Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago
April 25, 2018
Meeting Minutes
Vice President Colin Bertling opened the meeting and greeted the new members. Thirty attendees were present. President Dean Nolan was travelling for his job.
The minutes which are on-line and were available in hard copy at the meeting were approved.
Treasurer John Bell said there was one new member.
Illinois Council of Skin and Scuba Divers – There will be no Jim Haigh Memorial Dive this year. The Beach Clean-Up will be on September 15 in Evanston, the Pumpkin Carving will be on October 7 at Haigh Quarry and the President Night’s Dinner will be on October 20 at the Golden Pheasant Restaurant.
Chicago Maritime Museum – Jim said that there will be a new exhibit with videos costing up to $200M featuring Skip Novack. Third Friday talks start at 7 pm and the museum is free and the entire Bridgeport Arts Center will be available for touring.
Wreckchecker Newsletter – The new one is on the table and at UASChicago.org.
Upcoming Events - The Nautical Archaeological Society class on direct survey measurement will be rescheduled with Dave Thompson. The Marine Archaeological Society of Toledo will have survey techniques on April 28 and 29. This coming weekend, Wisconsin Underwater Archaeological Association will have a work weekend on cleaning up and maintaining the Whaleback—the last ship of its kind. They also will hold a NAS 2 course on the second week of July of you have NAS 1 certification. There will be an Introduction to Scuba class held by the Tritons on May 2.
Diving – Keith Pearson of Double Action reminded us of the Sunday afternoon charter discount for UASC for diving on wrecks we are studying and that the lake is clearer in the springtime. He had just made a presentation in Plainfield.
Miscellaneous – New member presentations are needed. Jim and Scott will be going to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin on Saturday, May 5 to tour Bay Shipbuilding Company, one of the last major ship building companies. It employs 1,000 people in a town of 9,000. It is only a 4-hour drive away and the Maritime Museum is half price that day. Spiros mentioned the Greek Independence Parade at 2:30 pm on April 29 in Greektown. Sam said that the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois is open for free on Sunday and
all types of trolleys will be running. Let him know if you are coming.
Featured Speaker – Daniel Tapia spoke about diving the Mars the Magnificent built in 1563 by the Swedish at the beginning of the Seven Year’s War against the Lubekians of Denmark. Eric XIV, the King of Sweden, melted down church bells to make the 101 cannons and intended it to be “the largest bad-ass ship”—Dan’s 21st century description- in order to run the gauntlet of the Danish blockade.
Unfortunately, the ammunition store caught fire and blew up the ship, sending it to a 250-280 foot depth in the Baltic Sea in Swedish waters. The cannons are strewn around like pick-up sticks.
Dan joined the international team of Global Underwater Explorers founded by Richard Lundgren who had actually motivated him to take up diving. All GUE gear is standardized so it can be easily replaced in case of lost luggage. They only used rebreathers because of the difficulty and expense of supplying mixed gases. There are very few technical divers in Sweden. The SORB needed for rebreathers to take out CO2 and add in O had to be imported from Norway on a pallet. In addition, when oxygen is introduced into wrecks it hastens the decomposition. In the Baltic Sea, there is a haloclime of fresh and salt water and the oxygen-deprived layer helps preserve the wreck because bacteria can’t survive in low oxygen. The temperature is 3 degrees centigrade so Dan wore a battery-pack and undergarments with wires down to his fingertips to keep warm. The wreck was divided into grids and each team’s job was to dissect the area. Photos were taken to make a 3D model. Evidence was found that the Mars had two anti-boarding nettings on it in which
potential boarders would become tangled. Then they would be impaled on spikes wielded by the Mar’s crew and by swords if they reached the second netting. The ship had a bulbous design so that the decks would be far apart if a ship tried to board it. Copper cauldrons were found in the kitchen area which was lined with bricks since everything else was wood. Several were needed in order to feed the more than 800 passengers and sailors. 220,0000 gold coins are on the wreck worth more than 3 billion USD, but it all belongs to Sweden and the ship is considered a war grave. When divers returned on ship, the scientists analyzed what had been found and gave a history lesson on the items. The Mars only sailed about a month and sank three ships before she went down.
Dan dived wearing seven tanks because he had to be his own emergency rescue if necessary. He had two decompression tanks, two tri-mix, one oxygen, one argon and his rebreather. He then would be able to switch over to open circuit from a rebreather if needed, but one’s timing must be precise. At a 250-foot depth, he only had 35 minutes before two and one-half hours of decompression. Five minutes of extra bottom time meant 30 minutes more deco time. The more body fat one has, the longer it takes to off-gas. He learned techniques for efficient diving including exact buoyancy trimming and swimming backwards.
He offered to give a workshop on that and working on wrecks for UASC.
As is often the case, when one thing goes wrong, usually others follow. In Dan’s case, his drysuit zipper started to leak due to a design flaw and that was followed by a battery leak which left him with no heat, more than 100 feet deep in the dark having to maintain depth with more than an hour of deco time left. Fortunately, he was able to get a battery from another nearby diver so then he was just wet, but not cold. Dan did a total of seven dives. The ships is located about 45 feet from shore and the next phase will be to look for other battleships in the area. Bottom visibility was from 5 to 50 feet and the silt is a meter deep. Diving is done by permit only and the ship is under constant high-tech surveillance by the Swedish government. The ship was found in 2012 using sonar and the war for which it was built was a stalemate. A piece of its wood which was brought up still smelled of smoke after 450 years underwater.
Besides a presentation on techniques listed above, Dan also would be happy to present on “ghost- fishing. His contact is
The meeting was adjourned around 9:30
Minutes respectfully submitted by Carol Sommers