- My name is Jon Miskowski.
Good evening and welcome to this sneak preview
of the documentary Shipwrecks!
And more than that,
we're gonna introduce you to this larger project
and to our partners who've been working with PBS Wisconsin
over the last two years or so,
to bring this really wonderful exploration
of Wisconsin history, our maritime history,
and these really important stories
that connect our communities and families,
who are connected to that maritime history.
So I wanna first start by thanking you
for supporting PBS Wisconsin,
and again, thank you for joining us.
Thank all our funders,
who've supported this specific project.
It's been a really wonderful process of learning
and working with great partners for PBS Wisconsin.
So today we're gonna have three things for you.
We're gonna offer a preview of the show
that you heard about, Shipwrecks!
I'm gonna give you a little homework assignment right now
and through the night.
We hope that you will watch tonight
and that you will share this with all your connections,
for the live premiere broadcast on November 30th,
when you'll have a chance to see the full-hour documentary.
So that's your homework, is to share with your friends
what you see tonight, what you enjoy,
and encourage them to tune into this.
And you also should tune in,
because you'll see more than you're going to see tonight.
So the other parts that I wanna tell you
about this project in brief,
is one, is there's lots of partners
and you'll sort of, rather than list them,
it is an enormous list.
You imagine as you see this production,
the images, every video file, every image you see,
every story
has so many people who've contributed to them.
So tonight, we'll be able to feature some of those folks
who've been working on those projects and our partners,
including the Wisconsin Historical Society,
an important partner for us and Wisconsin history.
So that's one thing.
As I said, you get a preview of the documentary, Shipwrecks!
and I want you to use the chat function that you're seeing,
and you've seen a few people comment there,
to ask your questions,
so you can direct your questions to our experts.
You can do that during the show,
and then we'll come back for Q&A after this preview.
Also, we'll take a look
at the education work associated with this.
Field Day-- which you'll learn a little bit more about
is one of the nation's leaders in gaming,
education gaming,
and does really extraordinary work--
is partnering again with PBS Wisconsin on a new video game,
built on the same stories as Shipwrecks!
So you'll get an introduction to that.
In addition to that, you'll get a sneak preview
of some virtual reality work that we're doing.
A 360 kind of dive into,
so, you'll probably hear a lot of puns,
so we'll just have absolution for everybody right now,
about using puns tonight.
But we will dive into the virtual reality, VR work,
that we've been working on,
with partners around the state,
including the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
Some of the folks who have helped us there
from the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery,
to kind of really show how that technology
can be such a learning asset
and to look at things in new ways.
So we have three things to show for you today.
And again, we wanna thank all of you
for supporting PBS Wisconsin.
So, first up,
remember to start thinking about your questions.
First up is this sneak preview of Shipwrecks!
which is premiering on PBS Wisconsin on November 30th.
*
- Narrator: At the time Frank Hoffmann discovered the schooner Jennibel,
shipwrecks were not well-protected
by state and federal laws.
He brought up one of the ship's anchors
and placed it behind his new business in Egg Harbor.
- This was "finders keepers" times in those days.
And so, the idea that when you were on the shipwreck,
if you didn't, say, maybe pick up a plate in the galley
or maybe even saw off a fitting,
but you better bring something up,
or you weren't much of a diver.
- Although treasure hunters had wrecked the Jennibel,
Hoffmann's discovery of an intact schooner
shocked the diving community.
- Boyd: People said, "Wow,
you can actually find these things intact."
But what are the chances that this will ever happen again?
- Hoffman: Dick Garbowski, fishermen in Menominee,
just called me on the phone
and asked if I couldn't free their nets.
They got them tangled up in some object underwater.
And, of course, it was--
Well, it was in November of '67.
It was cold, miserable day out, but the water was halfway calm.
I couldn't get in contact with any of the other divers
in our group in that short of a notice
to come up and help us out with the net.
So, I had to make the first dive myself.
[suspenseful music, splash]
Going down alone, I wasn't feeling too well,
you know, myself, but it was a job that had to be done.
And, of course, our Green Bay waters are dark.
Your light fades out at about 60 to 70 feet.
When I did get down to the net, and, of course,
then I seen what was down there,
and it was an old sailing ship.
Back in them days, we only had
pressure cookers with car batteries in them and sealed beam headlights.
The pressure cooker that I had,
the light kept going on and off.
And, of course, visibility was a foot and a half.
When the light went out, you didn't see nothing.
And I did the best that I could, freeing the net,
cutting the net, and freeing it up.
And after a certain length of time,
I knew that I couldn't accomplish the job myself.
And so, then I returned back up to the surface,
and I was never so happy to get up on top
as I was after that dive.
I knew at the end of that dive
that we were on an old sailing schooner.
How old exactly, I do not--
I didn't know at that time.
But the idea that I knew it was big,
and I knew it was beautiful,
and it was something that had never been touched before.
I felt the best thing was for me to call in for extra divers,
to finish freeing the nets up.
After we had accomplished the job of getting the nets off,
we took a tour of the ship itself to see what it was.
We found the wheel of the ship,
and there was still canvas on the wheel itself.
And this was to protect somebody
from putting their arm or leg through it
if the ship would take a fast turn.
As to the interior of the ship,
we found out that it was entirely filled with silt
to within about a foot or so of the deck,
you know, inside the cargo holds.
The cabin area was the same thing.
And when the diver would go into the silt
to get any articles out from inside the ship,
the silt would stir up,
and it would hang in the water.
And we didn't realize up or down or sideways.
It was like swimming through a bottle of India ink.
- Boyd: That was very exciting
because we had no idea what the wreck was.
In those days,
none of those records and so on were available.
There was very little interest in that sort of thing.
And so, for the better part of a year and a half,
we had no idea what it was.
- Hoffmann's team of divers
brought in a small pump to begin removing the silt
and brought up artifacts
that gave clues about the identity of the ship.
- Boyd: I brought up a bowl out of the galley,
and on the bottom of it is a bunch of embossing on there.
And we were able to determine that it was pre-Civil War,
and so, this vessel has got to be
very early 1840s and '50s, '60s.
That's real old stuff
as far as Great Lakes shipping is concerned.
- As the divers brought up more artifacts,
well-preserved in the cold, thick silt,
the media began to follow the story.
- Boyd: We'd gotten just enough artifacts out
that this craze was going wild
and the idea that, first of all,
a totally intact wreck had been found.
They don't know what's in it.
They don't even know what it is.
It's the "Mystery Ship From 19 Fathoms."
The excitement got so much that all of a sudden,
Marinette Marine Corporation,
particularly Harold Derusha there,
was a big maritime history fan;
He essentially gives the project
a 60-foot LCM craft equipped with
a very large eight-inch diameter salvage pump.
We just outfitted this thing for diving.
So now, all of a sudden,
we have this huge craft to work with.
- After connecting the big pump,
divers began removing tons of silt.
More artifacts were revealed--
frozen in time, on the ship's last day at sail.
- One big crock came up.
There's a nice picture of it.
Had the usual little silt on the top of it,
so we scraped it off from.
The thing is, is full of what was called a crock cheese,
which was a very common staple on ships,
and they can put it onto a biscuit and so on.
I was a microbiologist at the time,
so we took a sample, and by golly,
we could still recover the lactobacillus
that had formed on it.
The thing was still viable in the cheese.
And so, we sent it out to the Kraft Foods people.
And it turned out
it was the world's oldest sample of edible cheese.
"Did I taste it?" is always the question.
Yeah, I did, and it was terrible. [chuckles]
But in talking to people
who were familiar with that sort of thing,
they said the stuff was always terrible.
In another case, we came up with a couple of ducks.
They were pretty much intact.
The flesh and so on was on them.
The head and so on was missing.
These things were prepared for a meal.
That was about the same time
that we identified the wreck
and realized that the captain and a couple of crewmen
had gone down with it.
And we got real uneasy about working in that silt down there.
As it turned out, there were no human remains ever found
on the Clark .
They were not on board the vessel.
- The mystery ship was identified as the Alvin Clark:
built in 1846
and sunk in 1864.
- Almost a little tornado came dancing across Green Bay
and smacked her and capsized her,
and sent her to the bottom.
- It's now thought the ship transported lumber
for timber pirates, who cut down trees on government-owned land.
- We've gotten just enough artifacts out
that this craze was going wild.
And all of a sudden, you're up to the point where
you've identified it and so on.
And gosh, you've got this thing.
At that time, there was no other known intact wreck.
It just seemed like the logical thing
would be to bring it up and preserve it.
And, of course, Hoffman really wanted to do it at that point.
He really had the fever.
He almost had dedicated his life to this whole business.
- The first step in raising the ship
was to find a way to loosen the masts from the deck
and haul them up with a crane.
Next, the group figured out a plan to raise the ship itself,
using six cables tunneled under the hull.
- Boyd: Where do you buy a tool to do that?
We had to invent one.
We bent a piece of two-inch aluminum pipe
that would match the curvature of the hull.
On the end of it, we designed what we called a dredging head.
Attach that on one end of the pipe, firehose on the other,
and you wrestle that underwater.
You could just slowly push that pipe right underneath the Clark .
And this thing would just dredge its way right under
following the curvature of the hull.
When it popped up on the other side,
you tied a nylon line on it,
pull the thing back out,
and there was a cable waiting from the surface that you then
attached to the nylon line.
Took six weeks to put six cables underneath that puppy,
and that was a real job.
- Hoffmann: A lift barge had to be found.
And, of course, Marinette Marine came through once again
in locating one for us.
They had gotten the steel cables ordered
that we were going to put in underneath the ship itself.
From this, we used a set of blocks and pulleys
and with 24 steel cables going up to the lift barge.
The lift barge was positioned over the ship itself.
And on the lift barge,
we had four hand-crank winches.
For every hundred turns on the cranks,
we could raise the ship approximately five inches.
It was very tiring on our crew because they had worked so long.
Boats would come out to see what was going on--
all of the sightseers, newspapermen, television people,
and everything else.
No one was allowed onto Cleo's barge
or onto the lift barge itself
until they put in their hundred turns on the crank
to help us raise the ship.
And everybody pitched in.
And it was a tremendous thing, you know,
to see hundreds of people out there
all helping us work in the final lifting process.
As the cranking came to an end,
the ship became visible under the barge.
Its bowsprit rose above the water,
and the crew triumphantly posed on it [dog shakes off water]
as the barge readied to tow the ship to Marinette
for the final raising.
[crowd murmuring]
- Marinette Marine closed the shipyard.
And there were over 15,000 people
that had come down
to watch the Alvin Clark raised to the surface.
And it was a tremendous feeling.
We had dove on the ship for two years.
We had never seen the ship itself in its entirety.
All we could see was three and four feet.
We were amazed just as much as everybody else was.
- Boyd: When that thing hit the surface,
and you saw the size of that thing,
we just went, "Wow,
you know, this is really something else again."
The thing was all so nice and clean
that it was just absolutely amazing.
We decided to see how badly it was leaking
and we had pumped it out.
We slack the cables off,
and the darn thing floated.
A hundred and five years it had been underwater,
and as far as we could tell, it wasn't hardly leaking a drop.
- As they cleaned up the ship,
the divers brought up the remaining artifacts
that would tell the story of life on an early schooner.
After a long period of kiln drying,
the ship was re-rigged,
and became a popular tourist attraction.
- Boyd: All of the rigging was put on,
the ratlines, the whole business.
She looked just like she would sail.
And she was floating in this little private harbor
called the "Mystery Ship Seaport,"
between Marinette, Wisconsin,
and Menominee, Michigan.
And so, she was a regular museum.
- The Alvin Clark
yielded a boatload of maritime information--
how the sailors lived,
the design and construction of the ship, and much more.
But over the next two decades-- exposed to the elements--
the Alvin Clark began to deteriorate.
- Boyd: What she really needed very apparently,
she really needed
to be dry-docked and to have a building over her.
- Hoffmann: It's the feeling of myself and our group
that actually we did our job.
And it's now for somebody to come forth
and preserve and take care of the ship.
- Frank Hoffmann moved the ship out of the water,
but try as he might,
he couldn't raise the funds to preserve it.
- Boyd: And the money for it just wasn't there
no matter what you do or how you tried.
And it eventually disintegrated
and was unceremoniously bulldozed up
and run off to a landfill site in the '90s.
[regulator bubbles]
- The destruction of the Alvin Clark
signaled the end of the "finders keepers" era
of Wisconsin shipwrecks.
New laws were passed to protect shipwrecks--
encouraging divers to visit,
but to "Take only pictures and leave only bubbles."
In 1954--
15 years before the raising of the Alvin Clark--
a Dutch cargo ship, the Prins Willem V,
loaded up in Milwaukee.
After taking on a full cargo of Wisconsin products,
the ship departed at dusk in strong October winds.
[wind whistling] Three miles out,
the Prins Willem collided with an oil barge.
As it began to sink,
the coast guard arrived and rescued all of the crew.
[wood creaking]
The Prins Willem came to rest on its side
in 80 feet of water.
The Army Corps of Engineers
declared the wreck a hazard to navigation
and requested proposals to remove it.
- Kuesel: The Corps of Engineers assumed that the wreck
would have to either be cut up, dynamited,
dragged out to deeper water, or raised
in order to clear it to the required 40 feet deep.
- Milwaukee salvage diver, Max Nohl,
won the bid to clear the hazard
and gain ownership of the wreck.
He soon discovered
that it would be easier to clear than anyone expected.
- This is the gangplank from the Prins Willem V .
This was sticking up to 31 feet of the surface.
The Corps of Engineers
felt that the entire wreck stuck up that high.
Max Nohl got the contract
to clear it to the required 40 feet,
and all he had to do was cut this loose.
Took about 20 minutes.
- As a child in the 1920s,
Max Nohl became fascinated
with the Jules Verne classic
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
The growing popularity of the open bottom diving helmet
inspired many Wisconsin teenagers,
like Max and his friend Jack Browne,
to build their own.
Jack made a rubber suit out of old innertubes
and a helmet from a five-gallon paint can,
held down with window weights.
Jack lent his suit to Max
to make a dive into Lake Michigan.
- Kuesel: And according to Max's writings, years later,
he was hooked.
He wanted to be underwater whenever he could.
[splash]
- While a student at MIT, Max bought a used diving suit,
which he brought home one summer.
With the help of his friends Jack Browne and Verne Netzow,
he discovered the wreck of the J.M. Allmendinger--
a wooden steam barge that ran aground in a storm
near Mequon in 1895.
After college,
Nohl met and teamed up with John D. Craig,
a diver and Hollywood adventure-film producer.
Craig had secured a contract
to work on the salvage of the Lusitania,
an ocean liner, sunk off the coast of Ireland in 1915.
- The Lusitania that got us into World War I
had been torpedoed off of Ireland
in 312 feet of water.
And the deepest dive of record at that time
was made by a US Navy diver-- 306 feet.
So, how could they get at the treasures of the Lusitania ?
[suspenseful music]
[turning page]
- In the quest to reach the Lusitania,
Max Nohl and Jack Browne would team up once again
to design and build a revolutionary diving suit.
Nohl and John Craig would volunteer as human guinea pigs
in dangerous experiments,
hoping to shatter the limits
of how deep shipwreck divers could go
and how long they could stay down.
[heartbeat, exhaling into regulator]
- I'm Jon Miskowski, again from PBS Wisconsin.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
We have more to share with you,
but I wanna introduce you
to two of the principals of this project.
They'll introduce themselves.
And I hope that you'll think about some questions
that you have for them.
I saw a few questions in the chat and we'll share those,
but please put your questions in the chat.
And let's spend a few minutes here with Tamara Thomsen
from the Historical Society.
And David Hestad,
who is the producer of Shipwrecks!
So David, why don't you introduce yourself?
And then, Tamara, you can give him your background
and connection to the project.
David.
- Okay, I'm David Hestad.
I'm the show producer for Shipwrecks!
and I'm a history producer with PBS Wisconsin.
- And I am Tamara Thomsen.
I'm a maritime archeologist for the state
and I work for Wisconsin Historical Society.
- Great, thank you.
And thank you for this great work.
So, we'll learn a little bit more about...
David,
could you tell folks now what we will see next?
So when we all tune in on November 30th
and when we all have done our homework
and tell all our friends to tune in on November 30th,
what will we see next?
- Okay, so the program is divided into three parts.
We just saw part two.
And so, it was a little bit of a cliffhanger,
I guess, at the end.
And then, so part three begins with,
again, with the Max Nohl story as a continuation to see
what these experiments on themselves looked like.
Would Max Nohl's, revolutionary diving suit
work under deep water conditions?
And would they be able to break the record
for the deepest dive to date at that time,
which was in the 1930s?
So, and then, the segment goes on
and talks more about shipwreck preservation
and show is really more reasons why
there was a need for new laws
and more efforts to preserve these wrecks.
And then finally, we went out with shipwreck hunters
and as they found the long lost,
the wreck of the long lost Pere Marquette 18,
which was a railroad car ferry that went down in 1910.
- Wow!
Well, thanks, David.
And, Tamara, my question for you.
We have other questions coming in,
but my question for you is,
is diving on a wreck as exciting
as watching diving on a wreck?
- Tamara Thomsen: Oh, yeah.
So, I mean, it's a time capsule.
So they went down with everything that the crew
would have taken with them.
And the cargo is in the age that they were lost.
So every shipwreck tells something different
and you can learn something from every one you go to.
- So another question for you, Tamara, is,
how are divers managing the ethic of diving?
As you said, we tend to fall into,
when we think about this, into treasure hunting,
and that is an ethic that we will see in the documentary
has kind of shifted,
but I'm curious about your perspective.
How do you shift that ethic
when that's sort of the storybook part of Shipwrecks! ?
[laughing]
- Yeah, so really with the passing
of the Abandoned Shipwreck Act in 1987,
we start--
my predecessors started with an education program
and really every shipwreck that we go and visit,
we try to leave in the same state that we saw it in,
so that it's new for someone else.
So not only is it against the law now
to remove shipwreck pieces,
but there's very few things, items that go lost now,
because it's just very common within our community
to leave in place and to leave it for the next person.
Tourism is a very prevalent thing in our sport.
So we have people that come from all over the world
to dive our shipwrecks, and the more stuff that's on them,
the more interesting they are to see,
and the more people will want to come here to visit them.
- Great, there's some question about the videos.
I think some folks in the chat
may have answered that question,
but you can answer it again.
Where were the videos when they were taken
that we just saw?
And a really important question is how they were found.
David. - So I'll--
- Jon: Oh, go ahead, Tamara.
[laughing]
- So I know that the videos were taken in...
The Alvin Clark was brought up in 1969.
So they would have been excavating the shipwreck
the summer prior to it coming up.
So probably 1967, '68 and '69.
And then, David found someone
that had an archive of the videos, so.
- Okay, it's kind of a long, complicated story,
but in the 1970s,
we had a production house at UW-Green Bay,
and they made a program called The Mystery Ship,
which was about The Alvin Clark.
And so they had access to footage from Frank Hoffman,
and then, also, they shot their own footage.
And so, then later on,
there was talk of another film because they were thinking
of raising another shipwreck.
And actually, someone who worked right down the hall from me,
Fred Wessel at PBS Wisconsin,
was involved in that project filming it,
but that project was never made.
So, Frank-- err, Fred had acquired all this footage
and hang on to it.
So he told me, "It pays to be stubborn."
So he kept it, I don't know where,
and then, eventually, he gave it to the Wisconsin Maritime Museum
where it was found
by an independent producer from Atlanta
who wanted to do a project on Alvin Clark.
So, he very generously offered to let us
use the footage for this project.
- So, I will say, I worked with David for many, many years,
and Tamara may be an underwater archeologist,
David is an everywhere archeologist,
whether it's underwater
or in the archives all over the state,
a great finder of amazing things.
And so, it's really wonderful to see that those resurrected,
certainly in the spirit of this show
of bringing these really wonderful stories alive.
So thank you, David.
Question for Tamara.
There's a question about the complete list of people
who helped with the dive and the raising project.
Is there some history of that with more detail?
- I believe that Dick Boyd,
and I've gone to another presentation
that Dick Bennett had given on Alvin Clark
and they have provided a full list of people
who were the divers on there.
They were a very tight-knit band of brothers
that worked to excavate the ship.
- Thank you.
Question to you again, Tamara,
"How do maritime archeologists
feel about the elimination of 'finders keepers'?"
That is a really wonderful little,
and I love that language in there, the finders keepers.
And then it goes on to say,
"Would we learn more
"by being able to bring some artifacts from the ships
or do they prefer leaving the wreck as is?"
- Yeah, we certainly prefer leaving the wreck as is.
Again, it's something to discover and learn from.
You can learn from the placement of artifacts.
Even moving them around the shipwreck
detracts from what it is that you can learn.
Also, we have overflowing
preservation and archive facilities.
It is very, very expensive
to keep an artifact in a proper condition and in perpetuity.
So there needs to be "forever storage" for these things.
So, right now, all of these guys
that were in the finders keepers era
in the 1960s and '70s are now getting older,
downsizing their homes,
maybe going into nursing homes.
And their families really don't have the connection
to the artifacts that their parents did.
And so, we're seeing a lot of these things
donated to museums
and there's--
it's this big storage issue
and a big conservation preservation issue.
So, it's better if they're left down there
so that everyone can enjoy them
and more people will come and visit here.
- So maybe Tamara, you can build on that,
by answering another question here about,
okay, so some of that stuff has come up.
Where do you go in this state?
Where do we go in this state
to see some of those artifacts besides diving?
[laughing]
- Yeah, there's a number of museums that around the state.
So especially along our coasts.
So we have Door County Maritime Museum with two locations.
We have Wisconsin Maritime Museum,
which is the official state repository for artifacts.
- And we all know where that is,
but tell people where it is.
I mean, everybody here knows.
- It's in Manitowoc, yeah, in Manitowoc.
And then, all of the historical societies,
the smaller historical societies, bigger ones too,
along our coastline also have minor collections
of materials that have been donated to them.
So we also have some here in Madison,
at our State Archive and Preservation Facility.
- And when you say all that, reminds me, too,
Bayfield has a museum.
Can you describe that for folks,
'cause we all want to go to Bayfield all the time,
so, give us another reason.
- Yeah, they have a seasonal museum.
There's also another museum that's up in--
is it Cornucopia or Herbster--
that talks about the fishing traditions there.
There's the museum ship Meteor,
which is like a whole ship that's in Superior
that you can go and see.
So, yeah, there's lots of maritime heritage about,
and you don't even have to get wet to go see it.
- Great, and as a reminder,
we have more content to share with you.
We're gonna show our education work,
which is really fun and beautiful, beautiful work.
So, and really intriguing thing
of how do you begin to introduce these kinds of ideas
so young people can learn about history,
can learn about how historians think?
So we have that coming up and then we're gonna show you
this amazing work that we've been doing,
trying to capture in a virtual reality world.
So stay with us, we have a few more questions here,
and then we're gonna go to show you more
of this Shipwrecks! project.
So another question I think for Tamara, from Stephen,
"Are there opportunities for non-professional divers
to be involved with research
and preservation of our wrecks?"
- Absolutely, we've got several groups
that are very active within the state.
One is called WUAA,
Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association.
They offer training and also they receive permits
for projects through the state.
There's also a group out of the Minneapolis area,
but they work across the region
called the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society,
mostly based in Otter Lake, Superior
and with Superior interests, but they do come down
and help us in Lake Michigan, as well.
And then, the State Historical Society
does take volunteers as well
for certain projects as we have funding.
- Great, thank you.
And Jeff asks, again for Tamara,
"What's the importance of,
and specific benefits of the newly designated
"Shipwrecks Coast National Maritime Sanctuary?"
- Yeah, the National Marine Sanctuary is new,
so just designated, gosh, I don't know.
I think it was in August, so not too very long ago.
What that does is that gives a federal level of protection
for the shipwrecks that are within its boundary.
So my job really for the state
has been to look at individual shipwrecks
and to list them or determine if they were eligible
to the National Register of Historic Places,
which would, one at a time, give them
a federal level of protection from looting and damage.
That's how we do preservation.
So, we don't bring things up.
We try to affect laws that will preserve the shipwrecks.
So, by having a National Marine Sanctuary,
not only do we have a federal partner
that's gonna bring in a lot of science and infrastructure
and attention to these very important
nationally significant shipwrecks,
but it also brings in the laws that protect
sort of a blanket area of our coast
that has really the most significant shipwrecks
of our region.
- So, I'm gonna answer this next question.
Al asked, "What inspired PBS Wisconsin
to take on this project?"
Honestly, you're hearing it right now
when you hear Tamara speak.
We've had a long relationship
with the work of this group,
which is always fascinating to us
that our state has underwater archeologists.
That's just fascinating enough [Tamara laughs]
for us to-- two of them right?
Well, we have a lot of water out there,
but that work that we've done
has always been fascinating to us.
And then, a few years ago, Tamara,
you can talk about the book,
the Historical Society shared with us
as we are looking at our continuing partnership
with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
One of the conversations we have
is what books they're doing,
because the research behind the book
really helps us with a sense of
the research is already done.
A lot of the photos for instance, are acquired.
Not all of them, of course,
and not some of the video that David found,
but it is really sets a table
for kind of this companion approach to the book,
and then the documentary on PBS.
So Shipwrecks! just sounded so great.
And then maybe, Tamara, you can tell them about the book.
- Sure, we have a couple of books that are available
through Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
The most recent one is Stories from the Wreckage.
It's by Dr. John Jensen.
It's a long time in coming
and it really talks about underwater archeology,
but sort of these stories that are these threads
through the history, the maritime history of our state.
It's very, very well-written.
And then we also have a children's book,
which is Great Lakes, Great Ships.
[laughs]
And it's geared towards fourth grade readers,
but I gave it to my mother and she loves it.
So, yeah, fun for all ages. [laughs]
- Great.
Well, this continues a partnership.
Some of the previous work--
David, you could mention, as an example,
David produced a documentary on Brewing in Wisconsin.
So maybe you could mention that show and that book
is just another example of how
we've collaborated with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
- Yeah, we actually did two projects.
One was called
Fill 'er Up: The Glory Days of Wisconsin Gas Stations.
And then we did one called Bottoms Up,
which was Wisconsin historic bars and breweries.
And both of those
had a companion book of the same name.
- Yeah, great.
Well, thanks for sharing that.
Here's a great question from Lincoln.
Lincoln is seven.
Thanks, Lincoln, for joining us tonight.
So, to each of you, we'll start with Tamara,
what is your favorite shipwreck?
- I think mine is going to be
the Christmas Tree Ship, Rouse Simmons.
So just it's sort of a seasonal story
that you may have heard,
but yeah, it's the story
of bringing Christmas trees to market
and really banking on
the nostalgia of Christmas and the nostalgia of sale,
and Captain Schueneman would have a small ownership
in these vessels
sort of in the later years
of their sailing, their service career.
And he would take them up in November
to the northern part of Michigan to upper Michigan,
and he would hire lumberjacks to fall trees
and to put them aboard the schooner,
which he would sail back into Chicago.
And it was lost with all hands
on the 23rd of November, 1912.
So, coming up on the anniversary of that one,
but that one kind of,
I tell a lot of Christmas tree ship stories
this time of year.
And the true story of the Christmas tree ships
surprises a lot of people.
- David.
- Well, I think probably the Pere Marquette 18
was my favorite out of the ones that we covered,
just because I was involved with the folks that found it
and, learned about how they found it.
And, then we actually did some interesting animation work
with that ship.
Tamara helped us find blueprints of the ship
and we had a 3-D model made,
and then we animated that.
So we can see, kind of, how the ship was
and how the ship went down.
So...
And then, we also got in touch
with descendants of the captain.
And so, that story for me
had a lot of elements to it
that made it very interesting to me.
- Thanks David,
David worked on a history on Manitowoc and Two Rivers
and being a little part of that,
I'd have to say, really, the legends of the shipwrecks--
So, for folks of us who aren't on that coast,
those towns just live with those legends.
As much as we are fascinated with it,
we are reminded of extraordinary loss here
and really devastating
incidents often, not always,
certainly devastating economically
for these losses,
but if you don't live on the coast,
and if you don't spend a lot of time in community
that's like Manitowoc, these stories just live on,
and they live on in the conversations of families.
These are really, really important stories,
not only is because they tell the history of our state,
but the personal connection.
And so, I go back to David
and working on that Manitowoc and Two Rivers history,
those stories were really important
to those Wisconsin communities.
Tamara, another question for you.
"Is there any work being done with submersibles
to investigate wrecks,
which are outside of a tech diver's limit?"
- Oh, absolutely.
We work with a couple of partners
and we use remote-operated vehicles.
Not necessarily submarines or things that you go down in,
but we will operate them from the deck of a boat
and we can get a real-time video feed.
And this allows us to spend well,
all day on a shipwreck that,
we may, if we were diving on,
we would be able to just invest a couple of minutes
without accruing a lot of decompression time.
So, it's definitely a tool that we use
and it also will have sonar equipment
and that'll allow us to take measurements
of certain features of the shipwreck
within one centimeter accuracy.
- Well, speaking of that,
Jeanette asks, "Is there regular surveillance
of the floor of the Great Lakes
and other places for new find?"
So how is that big, big area?
How is it covered?
- Actually, so because of the designation
of the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary,
we're getting NOAA vessels in,
that have the technology to be able to do bottom mapping.
And they are looking with not only sonar equipment,
but with magnetometers.
And so we should see quite a few other shipwrecks
and just interesting features,
maybe geologically, as well,
found within that sanctuary area.
- Thank you.
David, there's a lot of talent,
I'm gonna get out of the way of this photo,
which this photo is so amazing.
And I want, I think one of the things that we know
in creating these things, David knows, is every image,
everything that you see, someone created that image
or someone and someone thought it was so important
that it should be saved.
So some of the museums that we've mentioned,
some of the families who contributed,
they're really fundamental to sharing this history
because they recognize the importance of this.
So let's give a credit, David,
do you wanna explain who took that photo?
- Okay, so I don't know the person,
but his name is Andrew Orr,
and he has a website and I think
that's how we found that particular photo.
Quite a few of the other photos that we used
were actually taken by Tamara.
And you can find those
on the Wisconsin Historical Society website.
So, they had a number of photos.
We, relied on the Milwaukee Public Library
for Max Nohl photos.
There's-- Alpena Library is also a repository
of shipwreck photos
that we could tap into.
So we did use a number of number of different archives.
- Thanks, Chi, who's seven.
Thanks for joining us Chi.
Asked, "Have you worked with the Edmund Fitzgerald?"
So I guess, Tamara--
I don't think David has dived on the Edmund Fitzgerald--
so, Tamara, tell us about that.
- No, I haven't.
So, the Edmund Fitzgerald,
although it was home ported in Milwaukee
and does have Wisconsin connections
is actually lost in Canadian waters.
And so, it requires a permit
and to do any kind of archeological work on it,
and it's sort of outside the scope of what we do.
We're kind of limited with our archeology
to stay within the lines of the State of Wisconsin.
- So who would be working on that then?
Would that be your counterparts in Canada?
- Yeah Parks Canada could do that,
or really any archeological survey could apply for a permit
through the Canadian government
to work on shipwrecks there.
- Great, thank you for that,
thanks for that question, Chi.
Joan asks, again Tamara, "Does freshwater
preserve wrecks better than ocean water?"
- It does.
Our shipwrecks are actually very well preserved
because it's generally darker underwater
and has low oxygen levels,
but we are seeing some colonization of the shipwrecks.
I'm sure you've noticed that in the more recent videos
that they were covered with zebra mussels initially,
but now in Lake Michigan in particular,
zebra mussels have been outcompeted by quagga mussels
and they cover the entirety of the shipwreck inside and out,
and they don't require really the currents
that the zebra mussels did.
So we're seeing a little bit of a burden,
particularly with the metal shipwrecks.
And so we're seeing increased degradation
because of this mussel colonization.
- Tamara, for you, again,
what are the statistics for shipwrecks in the Great Lakes?
The question says which remain undiscovered,
which means, like, if it's undiscovered,
that means it's in a record somewhere, right?
So you gotta share that.
- Yeah, I can speak to Wisconsin.
So, when our office was founded in 1987,
my predecessors did, they created database,
they did a lot of research.
They looked at newspaper articles and insurance documents
and any kind of document they could get a hold of.
And they created this sort of
"likely to have been lost here" list.
And we came up with it, we change it every day too,
as we do research and we discover that something is here,
or maybe it's on the other side of the lake,
then it comes off the list or some things are added.
And so we're at about 752 shipwrecks
that are lost in Wisconsin waters.
And of those, we only know where a little
over 200 are located.
So there's still a lot here in Wisconsin
that's yet to be discovered.
So you just have to keep your eyes open
and go out there and look,
and there's good potential to find something.
- A question for David.
And we just have a couple more minutes,
and then we're gonna show you more great work
from our education team and partners.
David, how did you choose
which vessels to profile in the film?
- So I guess part of the answer to that is chronology.
So, at least, in the first segment of the program,
we wanted to show some of the early wrecks.
So we show that the Gallinipper,
which is Wisconsin's first shipwreck.
We go back and show a dugout canoe,
which is one of the oldest--
it's older than the one Tamara found.
- We better have Tamara explain that
if folks didn't see that,
but everybody should know about it.
So David continue and Tamara will cue that up.
Why you're in the front page of all our newspapers lately.
- He's finding words, yeah.[laughs]
- Yeah, so I mean, if you take,
if you draw like a Venn diagram of,
and, I learned this with, through Tamara,
through a series of long conversations with her
at the beginning.
So there are good looking kind of intact shipwrecks,
and then, there are good shipwreck stories.
And then, where do they meet?
And then the question is,
is there footage available?
Is there someone that knows the story?
So then it becomes kind of the art of the possible,
like out of all those, like what stories can we tell?
And then, it's just sort of a sifting and winnowing,
I guess, figuring out what would be the best story,
the best story, I guess.
- Appropriately the documentary begins with a dugout canoe.
So Timberland that you share that,
and then folks are really curious about the recent discovery
and so you can tell folks about that.
We just have two minutes,
so why don't we take those last two minutes?
We'll talk about the canoe that starts the show,
and then the canoe that's has everybody intrigued,
this recent discovery.
- So, the oldest known dugout canoe in the state
is the Mary Lake canoe.
And it is in the possession right now
of Kenosha Public Museum.
And conservation has been done on that.
It was discovered by a little girl and her grandmother
and I don't wanna ruin the story for people,
but that's what we'll cover
in the parts that are not covered tonight.
- On November 30th when we all tune in.
Go ahead, and then the recent discovery.
- Yeah, so I was,
I had finally had a Saturday off
and asked one of the girls from the dive shop
if she wanted to go out for a scooter ride.
These are these diver propulsion vehicles.
It's like a fan with a battery.
And pulling ourselves through the water...
it was June so our local lakes here in Madison
were pretty clear as far as the clarity of the water.
And we went to a dive site
that we have been to a million times.
And as we were scootering and turned around
at the turnaround point in our dive,
she was hovering right above the end of a dugout canoe.
And we went back out
and uncovered it
and found out that it was intact.
And at that point, the Historical Society
made a decision that it needed to come up.
And so we did radiocarbon dating
and we discovered our canoe is 1,200 years old.
So it dated to 800 A.D. [laughs]
when it was created,
which is, like, mind boggling to me.
So I just, to the hands of people
that lived here so many years before us.
So then, so it's been brought up.
It's in the state.
This was November 2nd,
it was brought up with the help
of Dane County Sheriff Department
and a number of our volunteers
from the State Historical Society.
And it's now in the state archive and preservation facility,
where it will undergo about two-and-a-half years
of treatment before it will be stable enough
to be on display.
- Thanks, Tamara.
Tamara's gonna hang out with us as we go now
to chapter two of the three chapters.
Let me introduce you to Alyssa Tsagong,
the Director of Education at PBS Wisconsin,
and Jim Matthews, who joins us from Field Day.
I think maybe Alyssa,
why don't you take over and share the education work,
this really fun game that y'all are working on.
And then, it would be great for you to say great things
about Field Day and about the great work that they do.
So, go ahead.
- Thank you so much, Jon.
Hello, everyone.
It's just such a pleasure to be with you tonight, talking about
all of this amazing content with Shipwrecks!
I think you can see why we were excited
to bring these legends and mysteries to kids in Wisconsin
and around the country.
And so, at PBS Wisconsin, our education department
uses technology to support learning
that's powered by curiosity.
You might be familiar with the way that happens
through PBS Kids.
Back in the day when some of these ships sank and sailed,
we did that through the radio,
through radio broadcast.
And we also create unique classroom media
together with Wisconsin learners and educators
that helps inspire about where we live,
and history, culture,
and science, and other topics.
And so, today, Jim and I are so excited
to introduce you with a sneak preview
of The Legend of the Lost Emerald.
It's an educational video game for students
in fourth through sixth grade
and learners will start with a mystery
and they'll use critical thinking
and historical inquiry skills
to uncover the real treasure,
the stories that are behind those legendary shipwrecks.
So, together with Field Day Lab,
we're working with a cohort of Wisconsin educators,
Wisconsin Sea Grant, the Historical Society and Tamara,
and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
to create this.
We're still in development on this game
and it'll launch to the public and be in classrooms everywhere
in late February 2022.
So, Jim, I'm really excited to introduce you to our friends.
- Thanks, Alyssa.
Hello everybody, I'm really excited
to be representing Field Day,
to hear and we have a team that is behind the game
that you're gonna get a sneak peek at.
But Field Day is a game design studio
and research lab at the University of Wisconsin.
We're housed in the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means that we both design games.
at a very high quality level.
We have a complete team of artists, and sound engineers,
and computer programmers, and artists and story writers
that all come together to build games.
But we're also very curious about the research end of that.
So how do teachers pick these up,
what the kids learn by playing games, et cetera?
So, one of the reasons
that we love working with PBS Wisconsin
is because they share some of our values,
one of them about the Wisconsin Idea.
So we have things happening at the university
and when we wanna make sure that gets out
to the rest of the state.
And also we're just really committed to public media,
as well, at Field Day.
And we, if you have not played it yet,
we've worked together before.
We co-created a game called Jo Wilder and the Capitol Case,
which is a historical inquiry game
for fourth through sixth grade students.
And so, we are back at it again,
this time, very, very much inspired by the work
that Tamara and other archeologists
and shipwreck hunters have been doing
as you saw in the documentary preview.
But in this case,
we're gonna show you a little bit of a short clip,
but I wanna just give you a couple things
before you watch it,
is that number one: in this particular game,
you're going to roleplay as a marine archeologist.
Very much inspired by Tamara.
And one of the key things
that if you heard Tamara get excited, it's really very often
not only about the dives, which you can do in this game,
but also the stories around the shipwrecks, as well.
So we wanted this game to really highlight the stories.
So when you watch this clip,
each of the levels has a little bit of a loop
where you learn about a shipwreck,
but you don't know what wreck it is.
And then you have to do some investigation.
You go on a dive and you do some documentation,
but you also have to get some information from the archives
and you glue all this stuff together.
And at the end of the level,
you are rewarded with a little bit more background
about the shipwreck.
So while you watch this, just note,
one important thing to note is that
there is sound in the game,
we have a wonderful engineers and musicians
and sound folks working on the game,
but in this particular clip which is about 45 seconds,
there won't be any sound in this particular clip.
And we'll see you on the other end
and talk a little bit more about it.
[no audio]
- What did you think?
I hope that you saw in that little montage,
that the learning goals of this game
are placed within beautiful art and a narrative
that keeps kids practicing these important skills.
Through the way that the educators
will bring this game to life in their classrooms,
our students will engage in that critical thinking
to solve the mysteries.
And they'll gather evidence from a lot of different sources
just like happens in real life with maritime archeology.
And they'll also use primary and secondary source materials
to support an evidence-based conclusion.
This is really hard to teach,
but put in this exciting context, it's a lot of fun.
And as Jim mentioned, Field Day and PBS Wisconsin,
we have a lot of shared values
and that commitment
of an engaged model of content creation
and working together with teachers and students
and subject matter experts,
is really important.
It ensures that what we make it's useful
and it supports academic achievement.
And so, we offer this spark,
the game doesn't take days and months to play.
It might be able to be played in one day
or over a couple of classes.
And so, that spark becomes
something that sets learners on a journey of their own making.
It helps them look at the world around them
a little bit differently that we think.
And so, bringing those forces together,
we're in the most exciting time of the project, in my opinion.
We're playtesting.
Playtesting is something that is really critical
to the development of games and educational media.
And Jim, I was wondering if you could share
a little bit by what that term "playtesting" means
and why it's so important to our process.
- Yeah, I'll try to do this quickly.
We don't have a lot of time, but I will say this:
is that without teachers and students playtesting our games,
the quality is just, is not where it needs to be.
We really need teachers putting their eyes on the game
and giving their expertise and feedback.
And then, more importantly, we actually need students.
They are ultimately the end users, right?
If students are not enjoying the game,
if they're not engaged,
if they're not learning from the game,
then we haven't knocked it out of the park.
So it's very important throughout our process
to be working with both teachers
to conceptualize, design, and implement games.
And as part of that,
students are along for the ride, so to speak, as well.
- Thanks, Jim.
Well, I know there's much more
that we'll be ready to share in the months ahead,
and we're excited to have everyone see this game in 2022.
And now, you all have the opportunity to hear
from my colleagues, Amber and Cailin,
who are gonna share about the ways
that they've been using emerging technologies
to engage you in new ways
through immersive, 360, and virtual reality experiences.
- Hi everyone.
Thanks for joining us tonight.
My name is Amber Samdahl,
and I'm the Creative Director here at PBS Wisconsin.
- I'm Cailin Short,
and I'm an environment designer here at the station, as well.
- So we're part of the design team here at PBS Wisconsin.
And we're really excited to be here today
to share some of our work with you.
Our team has been seeking innovative new ways
to create content and connect with our audiences.
With those goals in mind,
we've been exploring emerging technologies,
in particular 360 and virtual reality or VR content.
So when thinking about emerging technologies,
we thought underwater shipwrecks provided
a perfect fit for creating immersive experiential content.
So in addition to the Shipwrecks! documentary
you saw tonight, and the Shipwrecks! game,
you just heard about,
the third element of the Shipwrecks! project
is what we call Shipwrecks! the Immersive Experience.
And this is a collection of three interactive experiences
that will launch in parallel
with the documentary this November.
These experiences will live online
on our Shipwrecks! webpage
and can be accessed from any web browser.
It can also be accessed through a virtual reality
or VR headset.
Our three experiences all center around
the story of the S.S. Wisconsin.
This was a packet and passenger steamer
that sank off the coast of Kenosha in October 1929.
Now each of these experiences focuses
on a different element of the Wisconsin story.
The first experience: we are invited to go on a dive
down to the wreck of the Wisconsin
in a 360 video.
The second experience is an interactive exploration
of the shipwreck on the lakebed today.
And the third experience is an interactive virtual tour.
And this shares the historical narrative
of the ship and the stories of the survivors
as we explore a 3D model of the ship
on the night of its sinking.
Now, each of these experiences
were developed very closely in collaboration
with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
We worked closely with them to collect the stories,
the research, the data about the S.S. Wisconsin.
- Cailin Short: The first experience that we mentioned
is the dive down to the S.S. Wisconsin.
This is a 360 video dive that we conducted in June of 2020.
We had a videographer go out to the site
of the S.S. Wisconsin and dive down
and film everything from above the water,
the descent down to lakebed,
and a full run across the top
of the S.S. Wisconsin shipwreck.
We then took that video, added ambisonic audio.
That is audio that can completely surround you
and will move with you as you change your head
and position in a VR headset.
Added the ambisonic audio,
added immersive interactive graphics
and populated the entire video
with information about the site of the S.S. Wisconsin itself
and the shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
And this is a clip of the 360 experience.
For the purposes of viewing today,
we decided to take out the audio,
but when you experience it for yourself,
you'll be able to hear a beautiful ambisonic soundscape
designed by Beaux, one of our audio designers at the station.
The motion graphics pinpoint important aspects of the ship
and let the viewers know some history
of the shipwreck itself.
- Amber The second experience in our collection
is a virtual tour of the S.S. Wisconsin shipwreck,
as it looks on the lakebed today.
So, on that very same dive back in June of 2020,
we also did what is called a photogrammetry scan.
So this was an actual digital scan
of the shipwreck underwater
and with assistance from some of our friends
over at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery,
we were able to take that data and convert it
into a digital 3D model,
which served as the foundation for our experience.
So here you can see the data as we're putting it together.
And then here it is in its nearly final 3D modeled state.
So this is a very, very accurate representation
of what the shipwreck looks like on the lakebed today.
So we were able to actually use that model
and then craft a tour so that you can experience
what it's like to be a scuba diver
and actually swim around and through that shipwreck today.
So this is a clip
of what that 3D virtual tour
feels like.
So this was captured
on a desktop computer.
You could see what it's like
to actually spin around
and look at this shipwreck
in full 360.
Again, we have the audio
turned off here for presentation purposes,
but it has, again, that ambisonic audio
really sounds like you're underwater.
We have also included some underwater videos
that show the divers, as they explore the wreck.
So again, this model is actually based on real data.
So it's a very accurate representation
of what it feels like.
We've got some great footage of going
right into the wreck itself.
So you can see what some of the cargo looks like
as it's sitting there on the lakebed.
We also have some more interactive elements
embedded in the tour.
So you can click and zoom and look in up close
at some of the cargo items that are still there on the ship.
And it gives you a chance to spin them around
and look at them up close,
see what they looked like in their prime
and learn a little bit more
about what's inside the Wisconsin.
- Cailin: The final experience
is the sinking of the S.S. Wisconsin.
This is a recreative model of the S.S. Wisconsin
on the night she sank in 1929.
We worked very closely with the Historical Society
to craft this model,
and worked very hard to research and source
historically accurate resources
for us to create our art development.
So, this is an example of a 3D white model.
This is a model of one of the locations that you can visit
in the VR experience.
This is the captain's bridge.
This is what the model looks like before
we would add our texture and final color to it.
Then we were able to hand off to our painter
to take it from this into...
this.
So all of the finishes are researched for their accuracy,
for the ship itself.
Cross-referenced with so much material.
This is the original model of our vessel,
and this is our model with our research
and our concept art applied to it.
And then this is a clip of the immersive experience.
The entire experience is narrated by Fred Minnow,
who was an insurance investigator
who investigated the sinking of the S.S. Wisconsin.
In his investigation, the report included
his best guess of what happened.
It also includes survivor accounts
of what was happening on the ship
as it sank
from 11 o'clock at night,
all the way to 6:00 AM when they abandoned ship.
And this experience follows three survivors.
We have Kenneth Carlson, who's the radio operator.
And then, we have Anthony Tillman,
who is an oiler aboard the S.S. Wisconsin.
He's the person who first noticed
water coming into the engine room.
And then we have Edward Halverson,
who is the first mate.
We also have interactive props that populate
this whole experience
and tons of other information,
such as this map here, you can see on the table.
This became an excellent opportunity
for us to input all of our research as little "Easter eggs"
for you all to explore as you tour the vessel.
All of this can be viewed on a desktop, mobile, or a tablet,
but it can also be viewed in a VR viewer.
As a pledged premium, we are providing cardboard viewers
to our audience.
This allows you to insert your phone
into this cardboard headset
and transform your phone into a VR viewer.
- Amber Samdahl: Thank you very much, Cailin,
and thanks, everyone, for having us.
We really appreciate your support of PBS Wisconsin.
- Hi, I'm Jon Miskowski, PBS Wisconsin
back to introduce you more formally to Amber Samdahl
and Cailin Short,
who worked on this project.
Why don't I start with a question for you, Amber,
and then you can give a little bit more
about your background here.
And then, Cailin, I'll ask you a question
and then you can tell a little bit about your background.
So we have about
a little bit more than 15 minutes left,
so you can please add your questions to the chat.
It's great to see so many generations of folks here today.
The seven-year-olds, thank you so much for joining us.
It's really great that you are asking questions.
So, Amber, my question for you is like
if I were gonna do a 360 work
and thinking about it underwater,
there's a lot of light problems underwater.
You know, we see some of the real dives,
so can we talk about technology?
How do you visualize this stuff that's so hard to see
in the best conditions?
- Thanks, Jon.
That's a great question.
So we had a couple of different techniques with our work.
One is actually in the underwater dive
that you saw a clip from our videographer
went underwater with our 360 camera
and had a lighting toolkit with him.
And in some of our footage,
you can actually see another diver going through
with these great lighting rigs with them.
So you can actually capture underwater
because it's very dark down there.
So you can actually capture that video.
And then, for our recreated models,
because those were based on scan data
and that we made into 3D models,
we're actually able to bring that into a 3D modeling program
and paint them and light them digitally.
And so that gives us a lot of flexibility
to be able to highlight different parts of it
and really draw focus to areas
that might be otherwise difficult to see.
- So, Cailin, you can introduce yourself.
And then, here's my first question for you.
Are the, some of the questions that we're getting is,
where can people see this?
And where can they get the VR viewers?
Tell us a little bit about that world.
- Yeah, so all of our content is going to be hosted
on the PBS website.
We've done extensive playtesting
to be able to host it on desktop, tablet, phone.
If you want a VR viewer,
they're available through pledge,
You can receive these
as a gift for your pledge.
And all of our content
can then be transported into the VR sphere
using our cardboard viewers.
- So, Cailin,
maybe talk a little bit about that cardboard viewer.
So if folks aren't familiar with it,
if you watch commercial television
you're gonna see a lot of advertising for the Oculus VR.
So maybe that's sort of not the most expensive thing out there,
but that's a little bit of expensive.
So maybe talk about the Oculus
and then compare it to the cardboard viewer,
which is a couple of dollars, or in case on November 30th,
you pledge to PBS Wisconsin, I know where you can get one.
So, Cailin, you wanna describe the difference there?
- Cailin Short: Sure, yeah.
The Oculus headset is a piece of machinery
that you can purchase that is within reason for some.
It's definitely gotten better in the last few years, Oculus.
VR viewers and headsets
have definitely been decreasing in their price
and therefore are more accessible to the mainstream.
The cardboard viewer though,
is something that we've seen for years,
not just in media,
but also just available through so many different outlets.
And it's something that transforms your own cell phone
into a VR viewer.
So it's a lot more accessible than a piece of machinery.
- So, there are other brands out there.
The Oculus is just one
that's probably the most visibly available,
but go online.
And if folks wanna read about those options.
Maybe Amber,
you could talk a little bit
about the other educational material
that are on these platforms,
and what kind of world of VR is out there.
- Amber Samdahl: Sure, yeah.
There's a lot of great resources.
As Cailin mentioned, VR is really a growing field.
It's really provides a great way
to engage students in classrooms, as well.
You heard about our great education game coming out soon,
and these types of tools also provide a great way
to connect with students and engage with content
in a different way.
It's definitely a growing field
and becoming more and more accessible
as I have my little cardboard viewer here.
It's really just this plus a phone
and you get to actually experience it yourself
and engage with this content in a new way.
So it's really exciting to be experimenting with this
and bringing this out to our communities across Wisconsin.
- Schultz asked, you mentioned using actual data
to get accurate measurements for the 3D programs.
So maybe, Cailin or Amber,
what data methods did you use?
- Well, so we used LIDAR scan
to go down to the shipwreck itself, the S.S. Wisconsin,
and capture the data of the ship itself
to then recreate a 3D model that we were able to produce
into this VR tour.
We also,
for the sinking experience
we were also able to cross-reference blueprints
from multiple years of the S.S. Wisconsin
and generate our model from existing blueprints.
So, it's a little bit of a combination of real data
that we captured in real-time at the site
of the wreck itself, and then information
that we had to assimilate to recreate our best imagining
of what the S.S. Wisconsin would have looked like.
- Jon Miskowski: Yeah, Amber,
you wanna talk a little bit about the artwork
would you wanna acknowledge though,
Schultz was a diver who volunteered
on the measurements of the S.S. Wisconsin?
So thanks for that work.
Do you wanna talk a little bit about the other ways
that they're building the artwork again,
trying to illustrate something
that otherwise it's really hard to see?
- Sure, yes.
As Cailin mentioned, this took a lot of research,
scouring through survivor accounts,
the investigative reports,
anything that might mention a detail
about what the ship looked like.
I think we learned there's crown molding in the engine room.
That just any little detail we could find out
about materials, colors, layout of the space
helped us start to craft that experience
and visualize it.
So what we did with all that information,
building off of blueprints, photos that we had,
we started crafting these 3D models, which as you saw,
started off as just kind of a plain gray object.
And then again,
using that research to start to fill in the gaps,
we were able to then digitally paint them,
figure out the lighting
based on the time of night, the weather,
start to build the world around it.
So you'll see in this image here,
for instance, we crafted the wave.
What does the waves look like in the middle of the night?
What does the sky look like?
And we have to build the whole world around its experience
to really make sure it feels immersive
and sounds immersive, as well.
- So Amber, we've talked about the players
and folks can go online to find a little bit more about that
if they want.
And this material will also be available
on, like, YouTube.
So why don't you explain that experience too?
That this is readily available
without the goggles
just by visiting YouTube
and other services like that?
- Absolutely.
Our experiences all will be linked on the same page
with our documentary.
I believe it will be pbswisconsin.org/shipwrecks.
And all three of the immersive experiences
will be linked on there, one links directly to YouTube.
So anyone with a web browser will be able to access that
and interact with the full 360 experience.
And then, the other two S.S. Wisconsin tours
will also be accessible directly on a web browser.
So it works on a mobile device, on a tablet, desktop, laptop,
and you can fully get that nice experience
and the full immersion right on your computer.
- Jon Miskowski: Wow, this is a couple of great questions.
And while I, like, scan this question,
I would like Jim and Alyssa to just do,
what we all want to do is thank teachers across the state
for this participation
and talk a little bit about playtesting.
We know we have some teachers watching,
we know some of them have participated in our work
in the past and in this project.
So you guys talk about the teachers' role in this,
and then I'm gonna scan this question for our group.
So, and then
we're gonna be probably finishing up with that.
Alyssa, why don't you give us a start on that?
- Well, I certainly see some of our teacher fellows in the chat.
Shout out to Mike in Door County,
and I'm sure there's others of you.
We couldn't do this work
without your expertise and brilliance,
and we're so impressed
with what you do in your classrooms every single day!
Thank you.
- Jon Miskowski: Great.
And Jim, you wanna talk about
how teachers inform on the creation of the game?
And then, we'll get to these big questions for,
I think Tamara's got--
We have 50 questions lined up for Tamara,
but we'll try to keep it in time.
Jim, you wanna talk about
how teachers work on the playtesting again?
- Yeah, when we work with teachers,
it's such a critical part.
And really, we run fellowships and bring teachers in
at three really core stages.
One is early on for design.
We spent two days hanging out with Tamara and her colleagues
just learning about shipwrecks.
We weren't even thinking about a game at that point.
And then, we moved-- that's phase one,
and then, we move into phase two,
which is getting teachers involved in concepting a game,
and beginning to think about what a game can look like?
And how does it fit in their curriculum?
And what needs do they have?
And then we, as part of that production,
we have the teachers give feedback on it,
but also have their kids give feedback on it.
And it's so critical for us to get that.
And then the last part is once we have this game,
the real question is,
"Well, how are teachers gonna implement it?
It's like we don't just clean our hands after that,
we have a third phase,
which is about implementing the game in the classroom.
And teachers are so creative about how they use these games.
So we have to continue to ask questions
and learn from them,
and we do it with eager minds and open hearts.
- Jon: And I think one thing that we've from teachers, too...
[laughing] Thanks Alyssa.
...is how teachers build around this.
So they take the game and really build things around it.
So it's not simply this 20-minute experience,
but often it links up to other experiences
that are even outside the classroom.
And really just sparking that curiosity
as Alyssa said earlier.
Okay, so here's...
I do have another question though, for Alyssa.
Some of the artwork in that is just so stunningly beautiful.
Certainly reminds me of our favorite storybooks.
So I do wanna know,
where did the artwork come together?
Then I'll actually get to these questions.
- Oh, there's so much to share about the beautiful artwork,
and there's an amazing creative director at Field Day,
Sarah Gagnon, and she really assembles an incredible team,
including members of the PBS Wisconsin staff
have been part of art concepting
for both this game and Jo Wilder.
And so, there's a lot of talent and effort
that comes and inspired by the stories.
- Thomsen: Great, thank you.
Okay, so Tamara, does the Wisconsin Historical Society
plan to generate 3D models of wrecks on a large scale?
This is, Quinn says,
"I've seen this starting to become a trend
"on the Great Lakes,
"and I think this is one of the best ways to document the wrecks
before they degrade further."
- Yeah, we've been collecting data
for the last several years, three or four years,
to try to create photogrammetry models.
So, and we've been working with Tori Galloway,
out of Indiana University
for quite a few of them,
but we're continuing on.
She taught us quite a bit when she was here as our intern.
- Great, thank you.
So one of the questions here is:
Each of the folks,
so we'll go back to Tamara and then we'll go to Amber
and then we'll work through all of you.
Okay, "So if each of the folks on the program
"have seemed to have such a diverse background.
"For a young adult watching, what majors in college
"would each of you recommend
"that would be the most helpful
toward a career in diving and discovering shipwrecks?"
Tamara.
[Tamara laughing]
- Tamara Thomsen: So, yeah.
Well, take a diving class, first of all,
that would be a good one.
I took it in college and it inspired me.
And then,
any kind of art that you can get into.
I mean, we do an awful lot of drawing underwater
and I've appreciated everything that I've learned from that.
I should say science and math and all of that
because that goes into it too.
But I think for the most useful thing,
it would be to be able to be artistic
and to be able to convey what you're seeing underwater,
because we actually do draw with pencil
and "Rite in the Rain" paper Mylar underwater.
- Amber, do you wanna give
a little bit of maybe your take on that question?
- That's a great question.
And, Tamara, I love your answer so much.
I was thinking the same type of thing,
anything that really combines right brain and left brain.
Really.
I love the take on combining design and art,
and how you visualize the world,
and then, that scientific curiosity
and how you are always searching for more
and exploring more.
So I think that combination is really the way to go.
- Alyssa?
- I mean, I would look to Fred Rogers,
Mr. Rogers would tell us to be kind and to be curious.
- And David?
- Well, I think photography might be one way into it.
The camera can take you a lot of places
and especially if you do what Tamara's done
and you combine that with diving,
then you could visit shipwrecks and take pictures of them.
- Cailin?
- I think it's important to note
that when you're down underwater,
what I've heard over and over through my research is that
you're only seeing small segments of the ship at a time.
And it's really important to have spatial awareness
and understanding of how things go together
as you're documenting the wreck.
So my background is in carpentry and set design.
So an understanding of how spaces are knit together
is crucial for this kind of work,
because you're only getting small snapshots at a time.
- And Jim.
- Jim: I think one of the things is,
whatever you can do to develop curiosity.
And also David and Tamara
I think both really highlighted
this idea of the archives and being curious
and discovering how to uncover things
and find things and meet people and that kind of stuff.
So, whatever degree and background gets you there.
[laughing]
- Yeah, I think I will speak
to PBS Wisconsin and my colleagues.
That isn't directly to the question,
but we have people from all different degrees
and what they have in common is this curiosity,
it's this unending desire to learn,
and the sort of passion to share that
and make a better state,
make a better world,
make a better community,
and their families, as well.
So I think that's the common ground.
We just have 90 seconds left
and thanks for all of you for joining us.
And a nod to the many funders.
When you watch on November 30th, you'll see that list.
If you know those folks, please thank them.
They took this idea when it was just like this idea.
We just, someone had an idea
and they came forward
and said that they believed in that idea
and made a gift
and made many gifts to support this work.
Now some of us can sit back and see the results of that
and see how wonderful it is and support PBS Wisconsin,
support Field Day,
support Wisconsin Historical Society
for this great depth,
for this great work that they all do.
But we also, those funders who had that vision
to see what was possible.
It's really exciting for us to share.
So, what's our homework?
November 30th, you're gonna tune in
and you are also, before that,
you're going to now, you're going to start sharing.
You have email lists.
You can go to the PBS Wisconsin website
and find our video and share it on Facebook.
This is just such a wonderful celebration
of some really difficult stories
and some amazing work in Wisconsin
of people to preserve those important stories for our state.
So really, thank you for joining us tonight
and thank you for supporting PBS Wisconsin.
Goodnight.
* Hooray
* For a race
* Down the lakes
[folksy music]