engines, just an auxillary shaft and the rudder is external with a very exposed quadrant instead of a more normal keel hung that you might expect on a hull like this. With her shallow draft and bilge keels she may have been used for logging.

boydski · Post by **boydski** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:21 pm

diverden wrote:Awesome that you just happened to run over this thing!

That's funny that you mentioned "just running over the thing" as I nearly did run right over the top of it. Here was my first view on the Side Scan (which I still had running as we were approaching the location of a sunken sailboat):

The right side of the image represents the path my boat was taking, so I very nearly did run right over the stern of the wreck. My comment to Richard at the time was, "holy crap, look at that!".

You can see the nice curvature of the bow at the bottom of the above image and to a lesser extent in the image below.

One of the really odd features that we found were the large bilge keels (stabilizers) on this fairly wide and shallow hull. It reminded me a lot of the self-propelled house barges that cruise the canals in Europe.

60south · Post by **60south** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:55 pm

That has a very high coefficient of awesomeness!

Dusty2 wrote:I'd sure like to see you do a survey in Discovery bay. We spotted a couple of things on the depth sounder that looked promising and I'd love to see what they were.

+1 on what Dusty said. (And take me with you?)

loanwolf · Post by **loanwolf** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:58 pm

Cool nice find.

Northwest Dive Club