Diving Chigaco

The Great Lakes of America are big. They store the largest batch of fresh water on earth and they hold many wrecks. There are five lakes - Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior. They cover an area larger than the combined total of England, Wales and Scotland. They have provided a convenient way of transporting materials and goods into the heartland of the United States. Because of this, there has been a well established fleet of ships that have traded between the different ports that are on the sides of these lakes. Shipping began to develop in these waters about 200 years ago. Trading has since been vigorous - as has been the resulting shipwrecks. Why so many wrecks? Freshwater is less supportive to ships than seawater  and is also quicker to react to wind. There is a smaller distance between wave peaks than in at sea. Ships that could handle the ocean find that the shorter distance between wave peaks in the Lakes mean that they can easily get into trouble. Weather is also quite changeable around the Great Lakes. Gales can quickly blow up. The result? Shipwrecks - many of them. There are estimated to be around 4000 of them. Many of them lie up north in the cold waters of Lake Superior. Their preservation is excellent.

In August 2000, Malcolm Rahn and Richard Knights visited Chicago. We wanted to dive some local wrecks and generally suss out what was on offer. What did we find?

There are a number of worthwhile dive sites just off the Chicago shoreline in Lake Michigan. The waters are shallow (less than 18m) and do not support a great variety of life. In fact, apart from the endemic zebra mussels that cover all the exposed wreck surfaces, round gobies, perch and a couple of freshwater crayfish there is not much life. But there are many wrecks. Freshwater meaning cold freshwater means that the wrecks are extremely well preserved. Wrecks that would have disintegrated in sea water are still preserved around Chicago. Both wooden and steel based wrecks can be dived. Water temperatures depend on the thermocline(s). The surface temperature in August was usually a comfortable 20°C. The first thermocline would bring this down sharply and we were told that on the deeper wrecks up north lower thermoclines could bring the temperature as low as 5°C.

We visited in the summer when the weather was hot. In the winter, temperatures fall dramatically and ice will cover large stretches of the lake. Heavy snow falls are common around Chicago.  Ice can cause substantial damage to the shallower wrecks as the weight of the ice bears down on the wooden structures below.

Diving is done via dive boats. Shore diving off Chicago is frowned upon and largely not possible. The dive boats are well equipped but are only designed to handle up to 6 divers. A team of 12 divers would have to use 2 boats. The usual system is to have a boat captain, a dive master and the team of divers. You have to sign pieces of paper that passes off any obligation to the boat and crew. Facilities before and after dive are excellent. But diving isn't cheap - a 2 pack dive costs around 60-70 dollars (year 2000 prices) and you need to add on hire and fill of equipment. Most of these boats are not dedicated to diving.

Weather can be changeable. Visiting divers would be foolish to rely on dives every day. Indeed, in a 6 day stay we were only able to dive on 2 days - and this was August! In one case we had arranged to dive the Prinz Willem off Milwaukee - 100 miles north of Chicago. At 2pm the weather was sunny and calm. We rang to confirm the dive. By the time we had arrived at Milwaukee three hours later there was a force 7 gale blowing with a tornado 80 miles inland! Unpredictable weather is not a UK prerogative.

The diving community around Chicago is very enthusiastic and helpful. There are a number of dive shops and facilities around and it is easy to hire gear. We found Scuba Systems of Skokie, Ill. very helpful. Nitrox is favoured, although at depths of less than 20m this might seem excessive. Many local divers take an active interest in the archaelogical aspects of the wreck heritage that they have acquired. There are a few projects that divers get involved in that require towing or bringing up old wrecks. Most dive experience is necessarily centred around freshwater diving and there is rightly an obsession about the thermocline. We met with a few divers that had never dived salt water. 

Unless you have somewhere to stay in Chicago, you will have problems arranging your diving. This is a big city. Car parking is very difficult and fines are expensive and vigorously collected. You cannot just breeze into Chicago on the fly and expect to easily go diving. However, Chicago is a superb place to visit. We had a great non diving time filled with visits to the aquarium, the Field natural history museum, Art galleries, Chinatown and downtown. We even saw a real bit of the Titanic on display, plus a German 2nd war submarine - the U505.

Here are some of the dives that we did.

The Material Service Barge is located about 1 mile NE of the Calumet River. For many years this strong steel barge ferried goods around the Chicago area. In July 1936 it sank in 10m of water, probably due to overweighting and cargo saturation. She is 240 ft long, 40ft wide and is of a low lying build. She lies upright on the bottom. There are 2 large holds that are wide open. There is a bit of a stern superstructure and two nice propellors half buried in the lake bottom. We dived it at night. It is a superb dive and quite different from sea water wrecks. There is so little life at night. No crabs or lobster peering from under the plates. No pouting hunting at night giving us a baleful eye. Just dark clearish water and a wreck that despite its years under water is in a good and clear cut form. There was a lot to see as we slowly went up and down the wreck, both inside and out. There were bits of wreckage, pipes, winch machinery and even an old bath, but overall the wreck is in excellent condition. Very atmospheric especially when the lights of the other dive pair appeared.

The Tacoma was quite a different dive. To start with she is wooden. She was a tugboat of 75ft length that sank in 1929. She lies upright on the sand and is liberally covered with zebra mussels that unfortunately obscure the fine lines of this basically extant wreck. She is shallow - less than 10m and stands about 3m clear of the bottom. There is a lot to see despite the small size of the wreck. Amidships there is a splendid boiler with a steam chest above it. Most of the machinery and controls are there. The stern is well rounded and in excellent condition with a well preserved prop and steering quadrant still in position. The bows are a little bit more broken up but the overall look and feel of the tug is excellent. 50 minutes passed quickly.

The TYM barge is eccentric. It is a wooden device built during the Second world war as a way of carrying fuel for naval ships. Purely experimental she faded away into obscurity and was found some years ago by a local dive club and relocated offshore from Chicago. There is a web site that details this. The barge is tiny and slightly broken up so you can see inside and appreciate what an odd thing it is. Close by there is the South tug - again a wooden ship with an excellent boiler present. We could peer inside the boiler and see the mass of tubes inside.

Another night dive was the Illinois - not far from the Material Service barge. The Illinois was a tug guided sand dredge. There is a pile of plates and general wreckage mess including a large centrifugal pump lying at an oblique angle. A slightly spooky feel at night, simply because of the amount of wreckage and yet no life or seaweed around it. There is a newly sunk barge nearby, sunk specifically for divers.  This wreck is upright and in excellent condition. It is possible to penetrate inside.

Oddest of all is the Crib. Years ago the city of Chicago erected water inflow towers (called cribs) that passed water from the lake via underwater tunnels into the city's waterworks. Some of these are now disused and so it is possible to dive them. To dive a Crib means finding one of the underwater inlets that pierce it and then swimming through to enter the inside. The inlets may be murky and visibility is usually not good especially if divers are in front of you. But when you get through (only about 20ft), the vis becomes crystal clear and you can see the sunlight streaming through from above. It's a bit like being in a smaller, underwater version of an Istanbul mosque. Very impressive. You can swim up to the shaft of the underwater tunnel. It goes sheer down about 30m, is silt filled and quite something to peer over. Highly recommended.

So would we do it again? We will, but what we did realise is the wealth of diving that is possible up north. The best seems to be in Lake Superior. Partly this is because of the huge variety of wrecks that litter the lake's bottom, partly because of the lower temperatures that favour preservation and partly because the zebra mussel is not yet terribly common up there. Munising seems to be a favourite base, but there are a lot of interesting wrecks off Thunder Bay and around Whitefish Point and Sault Sainte Marie. There is a lot on offer in Superior, and around the Mackinac Straights - but do make sure that you have adequate back up plans for when the weather turns bad. It can be a wilderness up there, with all sorts of non-diving possibilities.

There are many web sites that detail the dives around the Great Lakes. Here are some.

Great lakes diving

Midwest diving links

Shipwrecks near Chicago

TYM Barge

U505 capture

 

A book that is very useful with lots of pictures and plans is:

Kohl, Chris (1998) - The 100 Best Great Lakes Shipwrecks (Volume 2, Michigan and Superior) - Seawolf Communications - 0-9681437-3-3

 

Richard Knights and Malcolm Rahn - Sept 2000