Coming up, Jonathan investigates the wreck of a boat that allowed horses to walk on water!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
It’s a beautiful day for a drive in Vermont.
The Blue World team is taking a road trip out to Lake Champlain to do some wreck diving.
Lake Champlain, the 13th largest lake in the U.S. lies on the border between Vermont and
New York state.
We are diving with Waterfront Diving Center in Burlington.
Over the past few days we have visited the wrecks of historically significant canal schooners
and less significant but equally mysterious deep water wrecks.
Today we are exploring one of the most famous wrecks in the lake—the horse ferry.
In the early 1800s, before steam power was in widespread use on boats, animal-powered
vessels, known as team boats, were used for short ferry crossings on lakes and rivers
where wind power was unpredictable or ineffective.
Horse-powered ferries were slow but reliable.
The wreck of a horse-powered ferry in Burlington Bay is the only archaeologically studied example
of a turntable “team-boat” in the United States.
Our day starts with suiting up at the shop and walking over to the marina.
Let us hoof!
Woo, such a long walk.
Our divemaster Shelagh Cooley brings the gear in the truck, and we load the boat.
Soon we’re off in a small dive boat with a 150 horsepower motor.
We take for granted how many horses fit on this boat!
The weather has turned a little rainy, but we don’t mind, because we’re going to
get wet anyway.
Well let’s go check out this wreck!
What he said!
At the mooring we drop 50 feet to the bottom, and follow the guideline from the mooring
to the wreck itself.
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The horse ferry is part of the Lake Champlain Underwater Historic Preserve, and it’s extremely
fragile, so we won’t touch it.
This site is also very silty.
Shelagh demonstrates that one wrong fin kick could ruin the visibility for hours, so we
have to dive with perfect buoyancy control, like cave divers.
The first thing we notice as we swim over the wreck is the turnstile, that the horses
walked on to transmit power to the paddlewheels.
The deck planking is long gone, but the wooden beams that comprise the frame of the boat
are still intact.
Nobody knows exactly when this boat was built or sank, but given the general time frame
that horse ferries were used, we know the wreck is probably at least 150 years old.
So given their age, the paddle wheels don’t look too bad--and they still look like paddlewheels.
Over at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, archaeologist Chris Sabick gives us a tour
of the horse ferry exhibit.
They have a working model of the turnstile mechanism showing how the turnstile is kind
of like a treadmill crossed with a hamster wheel to turn a driveshaft connected to the
paddlewheels.
Underwater we can see the resemblance.
The wreck is covered with freshwater sponges and invasive zebra mussels.
Zebra mussels are native to southern Russia, but were accidentally introduced into the
great lakes and have made their way all over North America.
They get their name from the distinctive zebra stripes on their shells.
Zach and I hover carefully over the wreck, looking at the remains of the mechanism while
keeping our fins way up to avoid disturbing any silt.
Finally we make our way back to the mooring line and the surface.
Man that wreck is silty!
But you can still see the turnstile where the horses walked.
You know what was amazing!?
It was two horsepower!
The wreck of the horse ferry in Lake Champlain may not look like much, but this unique piece
of history may very well be the only such example of a horse-powered ferry of this type
surviving in the world.
So it represents a unique opportunity for people to visit the past in the Blue World.
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