Shipwrecks - Liquid Space Publishing

Shipwreck Gallery

Anatomy of a Shipwreck: The Wreck of the Racketeer

In June 1994, the 64-foot Gloucester stern trawler Racketeer ran aground on the Dry Salvages, an outcropping of bedrock ledge three miles from Rockport Harbor, Cape Ann, Massachusetts. It was rumored that the captain literally fell asleep at the wheel with the electronic shallow water warning device switched off. The ship was the only casualty, all crew members were evacuated safely. • For a few months the Racketeer made a marvelous spectacle sitting perched atop the ledge until a powerful September storm came along and lifted it off whereupon it fell down the ledge breaking apart all the way until finally coming to rest in pieces in 45 feet of water. • Two years later I finally got the opportunity to dive the wreck and photograph it. By that time mother nature had already staked her claim to it. The ship had become encrusted with all manner of marine life softening its sharply geometric shapes into a softer, more amorphous mass. Mussel spat and starfish had colonized the rigging; barnacles, pink-hearted hydroids and anemones had populated the hull and deck plates and many lobsters and crabs had taken up residence in the nooks and crannies.

Top: Racketeer on ledge. Center, left to right: trawl spool, rigging, lobster on deck. Bottom, left to right: Broken port hull, trawl spool.

The Wreck of the City of Salisbury, Boston Harbor

It hardly seems possible that after a few hundred years of maritime navigation in and out of busy and historic Boston Harbor, nobody even suspected the existence of a shallow ledge just a few hundred yards off Graves Lighthouse (left) in the outer harbor. • Unlikely as it may have been, it was nonetheless the reality that confronted the captain of the freighter City of Salisbury in 1938 when his ship abruptly crunched to a halt on Graves Ledge. Captain Crunch he was for a while though later exonerated of all wrongdoing in the Coast Guard’s investigation. It must have left egg on the government’s face when it was determined that the captain was navigating using the government’s own charts which did not show the ledge.

The Barges of Boston Harbor

In the 1950s and ’60s, the city of Boston would put some of its trash onto barges, burn it in the outer harbor and a bulldozer would push the whole stinking mess over the side into the sea. An ecological sin by today’s standards but that was the standard then. • It’s not clear when or how these barges ended up on the bottom but there are several of them and some sit right next to the trash heaps they helped create. • I must admit that I was skeptical when the skipper said we would be diving on some sunken trash barges on a particular trip. I remember thinking, “Oh boy, a big steel box lying on a pile of s__t. How interesting could that be?” • What a pleasant surprise to descend onto the decks of these gigantic, corroding hulks with gaping holes and overgrown with colorful marine life. I was overcome with a mix of wonder and excitement when I dropped down inside an empty bay by a forlorn ladder now leading to nowhere for no one. Hull and deck plates had corroded away in places revealing a skeleton-like frame of beams and girders. • My favorite barge photo is of the crab on the cross (left). In murky water each scene unfolds gradually from out of the mist like focusing a lens and this one appeared to me as a crucifix. • At Easter service in my former church, a large wooden cross was wheeled in covered with chicken wire. Every worshipper was given a flower upon entering and during the service all would come to the altar and fasten their flower to the cross. The flowered cross was symbolic of the resurrection and the affirmation of life over death. It would be wheeled out to the front steps after service for the public to see. It made a very dramatic and powerful statement of faith. The sea anemones and sponges on the barge’s frame reminded me of that flowered cross and God’s creative work in the deep places. • I came back from one trash barge dive with some nice old soda bottles from the late fifties and early sixties. Treasures and flowers from the trash!

The wreck of the Kiowa, Boston Outer Harbor

Copy to come...

Wreck of the Ella M. Storer, Dolliver’s Neck, Gloucester, Massachusetts

On the day that a British submarine sank a Turkish destroyer in the Dardanelles, the schooner Ella M. Storer was dashed to pieces in a storm on the rocky shoreline of Dolliver’s Neck at the entrance to Gloucester Harbor. That was in December of 1914, just three months into the war to end all wars. Two nautical disasters on the same day half a world apart, one by the destructive forces of determined enemies in armed conflict, the other by the disinterested forces of nature. • Seventy two years later, I would find myself swimming over the exposed ribs of the Storer rising up from a flat sandy bottom like a giant fishbone skeleton. Other pieces were scattered around most notably the windlass. It would take some persistent detective work to determine the identity of the ship but I finally found the newspaper article that described the shipwreck with a very precise location, right where we were diving.