June 15, 2014
It must have just missed the cut in Cris Kohl’s book, “The 100 BEST Great Lakes Shipwrecks”. It has all the elements that make a great shipwreck: it’s largely intact, significant, beautiful, and reaches back to a very different time period (nearly 200 yrs).
The “Tiller Wreck” is a 94′ two-masted schooner that lies in 116′ of water about 4 km off Port Dalhousie, in Lake Ontario. It gets its name from the tiller which steers it, as opposed to a wheel, which was introduced around 1850.
Not much else is known about this wreck. At one time it was thought to have been the Henry Clay, but it has since been positively located elsewhere. It’s hard to visualize nowadays, but Schooners were at one time a very common sight in the Great Lakes, as common as 5-ton trucks are today. In other words, they were just ordinary- carrying people and merchandise. And perhaps because of this, little documentation on them survives.
Unfortunately for us there was a lot of rain and wave action the previous two days which reduced the visibility to the 30-40′ range.
Consequently there was quite a bit of particulate matter in the water, so I switched to natural light photography. Even then, I had to reluctantly increase the ISO to 1000 at f 2.8 and 1/25 s, using a compact Canon S95 camera at the time .
Significantly though, the Tiller resembles the War of 1812 ships Hamilton and Scourge, which lie relatively nearby off St. Catherine’s in just under 300 feet of water. The Hamilton and Scourge, like the Tiller, began their careers as simple merchant ships. But when the need came, they were converted into war ships and pressed into service for the American Navy just prior to the War of 1812.
Tips:
We joined Dan’s Dive Shop on an Aquaholic Dive Charter to dive the wreck. How lucky for them to have such a nice wreck in their own “backyard”. Dan’s Dive Shop is a dynamic group that loves to dive, and talk diving . Matt and Kristen (the original owner’s son and daughter), brought a “Canadian breakfast” (Timbits) to help get everyone started.
The Tiller makes a great advanced level dive with Nitrox (just over 20 mins with 31%). Matt has told me that its not unusual to get 60-100′ viz there. The water though was a chilly 39 deg. F below the thermocline. Beware though that at this temperature and depth regulators are prone to freezing, as did my secondary (slightly) when I “pushed” it too hard racing around the wreck looking for photo ops. Divers did penetrate the ship by moving down one hatch and exiting out the other, but the wreck is largely filled with silt, and there’s not much to see in there.
Port Dalhousie is a beautiful place to visit. It has a nice beach (west side of Port), lots of patio restaurants and shops, and the Port has long piers to go for relaxing walks. The beach area also has a Carousel ride that still goes for 5 cents.
