Shipwreck discovery?

[innerspace]

I got a call that someone was going to cut a hole in the ice and dive the "mystery wreck."  It was pretty slow, so I closed up the store, threw some gear together, and 45 minutes later arrived to find they had already cut the hole, heh-heh (Thanks Jay!  8) )

So Jay, myself, and a few other guys jumped through the ice to check the boat out.  It pretty much looks like the pictures you've seen in the papers.  Still pretty cool though, to be the first guys to see the wreck! 

Some smaller items I noticed (that unfortunately will most likely be the first to disappear) were a small broken blue glass bottle sitting in a recess <?> of part of the drive system between the prop and crankcase.  On the crankcase there was a small clear stopperless medicine type bottle, and a small (about the size of a fired 10 gauge shotgun shell) thin walled brass cylinder.  There were also some marble to egg-sized coal pieces towards the stern, as well as some crockery bits.
It looked like a single connecting rod on the crankshaft, and that rod had either been cut or broken.  We noticed some heavy metal plates forward of the crank assembly, probably parts of the boiler.  Jay and I both looked for markings/numbers, but the only thing we noticed was a number cast into the prop.  There are also lots of brass pins and nails still holding things together, so that was neat seeing that kind of stuff still there.

The wreck is in 9 feet of water, and rises maybe a foot ~ foot and a half off the bottom, so there is concern that being in shallow water of the ice damaging the site.  If you are able, I would say dive it sooner rather than later!

We have a really strong wind blowing off the Lake as I'm typing this, and it's beginning to snow too.  I was going to do an Ice Diver class further down MN Point Saturday/Sunday, but after reliable reports of fallen ice skaters literally being blown back into shore, I'm thinking not.  I'm hoping to get on the wreck one more time, but we'll see what the Lake decides after this weekend.