Race against Mother Nature to survey Connecticut shipwrecks
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Settled just about 5 feet below the surface of the water in the shadow of the Stratford Avenue Bridge, three ships from the early 20th century lie undisturbed and slowly disintegrating.
The three ships' stories of navigating waters did not end as tragically as other shipwrecks Nick DeLong has studied, but it's just as important to preserve their history underwater, he said.
"There are only a few examples of (these canal barges) that we have and these three are stacked on top of each other," said DeLong, who is a nautical archaeologist.
DeLong, along with John Bean, an ocean hydrographer, and Jeff Pydeski, a project scientist, both from Ocean Surveys, based in Southington, have been working to collect data on shipwrecks along the Connecticut coast for about two weeks, and Bridgeport Harbor was a recent stop. The surveys are helping them to better understand the state of the wrecks now and how the sites might be affected by future storms or other environmental factors.
"Super storms could pick up wrecks and move them," DeLong said. "Hurricanes and the health of the seas can play a large role in where these wrecks are today."
"The best we can do is understand it," he noted.
The survey work is being financed by the state Historic Preservation Office, and R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates, where DeLong is based, has been tasked with analyzing the data collected at the shipwrecks. About $8 million in grants from the federal government was given to the SHPO after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 to be used to survey and collect data on historic sites along the coast that are at risk when major storms hit, according to Doug Royalty, the state Historic Preservation Office Hurricane Sandy Disaster Relief Grant coordinator. These sites have been both on land and underwater.
Some money is also being used to restore historic properties on land damaged by Sandy and to help educate shoreline city and town engineers and planners about historic sites along the coast that might fall victim to rising sea levels or future storms, Royalty said.
While it's unlikely Superstorm Sandy made a large impact on the three Bridgeport Harbor ships, DeLong said the data available on the three boats will be more complete now.
A survey day for DeLong, Bean and Pydeski starts early and typically lasts about eight hours. Much of the time is spent in a small survey boat going back and forth slowly across the shipwreck site, as a multibeam echo sounder sends sound waves toward the ocean floor and gathers the data from the echoes made. A combination of software and hardware that Bean and Pydeski use is able to account for shifting motions of the small survey vessel made by waves and generate images of what's below based on echoes the multibeam echo sounder picks up from the ocean floor.
The process, which also uses a sound speed profiler and requires some angle shifting for the multibeam echo sounder to get all sides of the wreck, can take a whole day. And that's just the data-gathering part of the project.
Data will be cleaned up by scientists at Ocean Survey — there are "shadows" created by echoes and sometimes things are picked up that are not needed — then the data will be shared with DeLong back in his Goodwin offices, Bean said. DeLong will then analyze the images to update existing survey data.
Prior to having this level of survey equipment available, taking stock of three ships in the Bridgeport Harbor would take about a dozen people three to four days, DeLong said. He has training in creating grids and mapping underwater wrecks by hand at wrecks up to 190 feet below the surface, he said, and even some stories about octopuses stealing archeological tools on dives. But, surveying 17 ships in 10 days is a lot easier with a multibeam echo sounder, he said.
Bean and Pydeski travel about 200 days a year, they said, though not always on the same projects, and have done ocean floor mapping for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and private engineering firms, they said.
"My responsibility is to map the object," Bean said. "I've always worked on the water and shipwrecks are interesting in and of themselves."
"Unfortunately, it's almost always a sad story," he added.
But, these canal barges sank sometime in the middle of the night in 1974 after taking on too much water at the dock, DeLong said. Historians believe the three barges were tied together so, once one sank, it pulled the other two down as well — not a terribly tragic story, he said.
All three boats, the Priscilla Dailey, Elmer S. Dailey and the Berkshire No. 7, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which is managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior. They were all listed on the register in 1978, according to records accessible online. The three barges were used for the transport of people and goods, according to the records.
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