YORKTOWN, Va. (AP) - Divers from four local emergency response units probed the waters of the York River recently in a two-day exercise that transformed the elusive wrecks of three British ships sunken during the Revolution into a joint training mission.
Working under the guidance of underwater archaeologist John Broadwater - who led an extensive 1980s excavation here as well as the recovery of the USS Monitor turret off Cape Hatteras, N.C., in 2002 - the teams made repeated dives near the old cofferdam pier in an attempt to find and map wrecks that haven’t been surveyed for nearly three decades.
Using side-scan sonar and a remotely controlled mobile underwater camera, they located two possible targets, as well as what may be one of the York’s most difficult-to-find Revolutionary War wrecks by about noon on the second day.
Two rounds of follow-up dives using metal probes confirmed the presence of one shipwreck in about 12 feet of water. They were zeroing in on a second about 200 feet from shore as the exercise came to end.
“We don’t know how many ships were sunk during the siege. We don’t know how many were raised after the battle,” Broadwater said, describing a puzzle that has challenged historians and underwater archaeologists since the first dives took place here under the supervision of The Mariners’ Museum in the early 1900s.
“But we do know that 26 ships were unaccounted for - and that we’ve only found 10 of those, with an 11th wreck that’s a strong maybe. Presumably, they’re all still down there hidden on the bottom of the river.”
Advised by Broadwater and organized by Newport News Fire Department Capt. Frank White, the exercise was hosted by the York County Department of Fire and Life Safety and included dive teams, boats and equipment from Newport News, Hampton and James City County.
More than 30 personnel took part in the two-day operation, which provided training in a wide range of areas - including logistics, boat handling, communications and equipment preparation, and search and rescue techniques.
“It takes a lot of people for them to put one diver in the water,” Broadwater said. “And that’s because this is a business where you can easily lose a life trying to save one.”
The exercise also provided important lessons in communication and cooperation among the array of relatively small local dive units that have learned from hard experience that some larger life-saving and rescue calls can only be met with a coordinated response.
“No one jurisdiction has the resources to do extended high-risk, low-frequency operations. But together we do,” said White, who is the marine incident coordinator for Newport News.
“So we need to train together in order to avoid running into any problems with each other’s personnel, equipment and capabilities when we have to go out together at 3 a.m. on an emergency operational call.
“You don’t want any real-life incident to be the first time you’ve worked together,” White said.
The exercise began with its easiest assignment - mapping the underwater remains of the steel cofferdam where Broadwater and other archaeologists excavated the wreck of the British supply ship Betsy in the 1980s.
Tuesday’s targets were far more elusive - as seen in the repeated passes of York County’s Marine 1 fire and rescue boat over the water as it searched for wreck YO94 with a Hampton Police Department team and its Marine Sonic Technology side-scan sonar.
“This is all about locating them first - and then mapping them if we can find them. But it’s not as easy as everyone thinks,” Broadwater said.
“I have people ask me all the time if we didn’t survey them back in the 1980s. And the answer is that we did. But every time we’ve come back to look for them since then we haven’t been able to get good GPS positions on these wrecks. They’ve been buried in the sand and silt where we can’t find them.”
A shifting bottom churned up by this summer’s storms has only added to that continuing problem, said White, who dove on the wrecks here during the 1980s.
Another longer-term factor is the impact of the rip-rap breakwaters built to preserve the restored beachfront here in the early 2000s.
Those forces have combined to change the bottom significantly by adding to the layers of sand built up over the wrecks.
“The most common term for what we’re doing now is, ’Mowing the lawn,’ ” Broadwater said, nodding to Marine 1 as it passed back and forth over a target site.
“It’s very boring. Just back and forth, back and forth until you find something.”
Still, the next day’s sonar search ended more quickly than expected, turning up not only the probable site of YO94 but also the location of one of the York’s least-seen wrecks.
“He was pretty definitive about it,” White said, as he and Broadwater watched the operation from the cofferdam pier.
“That would be an exciting find,” the archaeologist answered. “We know there are more out there.”
Once in the water, the dive teams began to report good news, too, as they searched for signs of another wreck originally thought to be the least promising target.
Probing the sandy bottom under about 12 feet of water, the James City County Fire Department team detected a series of substantial, rough-hewn timbers arrayed in a curving line.
“That’s great news,” Broadwater said. “That’s the one we thought would be hardest to find.”
Newly staked and located, the wrecks and their locations will be bundled into an upcoming nomination aimed at making the Yorktown shipwrecks a national marine sanctuary.
“We want to get it done in the next few weeks,” Broadwater said. “So any new additional information we can get is important.”
That could happen sometime next year if the dive teams return on a follow-up training mission, White said.
But as the divers left the water late Tuesday they focused instead on the remaining job of breaking down all their equipment and packing.
“People always ask us, ’Why do you have all these resources out here?’ - and the answer is because every one of them is needed,” White said.
“This can be a very dangerous thing to do - and it’s very labor-intensive process if you want to do it safely.”
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Information from: Daily Press, http://www.dailypress.com/
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