CC
Wednesday Nite at the Lab. >> Welcome, everyone, to
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We do this every Wednesday
Tonight, I'm delighted to be night, 50 times a year.
Thomsen. able to introduce to you Tamara
instructor, and she's one of the She's a 20-year veteran diving
diving instructors who are handful of female technical
rebreather, and mixed gas teachindiving.ce cave,
Her expertise in scientific diving allows her to dive the
globe discovering,
submerged caves and shipwrecks. A maritime archeologist for the
Wisconsin Historical Society, Tamara has joined exploration
project on the USS Monitor, the RMS Titanic, and the TN Andrea
Doria, as well as numerous other
She hasn't been to my house yet. wrecks.
Her work has resulted in listing 26 Minnesota and
Wisconsin shipwrecks to the National Register of Historic
Places. Her photographs have been
featured in National Geographic New, in Science, in Forbes
magazine, in Popular Science, and in the Wisconsin Magazine of
History, and most popular dive
She speaks and writes regularly about dive exploration and, in
particular, in the Great Lakes
her bottom time. where she spends the majority of
genetics department at UW Madison, the building in which
we are in.
Tamara to Wednesday Nite at the Please join Lab.n welcoming
[APPLAUSE]
for having me, and I wanted to >> Well, thank you
feel free to answer back. staHow many of you knew thats so
historically there are 750
in Wisconsin waters? shipwrecks that are ship losses
Did you guess more or did you How manguess less?ew that?
Less, yeah. And of those 750 known losses of
ships in Wisconsin waters, would
been found? We only know the location of 150
of those lost shipwrecks. Would you have guessed more or
less? More, wow, okay.
Less. So actually it's an open market
for people who are searching for
of them out there, and there's shipwrecks, there's an awful lot
you would be able to find them. probabGood reasonability.e that
Of those 150 that we know the location of, Wisconsin has 44
listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
That's actually more than any other state in the country.
So what we have that's on our bottom lands that's below the
surface of the water that's under the waves is something
that's historically significant and really special.
Our maritime history, our maritime heritage is Wisconsin's
history, and it says a lot to the founding of our state.
So tonight I wanted to talk to
shipwrecks that we have listed you about one of the 44
Historic Places. on the National Register of
Appomattox. As part of my job working for
Wisconsin Historical Society
at these shipwrecks as a time what I get tcapsule.really look
They went down with everything
aboard, everything the captain that the crew would have had
the cargo, and really a point in would have had aboard, all of
It's really interesting to look tiat the cultural history, them.
items that are left on the
we do is we look structurally at bottom, but another thing that
And so we look at the puzzle what we see.
archeological site, and we try pieces that make up the
constructed this way and how was to think about why was it
especially for wooden vessels. it constructed this way,
about how these wooden vessels There really isn't a lot known
There isn't an archive of all the ship plans that were ever
made that's out there.
sparse things that you can find Whathat you can use to makeust
determinations, but a lot of
from looking at the archeological sites that are ond
our bottom lands. So tonight we're going to look
at the wooden bulk carrier
She was built in 1896, and she's Appomattox.
for a couple of reasons. listed on the National Register
was the largest wooden bulk Butcarrier ever built, and weshe
believe that that's not just on the Great Lakes but that's in
the world.
special things that we learn And so there's a lot of really
constructed. about this vessel and how it was
in 20 feet of water just north She actually rests on the bottom
Does anyone know where Shorewood of Milwaukee.
just north, and there's Atwater is, the vilBeach?f Shorewood
If you go off the beach about 200, sorry, about 150 yards,
you'll actually find the
So it's a really interesting wreckage there.
scuba diving and explore. pThis gentleman that we have up
here is James Davidson. He was the builder of the
Appomattox, and he wasn't just
owner of this ship for a good the bmajority of her life.ly the
And he developed a lot of techniques for building these
vessels which allowed them to become longer and longer and
actually exceed what a lot of people thought were the limits
for wooden shipbuilding.
later. And we'll go into these a little
about a 40-year career sailing Captain Davidson actually had
And when he built and he owned himself on the lakes.
the Davidson Steamship line, and the Appomattox, he ran her under
cargoes around the lakes. And she wouldn't just carry the
iron ore or the coal by herself.
her, a schooner barge. She towed another boat behind
vessels. So schooner barges were big
sail independently on their own if they had to in the event of a
storm, but they were most commonly towed behind a
steamboat.
they're towed behind they're And he also built, and when
So the consort for the called a consort.
Santiago, and James Davidson Appomattox was called the
So here's a picture of the crew of the Appomattox at one of the
coal docks. The Appomattox led a pretty
uneventful career.
having many mishaps on the She really isn't noted for
The only one that really stands out is she did have an accident
on the St. Clair River, and what
barge that's being towed behind his it makes it a little bitn
difficult to steer your vessel. So they were running in a fog.
They were trying to steer, and
the Santiago veered off and hit tanother schooner barge calledd
the Fontana.
Fontana, and unfortunately one And they immediately sunk the
accident. oSo after that, really the only
other accident was the accident that caused the loss of
Appomattox. The Appomattox was lost on the
2nd of November, 1905.
with the Santiago in tow, and as She was approaching Milwaukee
closer to the city they encountered a fog, a combination
of fog and industrial smoke from
And they got confused in their the city.
approaching North Point, and she navigation when they were
shore, up on the beach. And she actually grounded and
then she also grounded the
But she wasn't the only vessel Santiago.
There was actually another that was lost in this fog.
lost. So now there's these three big
vessels that are up on the
from Milwaukee to try to free beach, athe vessels.ent tugs
And they were able to, it was moderate weather conditions.
Not too rough.
Santiago off. They were able to get the Iowa
off.
remained hard aground. And the Appomattox still
and they offloaded some of the So they sent for some barges,
They call this lightering, and cargo.
putting it onto barges. thIt took them about 13 days.gan
Over that 13-day period weather starting getting rough, the ship
started breaking up.
and they got as much coal off as Actually, the bottom broke out,
abandon the salvage attempts and they could, but they decided to
It took about two years for someone to come back and to
recover her boiler and then recover her engines.
And in the meantime, any coal that had been left on the ship
had been washed ashore, and then
scavenging the coal to heat their buildings over the winter.
So it was definitely going to good use.
So to give a perspective on how big the Appomattox was, I know I
had said that it was the largest
ever built. We can take a look at this ship
here. This is actually the British
ship of the line Victory. Have you seen Master and
Commander?
So this is Victory from the Battle of Trafalgar.
She was 228 feet in length, and she had about the same tonnage
as the Appomattox.
to be the most advanced in At the time, this was considered
And it was thought that this wooden ship technology.
that you could go, biggest, largest, in wooden shipbuilding.
But if we add the Appomattox
Appomattox was a little narrower behind, you can see that the
feet in length. tAgain, about the same depth of
hold, about the same tonnage. So quite a bit longer.
And when you think about wooden vessels, you have to think about
stresses that occur on the
And so we can just talk about those a little bit for the
engineering people that showed
We can talk about wave action. up today.
cycle that passes over these And so as you have a normal wave
actually will have the ends, the mammoth wooden vessels, you
the middle sag, and as it bow apasses, vice versa.p and
So there's quite a bit of stress
When you're looking at the Great that happens.
actually, a shorter period Lakes, you're looking at,
So you're looking at even more between the waves.
And to add to this, if you think stresses.
would put on the outer hull, about the planking that they
longitudinally, and they're butted to each other.
And so when you have these
going to open up the joints, and stresses from the waves, that's
come in. it's going to allow water to
these wooden ship builders would That's one of the things that
The other thing they would have to think about is what's called
hogging and sagging.
wooden vessel, it starts losing its strength and its rigidity.
And so they need to accommodate for certain things.
Hogging is when the bow and the stern would drop, and it would
rise up in the middle.
stern stay up, and it sags in Sagging isthe middle.bow and the
And so these can be accounted for age, age definitely does
this, but also these two things can be caused by loading,
improper loading of a vessel. So, again, you need to
structurally add things to the
this. veSo let's talk about how theyte
would normally longitudinally deal with these stresses.
Normal shipbuilding, if we take a look, let's see if I can get
this guy up here, we look up
start here. That's going to be how you would
build a smaller wooden vessel.
assemblages, you would lay down Ywhat they call the backbone ofn
the ship, the keel. On top of that, you would lay
the floors and then put a single
As you get longer in vessel, you keelson.
to this. then add more structural support
either side of the keelson. Those you would call sister
keelsons. If you would put another
structural member on top, a timber on top, that would be
called a rider keelson. Then we go down to the next one
below that over here. You can see then that, again,
you can add even more riders. So you put two additional
timbers on top and astride of the rider.
Those are called sister riders. And then we can go down to even
a longer vessel in the bottom corner here, and we would have
the sisters with the rider
rider on top of the rider. keelsons on top and yet another
a second rider. SOkay, so here's your question,d
your quiz question: if you were going to put members outbound of
the sister keelsons, what would those be called?
Any guesses?
Cousins. >> [INAUDIBLE]
Good guess, though. So James Davidson had a
different approach to this. So what he decided to do, again
if you're going to add all of those timbers in the center of
your vessel, what are you going to take away?
You're going to take away room
If you take away room for cargo, for cargo.
money. you're going to not make as much
to this, and he went with the So he tosingle keelson.approach
This keelson, of course, was
The biggest piece of wood you abscan think of.th.
It was actually 17 inches across
really big piece of wood. And then on either side of that
he added iron plate.
thick and ran the length of the So this irokeelson.was an inch
And then he went ahead and
these six floor keelsons. These six floor keelsons are 13
inches by 13 inches.
the bottom. So, So in 2003 the Wisconsine on
Historical Society did a survey,
So that's documenting everything a phase two survey of this site.
And we were able to develop this to scale in place.
looks like. siSo you have the lower bilgeite
section, which is the majority
right in this area, and then you of it, which is going to be
sort of fallen away. see here that the port side has
the lower part of the bilge. So that's fallen outward from
this lower bilge section and So if we want to take a look at
you can see that here's your kind of look a little closer,
your six floor keelsons, and if we look at this under water, and
this is actually what it looks
Michigan, you can see that we have here the keelson and then
you have the iron plating which is on either side of that.
And this is bolted in place with
stabilized. We're going to talk about those
drift pins in a little bit too. So another look under water
you'll see the six floor
And to give you a little bit of perspective, this gentleman is
actually one of our longtime
and in this picture he's about volunteers, Kimm Stablefeldt,
gentleman. 250 pounds, about a 6-foot tall
you can see those are some So to use the diver for scale
wood that's on the bottom of the really, really big pieces of
So there's like a forest down there.
We want to also look at additional support that they
used to really help structurally
have is triple framing. Normal wooden vessels are they
ones that we typically would see
So two pieces of wood side by side that are kind of bolted
together and that would form
as it's spread out. These they use triple frames and
they also space them a lot
So each one of these pieces of closer together.
So when they're put together, you're going to have five by 15
or 16, and then a short space in
again. between and you'll have that
stability. This actually provided a lot of
framing here. But also what they could do with
this is then on the bottom of the boat to make the floor of
the ship where you put the cargo
planks athwart ship, across the on top, theyship.d lay out the
So that allowed them to use cheaper lumber to be able to put
on the floor. It also allowed them to replace
and make repairs a little bit more easily.
In your normal shipbuilding,
ship. tSo as I said before, you can't
find these plans very often, but
that exist for the Thomas there happeCranage. ship plans
This is a James Davidson built
She was built three years prior to Appomattox, and she's about
20 feet shorter.
construction techniques that you So she employs a lot of the
that it was very similarly built see in Appomattox, and we think
So take a look at some of this to Appomattox.
was doing to make the longer combination of things that he
he was doing was adding the vesssteel in to be able toings
strengthen the weaknesses in the
And you see what he has here is he adds in a hogging truss.
So this prevents that bending or
the ends up. bowing of the vessel and brings
is a remnant of this that exists We'll take a look at where there
Just a small piece of it. This is 30 inches wide.
It's about three-quarters of an inch thick.
So it's a really big and strong piece of metal, and it runs from
the bilge up in an arch along the vessel line and will kind of
round out just under the weather
Here's a picture of it under deck or the uppermost deck.
You can kind of see it water.
This is going to be, this piece right here that's running along,
that's going to be your hogging truss there.
So the other thing that he did
or a basket truss that he put wasinternal into the ship.eave
And so we have this on the
planking. And these members were actually
five inches wide and about half an inch thick.
And then they were peened through in order to create sort
of a sandwich.
side. So if you take a closer look at
this diagram, you can see how everything was lined up, and
then it would be bolted through and used to keep the whole hull
side together as a unit.
These are metal. >> Are those wooden or metal?
Or iron, sorry. SAnd so you'd see here, here's.
where the pin would go through, and that's on the inside of the
outer hull planking.
the rigidity in the outer hull. ThSo we've been talking aboutof
these, they're called roves or
they worked. clinch pins, and this is how
They would put a clinch ring, a two-inch clinch ring, and then
they would peen it over.
was he made, as I've been calling it, a sandwich out ofd
his hull. So you have the outer hull
planking, then you have the basket truss, then you would
have the frames, then you would have the ceiling planking or the
planking on the inside of the ship, and then over the top of
that you would have the hogging arch, and then all of that would
be peened together with these bolts and clinch rings, or roves
as they call them on the Great
And this type of connecting with Lakes.
was pretty common. the bolts and the clinch rings
the keelson assemblages together They'd use them a lot to hold
Davidson used them everywhere. in the smaller ships, but
that's very typical of his And that was one of the things
So when you take a look here, you can see that there are these
rows and rows of roves that are going, you see them all lined up
here, going down every one of the frames that's holding the
sandwich together.
the bilge was three feet thick If you think about the bilge,
had created holding it all because of this sandwich that he
So there was quite a bit of buffer there and quite a bit of
strength, but an awful lot of wood and probably a very, very
heavy vessel seeing that it was made of oak.
So, as I had stated earlier,
that we listed on the National this is one of the shipwrecks
result of our archeological work Register, and that's kind of a
determine if it's eligible for is to examine the site,
hopefully list it on the State the National Register, and then
So it was listed in 2005, and as and the National Register.
to what we call the Maritime part of that we wanted to add it
of Wisconsin so as to draw Trails Initiative in the state
sites. attention to maritime heritage
Maritime Trail sign and a buoy And we wanted to put up a
know where it was and be able to on the site so that people would
And so I went out and we were taking some pictures to be able
to promote it on our website and
there, and while we were done, to put up this sign that's
done the photography, and while andwe were out there it was ahad
really calm day and really
GPS and it said that there was beautiful, and I looked at our
close which is called the Josephine, and in a lot of the
dive guides it's called the Josephine.
And I said, since we're out here
It's like, I don't know, maybe can we just go over here?
site, and take a look at the 500 yards northwest of the main
We'll get some pictures for that Josephine.
So we headed over to this site, and this is actually where it
is. You can see how close it is to
the beach.
just north of Atwater Beach. It's nearly right up on shore,
Does anybody see in this picture And we took a look at this site.
Yeah. If you remember back to the site
plan, it was the lower bilge and
noted the starboard side isn't the port side, and it was just
It must have gotten broken up and blown away or salvaged or
something.
Well, the Josephine was a large steamer and it might have had a
hogging arch, and it did have two decks so you can kind of see
in this area is where the deck
But this isn't the Josephine. And if you go down and take a
look at a lot of the
they match up exactly with the construction details of this,
away. And so we decided we're going to
make sure.
measurements and make sure that this matches exactly with the
other vessel. So we did a survey of this in
2010. Actually, it started in 2008.
An avocational group out of Milwaukee called the Great Lakes
Shipwreck Research Foundation went out there, and they started
surveying it. And we went back out in 2010 and
helped them finish this survey. But if you go down and take a
look at this site you can see it
you can see the hogging truss here, and then you can see that
you have the roves that are here, the peening, very, very
similar to what you saw on the
main site. port side that was out at the
And you also see the basket Oops,truss here.there.
You see some zebra mussels on this one, but you can see you've
got the Xs there. Sorry, I went a little fast
there.
The crosses from the basket The Xs, evetruss.see those?
And so we went out and we surveyed this, and we actually
found something really
lot more of the starboard side interesting because there was a
So we were able to get a lot that remained on the bottom.
this little piece that remained. more information out of just
pieces and putting them You're tatogether.the puzzle
I don't know if you can see this
here? Okay, so we knew that Appomattox
had a hogging truss and hogging trusses were very typical to
James Davidson vessels, but all of them were slightly different.
All of his vessels he changed some things because he was
learning, and he had learned
So what we discovered was this from making the previous one.
truss as well. actually had an internal hogging
corner that this would be the internal hogging truss, the one
that would be on the inside of
planking that would be on the the inside of the hull.r the
And then you see that there's a hogging truss that's right below
it here that's inside of the
So now we were able to better describe how that hull sandwich
worked. There's the outer hull planking.
There's the basket weave. Then there's the inner truss.
Then there's the frames.
planking, and then you have the Then internal truss.iling
So we were able to add a little bit more to the description of
what he did differently when he built Appomattox than he did
when he built Thomas Cranage or the other ones.
It's really interesting to do these surveys because there are
five, six Davidson vessels that are lost in Wisconsin waters, so
you can actually go and dive all
the different construction the different ones and see all
compare them. So a lot of them are within
recreational diving range too,
out there if any of you guys and one of them is still lost
It's off Sheboygan. So there's a lot of things that
you can do as far as comparing
Did you decide that that was them as well.
It is and we actually did an a piece from the Appomattox?
Register nomination, and it was amended in I think it was
January of 2011, and this is the
So you have here, these are the piers or the breakwaters that
they have at Atwater Beach, and Atwater Beach is going to be
right in here.
it, and it's buoyed. So you can actually swim out to
starboard hull section that was And formerly the Josephine. the
And then we started interviewing
the site, and they said that the a lot of people who were diving
Sand was shifting. debris field was opening up.
they started finding that were There's a lot of things that
So we decided to include the out in the debris field.
notable would be the propeller debris field, and the most
piece. and that's the furthest outbound
what they boundary is of the So it's quite a big expansion to
particular wreck site. historic zone for this
propeller. Here's a picture of the
the diver from the first one, Agaiposing in it for scale.ldt,
So really, really beautiful wreck site again.
Now, there's two of us that work
as maritime archeologists. for Wisconsin Historical Society
Keith Meverden, raise your hand. There's me and then there's
but most of our work is done by And we'revolunteers.ice daily,
These guys help under water.
They do historic research for They do us. surveys.
You name it, they're there for
And there's a core group of about 12 guys that rotate
through all of these surveys, and we are greatly appreciative
to them, and there's a lot of the guys in the audience today
too.
So, again, a result of this is So thank you.
sites. that these are really cultural
really easy to say this is a A lot of people find it really,
protect natural resources, but natural resource, we should
that cultural resources are non-renewable resources too.
So we want to do whatever we can
So one of the things that we do is, and we don't want to hide
them. We want you to experience your
history.
Appomattox has one of them. It's a safe mooring buoy, so you
can tie your boat to it.
easy to find so you can kayak out to it or you can snorkel it
or swim from the beach or go
And so we added this mooring diving.
then we also do Maritime Trails buoy to themarkers. 2005, and
So these markers, I think we
around the state, and they have 36 of them now that are up
the place that you're at and really try to connect you with
And so this is at the top of the what history happened there.
I don't know if you guys can see bluff at Atwater Beach.
look right above my arrow there, this on the screen, but if you
Yeah. do you see t>> Yeah?e white dot?
That's the buoy.
of the cliff from this sign and Sosee the buoy that marks thetop
shipwreck site so you can know
Here's a little closer look at what history happened.
So it tells a little bit about the Maritime Trails sign.
to it, and then we also, at the bottom of the sign here, have a
site plan that we had from the
We actually have these on little archeological survey.
take out there so you can learn the shipwreck parts or see what
it is that I'm talking about up here.
Remember it, recall it when you're there and under water.
Okay, so everything that I told you we try to incorporate into
our two websites, Maritime
Maritime Trails has sort of a Trclearinghouse that tells yous.
about maritime heritage sites that you could visit wherever
you're at.
you're from around the state, Sand it will tell you maritimewn
related resources that you can
Appomattox, the buoy and the go and visit.
this site. Maritime Trails sign are both on
and we're including sites along Ththe Fox River now and theed,
Mississippi and the Wisconsin River as well.
And then we work with University
Institute. of Wisconsin Sea Grant
sponsor on these projects. They've been our long-term
survey, and they also funded the They funded the 2003 original
2010. And they have a site which is
called Wisconsin Shipwrecks, and
them with information. we work with them to provide
I've told you here in the Inlecture is up on their site.t
You just need to click on lower Wisconsin and Appomattox, and
you can review what I have given
And it talks about the service you here.
the site looks like today, and history of the vessel and what
resource. And it also has a database of
newspapers that's on there from Door County Advocate and from
the Manitowoc Herald. So if you have a relative that
was involved in maritime trade
particular shipwreck, you can osearch the database and get aa
lot of information there. So that's what I have for you
tonight.
D[APPLAUSE] ?