Submerged

by Daniel Lenihan

  The use of mixed gases such as heliox (helium and oxygen) or tri-mix (a combination of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen) would have mitigated the serious narcosis and decompression problems presented by these sites, but it wasn’t the appropriate place for us to use them. They necessitated employing either expensive support facilities beyond our means or technical diving rigs that had not evolved sufficiently in the mid-1980s for me to feel comfortable using them on a government project. Sheck and others I knew in the cave- and wreck-diving world were using such systems successfully, but I wasn’t ready to take a chance on them. Many thought we worked excessively deep on air and should switch to these systems. But when given the choice, I always opt for the simple, tried and true, regardless of apparent advantages of newer technology.

  In short, I would rather leave blanks in the report than risk lives on the Kamloops, but I hated giving up. I let it be known that we were in the market for solutions to that problem, and in 1985 an opportunity presented itself.

  The oceanographic research vessel Seward Johnson from Harbor Branch was going to be in Lake Superior in the summer of 1985, and its scientific director wanted to take certain natural resource-related samples in park waters. This ship carried the Johnson Sea-Link, a deep-diving manned submersible, and the large remote operated vehicle (ROV), Deep Drone. I forwarded our request through the proper channels and received a commitment for two days of ship time without charge. This was very encouraging, because such time is extremely expensive—my memory is that it sold for $13,000 per day headed up to Isle Royale in 1985 with high hopes. I was in for a less than satisfying experience.

  At a brief orientation with the project leaders I began hearing the phrase “evaluating the possibility of checking out those wrecks.” I hadn’t taken two weeks out of my schedule and paid the expenses of flying to Isle Royale for any “potential” project. I bit my tongue, but I was starting to have premonitions of disappointment.

  On the sort of cruises the Seward Johnson regularly undertook, the ultimate decisions as to whether or not a particular vehicle would dive on a certain day was made by the chief of operations. I had no basic problem with that; we often left final decisions about safety to a diving officer on our projects. Even the best-laid plans might see something unforeseen arise that made them unfeasible to put into effect. The man was disinclined to allow the Sea-Link or the Deep Drone to work around Kamloops because of the potential of being hung up by extraneous lines or cables. Curiously , the sub pilot was perfectly willing to undertake the dive. I didn’t know enough about manned submersible operations to evaluate the wisdom of the operation officer’s conviction, but I did know that all of the information necessary to making that decision had been in front of this fellow for months before we rendezvoused at Isle Royale.

  Still refraining from doing anything confrontational that could have jeopardized the project, I kept my own counsel until the night of a planning meeting on board the ship. I had a local wreck diver, Scott McWilliam, give a briefing to the research crew. Scott and the local members of the extreme wreck-diving community, which paralleled the Florida cave-diving community in intensity and skill, had made numerous forays to the ship. Scott was willing to share a sketch they had put together and a fair amount of firsthand knowledge related to potential obstacles or hangup points for the submergence vehicles.

  The reaction of the chief of operations and several “marine scientists” was to make wisecracks about Scott’s choice to dive that deep on air. I was mortified. Scott was not being paid a dime to be there or share his firsthand observations. He also, I would wager, had more deep diving experience than all of the assembled scientists put together. I grabbed Scott, turned to the assembled audience, and said, “This meeting is over,” and left. I was concerned he would suffocate under the blanket of smugness in the room.

  This was not the first, or last, time we dabbled with interfacing with projects run from large oceanographic research vessels. Invariably the experiences were not productive. Something about big ship culture did not make for good chemistry with SCRU, unless the ships happened to be big Navy ships. For some reason we blended well with the Navy, police, and commercial operations but had poor karma with oceanographic cruises.

  We agreed eventually to have the Johnson run ROV pattern searches in the area where the lost bow of the Algoma was said to rest. It was a token effort. We found little of interest, and pretty soon our high-dollar visitors left to pursue more lofty goals. Beneath the immediate, personal dynamics at play here is a larger issue—the unfortunate fact that in the United States, most deep submergence systems are controlled by oceanographic institutions and agencies that have little understanding of, or appreciation for, archeology.

  In vivid contrast to this snobbish display, we received assistance in 1986 that brought the project to a most satisfying conclusion. Emory Kristof from National Geographic magazine felt he could solve the last of our “impossible” problems with some newly developed LCROVs. The acronym stood for “low-cost remote operated vehicles.” These were tiny versions of the crane-deployed Deep Drone that were being developed by a young electronics wizard named Chris Nicholson. The advantage was they could be deployed from a twenty-eight foot park patrol boat by simply picking them up and tossing them over the side, and they were more maneuverable in tight quarters. In addition, Emory and his technical assistants were bringing two of these vehicles to deploy at the same time so they could monitor each other as they attempted a penetration of the wrecks. The imaging capabilities exceeded anything produced by the larger Deep Drone.

  Coincidentally, a BBC film crew was going to join us on the project. At the time, the BBC maintained an excellent underwater film unit and hadn’t yet succumbed to the fit of spasmodic downsizing and contracting-out of most corporations seduced by the latest management fads of the 1980s.

  We had a helluva project. Emory was still fresh from his considerable involvement with the discovery of the Titanic. He had some serious hard feelings about that project, and he raved the better part of the first night about the ugly clash of egos and the credit mongering by the project directors. I was not sure what to make of the several-hours-duration display of temper, but any misgiving I might have had about Emory vanished the next day when our operation started in earnest. He and his assistant Keith Moorehead and Wayne Bywater of Northeastern Underwater Services were field people of the first caliber.

  We dropped those swimming eyeballs overboard, and they worked like magic. I thought Emory’s constant reference to the devices being FM had something to do with the frequency of the return of the data stream to the boat—in fact, he meant they were Fucking Magic. We moored directly to the Kamloops. Ken Vrana, who was then a law-enforcement ranger working for SCRU, and I made a couple of dives to the ship to attach chains for mooring the patrol boat and providing descent lines for the robots. Back on board, warming up, I watched as the slick little robots were joy-sticked around the wreck that had eluded our best attempts at documentation for so long. We systematically surveyed the entire exterior of the Kamloops hovering on spots that needed special attention for fifteen minutes at a time. Depth and cold were irrelevant. We drank coffee in the boat cabin watching the progress of the two robots slaving away for us in the frigid water 200 to 270 feet below. Then came the real magic . . . the little buggers could penetrate.

  “Think you can slip through the engine room skylight?” Emory queried Wayne as we bounced gently at anchor, glued to the video screen of ROV1.

  I was about to remind Emory that the radio above us was droning warnings from Canadian Coast Guard Thunder Bay in that curious three-speak—“Security, security, security, all stations, all stations, all stations”—that there was a fast-moving front bearing down on us, when I realized that ROV2’s screen was now looking back at ROV1 from inside the engine room! Emory looked over at me with a demented smile he puts on when he’s doing something particularly outrageous. He arched his bushy eyebrows up and down Groucho Marx style and announc
ed in his best hospital intern voice, “We’re in, doc.”

  Pat Labadie, whose vast knowledge of Great Lakes material culture was being put to good use narrating observations onto the videotape, was momentarily speechless. He was looking at the Kamloops from the inside out. Then, things started happening really fast. The boat shuddered as the first gust of wind from the approaching gale gave us a warning kiss. District Ranger Jay Wells stepped down from the bridge and announced, “Time to wrap it up folks. We’re sitting ducks out here.”

  This is when the project director earns the big bucks, usually needed to pay for treating those ulcers later in life. If we had several days of access to the equipment remaining, I would have just thrown in the towel, but these opportunities always seem to present themselves in the eleventh hour.

  “Jay, look, man, I’m not asking you to put us at risk of life or limb, but can we hold out for a bit?” Jay glanced down at the screens and whistled. He didn’t need any explanation why I was so desirous of hanging on a bit longer.

  As Jay mulled my question, I said, “Emory, that’s over $100,000 worth of National Geographic equipment in that engine room. You know , if we start taking this wind broadside, we’re going to leave it there before we endanger the crew . . . What’s your call?” Jay was nodding as I spoke so I knew he was willing to stick it out if he could dump the equipment and motor clear of the shoreline should the wind come up with the ferocity it often does on the Lakes. I didn’t know it then, but this wouldn’t be the last time that Emory and I would be standing someplace on the razor’s edge of a tough decision.

  Emory sighed, did a few more eyebrow arches, and muttered, “Let’s go for it, Lenihan, if it was easy everybody would be doing it.”

  The BBC crew was rafted off to us in another boat. I told them things were going to get real intense real soon and they would have to pull clear of us. They sensed the building drama, and Russ England, the producer of this segment, asked if he could leave his camera team, John Beck and Brian Marden-Jones, to catch the action. I said, “Sure, if you think they’re expendable.” These Brits were great to work with, but my humor sometimes eluded them. I could tell from Russ’s face that this was one of those times.

  “Just kidding, Russ. Sure, leave John and Brian, and we’ll return what’s left of them and the cameras later.” He knew then I was really giving him a crack at a great scene. He clapped his hands, gave a “Righto,” and started getting all of his folks except the camera team to their own boat.

  Emory sat down and started directing his robot flyers. Technically, I was supposed to be the one making the decisions about where the ROV went for archeological purposes, but I wasn’t about to stand on formalities. I quickly deferred my prerogatives to Emory and Patrick. Emory knew the capability of the machines and his operators, and Patrick knew the inside of an old Laker’s engine room far better than I did. I could feel the BBC tug depart and watched Ken Vrana prepare the thirty-two-foot patrol boat Lorelei so it could immediately cast loose from where it was moored to the stern of the Beaver. Pretty soon we had only our mooring and the robot cables to contend with should things get rough quick. We knew from the rapid increase in frequency of wind gusts, it was no longer a matter of if, but when.

  Almost as if the gods of the Lake knew what would entice us to stay too long, the footage from ROV1 became breathtaking. The engine room telegraph and binnacle came into view. Though we couldn’t position to read the setting to confirm the report that it read “finished with engines,” the water in the engine room was clear as air. Emory pushed his control link to the vehicle’s camera and the flash went off, then the video image went still, as he backed up his photo with an electronic freeze frame. We could feel the boat shift slightly and start rolling; we were now in the troughs of the still small but building waves rolling in from the northwest.

  Then Keith said, “Hey, what’s this?” As everyone glanced at ROV2 a hush fell over the cabin. Just the wind blowing and all of us staring at “this.” The human form was like something out of a grade-B horror film: a feathery white-looking corpse with soft tissues the consistency of soap where the overalls kept the shape normal. The head had fallen to the floor, and leg bones were sticking out of the overalls cuffs. We knew there were supposed to be human remains in this room, but the reports had come from the nitrogen-fogged memories of a few technical divers who had made it to this point at the risk of life and limb, and their recollections were highly contradictory. No contradictions here, just a very accurate, gruesome testimony to a tragedy. The other ROV monitored the cables of ROV2 as it moved up to and carefully examined the remains. Then another and another.

  In addition to the emotional tension in the room, the pitching boat was getting to the ROV operators. Every few minutes they would have to hand someone the joystick while they bolted for the companion way and ran to the rail to vomit. Motion sickness is a real problem for people controlling a joystick on a boat. They are seeing through the eye of the robot a very still, controllable world. In direct contradiction to their sense of sight, the chair they are sitting in is rolling and bouncing with the building seas. The contradictory cues to the balance organs are too much. You can tell much about people when the pressure is on; these guys were good. They took their orders while green in the face, made for the rail, and came back—time after time, without protest.

  There was another irony to the whole thing: As we were in the process of obtaining the incredible footage of the bodies, I felt obliged to whisper to Emory, “You know my friend, I can’t let you use this tape.” He just gave me a green-faced nod in reply. We had achieved our research goal and were now getting extremely useful information for the use of the Park Service in managing the wreck, but the superdramatic scenes of the human tragedy were too much for a television audience. In any context except forensics and law enforcement, this was sheer gruesome spectacle that would be inappropriate for us to release.

  Suddenly, the boat pitched to the side, and Patrick was sitting in the lap of the BBC cameraman. “Th, th, that’s all folks.” Emory’s Porky Pig imitation was a cue to his robot operators to get those machines out and back to the surface. Jay jumped down again from the bridge to make sure we had come to our senses and to be reassured that we were in the process of disengaging. He knew he didn’t need to add to the pressure, so he just said in a soft but firm tone, “Got about five, fellas, five minutes and we’re out of here, robots or not.” Nods all around followed by a sigh of relief as ROV1 made its way without incident out of the engine room. Two of the seated men rushed to the back deck to begin hauling it aboard, no tidy cable laying, just the “flap flap” of armored wire hitting the aluminum deck and the “Come here sweet baby of Keith,” as it was pulled aboard.

  After helping on deck, I jumped back down the three steps to the main cabin where I could tell by the grim expressions that things weren’t going as smoothly with ROV2. “Okay,” Emory’s very even, forced-calm voice said, “let’s edge back toward the engine again and see if we can’t find where we’re hung.” I figured we now had a potential loss of only about $50,000 because the other ROV and the consoles were all safe. Also, two minutes, give or take a minute. We were now pitching regularly, and the poor operator was deathly nauseated. Even with the clock ticking so ominously, he had to ditch for several seconds for one final retch over the side. He took back the joystick and tried a last-ditch effort to run the vehicle the full length of the engine room and see if it could jerk loose from whatever was hanging it up. The screen filled with rust and silt as some small projection gave way somewhere in the room and, somehow, he was untangled. “Make for the skylight! Even if you can’t free it, just bugger for the surface. We have enough cable so if we throw it loose, you can still get the vehicle back up and we’ll just lose the cable.”

  Jay popped in and said, “Sorry, fellas, game’s over. I’m cutting us loose as soon as both engines are going.” We could hear the diesels turning over a few seconds later. No arguments here; everyone knew Jay w
as right; the damn robot wasn’t worth dying for but . . . damn near. Then a cheer, as someone yelled in from the back deck, “She’s free and on the surface.” From there, it was up to Jay’s seamanship. With engines running and free of our mooring, he had to make sure we didn’t get closer to the rocks while we gathered in the second swimming eyeball and several hundred feet of cable. We did it . . . and departed, in haste.

  The Lakes get your attention when they get riled. Halfway back to Blake Point on the northeast end of the island, we knew it was time to quit playing the odds. “I’m heading for Amygdaloid,” Jay yelled down through the roar of the engines. No surprise. Jay would gamble with equipment but not lives. He knew we could always pull into the deep cove where the park service maintained the ranger station we had been hauled to in the LL Smith several years earlier. The Lorelei and the BBC tugboat were already there. We pulled in and exchanged high fives on the dock, speculating that it would be hours before things calmed down enough to make it around Blake. It took hours all right, thirty-six of them, during which we all crashed on the floor of ranger Ellen Maurer’s cabin.

  “Hey , Russ, you got your camera back, and,” pointing to John and Brian, “we even have your film team intact.”

  When things calmed down the tug made a run for it the next day. His cameraman might have made it home intact, but Russ didn’t, he was thrown out of his bunk even during the “lull” and gashed his forehead. No one in the group that limped back to Rock Harbor a day later would ever have any reason to wonder why the Lakes had the reputation they were famous for. We were a battered but happy lot. We had managed to complete the Mission Impossible that we had been handed six years earlier by Jack Morehead. National Geographic had perfected its use of ROVs in the toughest test they would ever face and the lads from London had a heck of a story in the bag.