Henry C. Daryaw |
June 29, 2017 |
I was in Ontario for the 150th Canada Day celebration. I took the opportunity to do some diving with Dive Brockville where they have some amazing wreck diving on the St. Lawerence River. This was actually my very first dive in Canadian waters!
Dive boat
Our ship's captain, Vincent, explained that the reason for number of wrecks is that squalls can swoop in very rapidly and unexpectedly. Ships caught unaware can be forced out of the channel and onto rocks near the shoreline or crash into any one of the literally 1000 islands. The St. Lawerence River is littered with islands like the one below.
Island
The dive was on the Henry C. Daryaw. While crossing a shoal around Crossover Island on Nov. 21, 1941 she tore a large gash in her starboard side. Numerous salvage attempts to pull her more firmly on to the shoal (with cables from steam tractors on the cliff) failed when the cables broke and she slipped upside down to the bottom of the shoal with her bow facing upstream. Dive Brockville has this great page with all of the wrecks they frequent.
The current was fairly strong and the visibility low due to the Cornwall dam being opened to deal with all of the rain the region has been getting this year. We worked our way down the chain the boat was moored to. Then along a line that led to the the Daryaw.
There was some respite from the current in the shadow of the wreck so we finned to the bow and explored underneath the wreck. I didn't have dive light so my exploration was pretty limited. I did get a good look at the barnacles on the outer hull though.
After the exploration we made our way to the top of the wreck and let the current drift us along the bottom of the over-turned boat. I did manage to get one decent shot of the propellor as we were carried off by the current.
The Daryaw's Propellor
The boat scooped us up downstream and we were headed off to our second dive site.
Henry C. Daryaw
| Location: Ontario, Canada |
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