As their search went into deeper waters, their work became more challenging. When they deployed the ROV, it was so deep and dark that they could get only video glimpses of targets on the bottom, even when employing high-intensity lights. The team felt the pressure to find and catalog as many wrecks as possible since the arrival of the zebra mussel in the late 1980s. “The major threat to all shipwrecks and planes lost in Lake Ontario is the rapid growth of quagga and zebra mussels,” Stevens said. “They cover all wrecks with a layer five to six inches thick, obscuring important details. Other invasive species and aquatic conditions threaten metal components with deterioration.” In May of 2008, the team picked up the image of a large wreck about 500 feet down on side-scan sonar. They sent the ROV down to shoot video, but the darkness at that depth only allowed them to collect images of small sections at a time. The team spent weeks, in one-hour sessions, recording the shapes that emerged from the murk. Was this the Ontario? “We could discern all kinds of ship’s gear on and around the ship: catheads, anchors, the tiller, number of hatches and their location, spars (both rigged and detached), bilge pumps, deadeyes and chainplates, swivel gun mounts, cannon, two ship’s tenders, hull construction details, cabin and deck furniture—all key features that told us about when the ship was constructed and for what purpose.” “We knew it was a square-rigger—you could see the yards where they landed on deck when the rigging began to break down.” Like other Great Lakes wrecks of sailing ships, the masts are still standing. In fact, both masts still have topmasts rigged and the mainmast its topgallant mast. Stevens said that the video footage from when the ROV approached the stern really struck the team. What other vessel would have had stern galleys…with the glass on two of them still intact! “Still, we didn’t know it was Ontario until we saw the scrollwork on the bow. Then we knew.” The story of Ontario became clearer as the team confirmed it had the find of the century—not only the discovery of Ontario’s grave, but evidence of how she probably went down.
By following maritime archaeological guidelines for documentation, they could “make a more-educated guess of why Ontario met her demise,” Stevens said. Evidence lies in the debris field on the bottom of the lake, the condition and position of the ship, what was left on the deck, and where it ended up when the ship settled on the lakebed. “I think they got hit by a lot of stuff,” said Stevens. “A snow squall or a waterspout spun off of the hurricane. The end of the bowsprit was broken off and with it the jibboom, and that may have pulled down the fore topgallantmast. Then there is the placement of the guns on the deck—they would never be in this position, so clearly something totally traumatic happened.” HMS Ontario was sailing easterly along the southern shore of the lake. Stevens and the team speculate that a blast of wind must have knocked her over because the tiller is pinned hard to port by two guns
rov images courtesy dan scoville
that would have been lashed on the quarterdeck. If the gun tackles parted, sending the cannons loose across the deck towards the helmsmen, there would have been no way the crew could free the tiller in time to steer the ship out of harm’s way. One cannon is right up against the tiller; another is under it. “It is likely that Ontario then rolled on her side. If sails were set, the drag they would have created would prevent the ship from righting itself. As more water poured down into the hold, the remaining guns lurched over to the port side.” As a lifelong sailor who has had his own moments on Lake Ontario when a storm came up suddenly and getting to safe haven was dicey, Stevens can empathize with what these sailors faced 250 years ago. “What agony the crew must have experienced,” he said. “Especially in the last moments before sinking.” Confident in the identity of their find, the team did their work cautiously, making their forays during the weekdays and avoiding weekend boat traffic that might have attracted attention to their activity. The trio had two goals when they started: first, to locate HMS Ontario on the lakebed, and second, to protect her as an intact historic artifact. The ship is a gravesite, of course, and the team has worked with that sensitivity in mind. The exact location of Ontario remains a secret. After Ontario was discovered and after an extensive video record was made, it was Stevens’s turn to apply his unique talents to the effort. With an architect’s eye for scale and with an understanding of 18thcentury ship construction, he set to marrying science and technology with art. He started by bringing the ship into focus, developing vivid images of Ontario out of the darkness, precisely scaling his drawings and even making corrections to British Admiralty plans to reflect changes that were made during construction in Canada. (left) Screen-grabs of the team’s ROV video footage. Despite being covered by mussels, the ship’s characteristics are plainly visible, from the deadeyes and chainplates (top); to the stern galleys (middle); to the scrollwork at the bow that matches the British Admiralty plan drawings (bottom).
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