COREY DANIEL
The research vessel Preservation is equipped for the needs of divers, including a platform in the water that allows divers to board and disembark.
KONNIE LeMAY
Scouts Wyatt Knight (also diving in facing page) and David Goldsmith enjoy the ride from the Silver Bay Marina to Gold Rock Point to test their diving skills.
On a brilliant summer Saturday not far from Split Rock Lighthouse in Minnesota, the small stern of the R/V Preservation is abuzz with activity. Four divers, plus two helpers, negotiate respectfully as they don skin-tight wet suits, account for critical equipment and all the while shooing away the hundreds of newly hatched black flies covering them and the boat.
It feels like backstage in a too-small dressing room between acts of a play, but this isn’t a dress rehearsal. It’s is opening night – or opening day – for Wyatt Knight and David Goldsmith. Success on this dive may take them as far as 80 feet beneath the lolling and lapping, but behaved, Lake Superior.
Two seasoned divers, Dean Soderbeck and Corey Daniel, will accompany them to visit the 436-foot Madeira, a steel schooner-barge that sank after being repeatedly swept against the cliffs of Gold Rock Point in a November 1905 that would wreck 11 ships on the Big Lake and sparked legislation to fund construction of the lighthouse.
Other divers are already moored at the wreck site and are in the water. The stage is set on this seventh year of partnership between BSA Venture Crew 820, a Boy Scouts of America group, and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society (GLSPS).
KONNIE LeMAY
Diver Jeff LeMoine from the BSA Venture Crew 820 swims over for a visit from his closed-circuit re-breather dive.
Monitoring of the condition of the Madeira is part of today’s mission, but preservation of another kind is really the point this weekend. These young men represent preservation of diving as a popular recreation … and it’s continued popularity is not a certainty. The expensive nature of the activity contributes.
“It seems like we’re getting less and less involvement,” says Corey, who is operator of this boat and an Eagle Scout. “Before ’08, people were gung ho,” he adds, but after that economic crash, “people’s priority with their money changed.”
Dean, a Scuba Schools International open water dive instructor, has led – and cheer-led – these expeditions for years. Venturing is a youth development program of the Boy Scouts and open to both girls and boys from ages 13 to 21. BSA Venture Crew 820 keeps specifically to scuba diving. The crew has accumulated enough equipment for 50 divers in “Discover Scuba” pool events. Dean’s crew has also tackled underwater basket weaving and underwater pumpkin carving to hone and enjoy their diving skills.
The BSA crew does more than dives. Every late May it hosts an Underwater Beach Clean-up, diving below the surface to get the trash that regular beach sweep crews can’t reach. The air tanks are provided free (and so is lunch) for the crew divers. Last year 14 youth divers and 30 volunteers showed up.
According to a report by Dean, the divers braved the “chilly 52 degree water” (you can judge later in this story whether that’s truly a “cold’ dive) and some dove below 20 feet, fetching discarded cans, plastic bags, other debris and even two steel picnic tables.
For Dean, getting young people involved in diving means the future of the recreation and also the future of shipwreck preservation on Lake Superior.
In a promotional piece about BSA Venture Crew 820, Dean writes, “The importance of having youth involved in shipwreck diving is to set up a legacy so that future generations will be interested in preserving Lake Superior’s shipwrecks.” As a Scout leader, he also sees this activity as a way to build leadership and service skills, to encourage personal growth and to get kids involved in adventures in the real world, not in electronic games.
For the North Shore dive, the GLSPS donates use of the boat while Northland Scuba donates the air in the tanks.
“We have to watch our gauges,” Dean reminds the Scouts.
“Do you have the baby oil?” asks Wyatt, wanting to keep his mask from fogging up.
KONNIE LeMAY
The Preservation crew for the day includes, from left, David Goldsmith, PJ Knight, Wyatt Knight, Dean Soderbeck, Corey Daniel and Jimmy Christenson.
Venture Crew 820 youth members are scattered throughout a 1,200-square mile area. David is from Foreston, Minnesota, and Wyatt is from Oakdale, Minnesota.
Wyatt’s mother, PJ Knight, is along for the ride on this trip, but she’s also with BSA Venture Crew 820 (the numbers make a play on H20). While fewer young people seem interested in scuba diving, she says her son seemed born to dive. “Wyatt’s always been a fish. He was free swimming by age 4.”
Wyatt is a sophomore at Tartan High School.
It takes more than an hour of preparation after the boat arrived at this site from the Silver Bay marina. First they go over charts showing the position of the Madeira, then they must wiggle into all the equipment and check it, several times.
COREY DANIEL
Wyatt Knight, David Goldsmith and Dean Soderbeck pose for Corey Daniel.
They slide off the back of the Preservation, which is specially outfitted for divers. Once in the water, Wyatt’s regulator malfunctions and needs to be replaced. But finally, they all sink below the surface into the 48° F water. The Madeira, resting at an angle, is from 10 feet to 120 feet below the surface. By the time the divers reach the pilothouse 80 feet down, the water’s temperature will drop to 38° F.
After about 30 minutes, their heads pop above the surface of the water. They’ve been able to spend about 10 minutes at the pilothouse (the bottom time allowed at that depth using conventional dive equipment). The rest of the time, they worked their way around the stern and up to the bow while allowing for decompression.
“Every dive is a decompression dive,” Dean explains. “Regardless of the type of dive, your tissues are under pressure, and they are on-gassing (absorbing nitrogen). So even when you ascend slowly and steadily, your tissues are still off-gassing (releasing nitrogen) each time you exhale.”
Back on the surface, David admits, “I’ve got to warm up. I don’t feel my toes.”
Dean has them check their air gauge for how much air is left in their tank.
“The scouts are using 80 cubic foot air tanks and the deeper dives consume more air than shallow dives,” Dean explains. “A diver is over three atmospheric pressure at a depth of 80 feet down. It’s like taking three breaths of air at the surface … so your tank empties faster. That is why we have a bottom time at the pilothouse of just 10 minutes plus off-gassing on the way to the surface, otherwise a diver can run out of air.”
Warming amid the relentless flies, David, who has dived salt water, was surprised by the clarity – as well as the chilled fresh water – on his first dive into the Big Lake. “Visibility was very good, I was very impressed.”
Visibility is more than 30 feet, Dean figures later.
Also impressive was the wreck itself, he adds. After more than 100 years under water, the ship remains mostly intact and still looks like a vessel. In the ocean, wrecks disintegrate, leaving only boards.
“I’m kind of an adventure junkie,” admits David, an Eagle Scout who has been diving since age 15.
On his warm-up return, Wyatt explains how he loves floating underwater, not beholding, so it seems, to gravity or bound by air. He’s enjoyed the water since he first dove into the YMCA pool as a wee child and settled right at the deep end. “I’ve always just sort of been a fish,” echoing his mother’s assessment.
KONNIE LeMAY
Corey Daniel sports plenty of gear for his dive.
On this weekend, BSA Venture Crew 820 is doing more than just this dive for two Scouts.
There are 12 divers and non-divers, seven from GLSPS and the others from the Venture Crew. Four of the entourage this week are in both groups.
The next day, after an evening’s gathering by a bonfire, seven Scouts will do a shore dive off Stoney Point, closer to Duluth. They will view ancient lava flow formations and look for parts from a tug that sunk there about 120 years ago.
“Despite the 39° water,” Dean reports later to GLSPS, “the unique bottom contours and texture of the Lake fascinated the Scouts, who spent 30 to 60 minutes in the calm shallows.”
After the chilly dive, he notes, they basked on the shoreline lava formations, absorbing, like the black basalt, the heat of the sun.
The members of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society, besides encouraging the Scouts, had their own mission for the weekend. Six of them would return the next evening for a night dive to film the wreck and create a digital 3D model. It’s part of the preservation work the group does all along Minnesota’s North Shore.
On the Preservation, Corey Daniel says he came to his diving through his father, Steve Daniel, former head of the GLSPS and also an Eagle Scout. Steve authored the ultimate dive guide for this shore, aptly titled Shipwrecks Along Lake Superior’s North Shore, with wreck details, plus fine sketched drawings of the vessels on the bottom.
Also on board this trip is First Mate Jimmy Christenson, another diver. Jimmy, who went to high school in Superior, is very familiar with Big Lake wrecks. He’s done scuba diving at Isle Royale, going deep onto the Emperor, a 525-foot steel bulk freighter built in Thunder Bay that sank off the island in 1947 in water from 25 to 175 feet. Jimmy calls it a “beautiful wreck. You can see the name on it, too.”
Today, though, Jimmy is helping others learn the skills of diving rather than enjoying a dive himself.
After a 90 minute break, the divers are ready to go back down. Dean jokes that the black flies are causing the retreat back into the water. This will be only a 30-foot dive on the Madeira bow and side section. After about 15 minutes, the crew returns to the boat and peels off their suits, ready for a little late lunch.
Today, these young people joined an increasingly rare group who experience views of history the Lake has preserved for decades.
“It’s a personal challenge, and it’s seeing a part of history that most people never see,” Corey says. “You get to see stuff as it was. That’s the big allure.”
To learn about BSA Venture Crew 820 and outings for this year, email Dean Soderbeck at deansoderbeck@yahoo.com. To find out more about the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society, go to www.glsps.org. To see the 3D images of the Madeira done by the GLSPS, go to www.3dshipwrecks.org