The Mysterious Underwater World Of The Magdalen Islands | Legends of Magdalen | Timeline

hi everyone welcome to this timeline documentary just before you watch i want to tell you about my new history channel it's called history hits it's like the netflix for history it's got hundreds and hundreds of his documentaries on there and interviews with some of the world's best historians we're adding new stuff all the time for example today i'm filming in this one of the few remaining lancaster bombers for a show about the dambusters raid in 1943. if you want to know more about history hit follow the information just below this video or search online for history it and make sure you use the code timeline to get a special introductory offer now enjoy this show ah i've seen one ship go down with over 700 passengers aboard seeing dead people on the ice there's all sorts of amateurs walking all over the islands with metal detectors and they're finding a lot of stuff it's not all just a dream i have a friend a diver you know mario is here [Music] here [Music] [Music] the magdalen islands sit isolated in the gulf of st lawrence surrounded by sea and five canadian provinces beyond the horizon wherever we stand the sea watches and speaks in surf it gives and takes away turning islanders into fatalists in the end the sea always decides [Music] over 350 recorded shipwrecks surround the islands only 15 have been found [Music] shaped like a fishhook the archipelago has caught many mariners coming its way [Music] high winds and shallow sands have been perilous to ships ever since the time of the vikings this underwater cemetery hides its vessels buried deep in sand making archaeological missions both complex and expensive [Music] what secrets do these shipwrecks hold answers treasures stories that haunted the mind of leonard clark [Music] my grandfather was from finland he was up here my wife's grandfather was a shipwreck he was from the jersey islands that's why probably i got such an interest in ships my grandmother's house was the meeting place for all of the old people i'd be sitting there listening and it looked like a disease i cried shipwrecked research is one research that is very hard i had a good knowledge before i even went to any archives tell us what you know about giraffe well he's always really loved history like he has bookcases full of books but all kinds of historic things whether it be about the indians but the war but sunken ships everything he has those maps that he did and he worked a really long time on those he used to go around with his metal detector all the time leonard did a lot of research in england well actually leonard was more interested in the history of the islands than i was at that time leonard was definitely one of the first amateurs of that sort he definitely thought like a researcher like a scientist you know could contribute as much as any you know archaeologist who'd gone to grad school i got to meet him at first and then and then trying to see how he went about his research in a very respectful way because he breathes that maritime culture as all the man actually know breathe it but he's one of the safe keepers of the of the past he said [Music] [Music] fishing was never a lifetime career with him he was always into something different his greenhouses were extremely popular here then he got into strawberries he had a mink farm at one point in time i know in 1971 he was the mayor of grozil he was into everything uncle leonard was one of the few maglin islanders who didn't stop at any one thing he spent so many hours at it and he researched almost basically worldwide as you know leonard's own family can be traced back to survivors of shipwrecks he talked a lot about you know what might lie buried in the sand i have no doubt that there might well be something out in those areas [Music] mario seer is a commercial diver and world-renowned underwater cameraman he has worked on 130 documentaries in 54 countries mario was born and grew up on the maglin islands listening to leonard's shipwreck stories [Music] [Music] foreign uh i'm sure if there's around at least a thousand wrecks of maglins without a question some of them had valuable cargos i spent my entire life at this work to find out the story of the madeleines [Music] [Music] foreign the salt domes created the islands and support today's local economy however this natural resource is not what attracted the first nations and europeans why are there hundreds of shipwrecks surrounding the magdalen islands what were all these ships doing here what were they after [Music] foreign here the klondike is 18 11 17 14 20. wherever there's perch we'll put the flat fish we'll use mostly mac well two mackerels here see this one here is good and then you gotta check underneath for spawned see that's got a lot of taking them once my great-grandfather allen clark that's the uh leonard's father he had his boat tied up to the uh wharf here in old harry and he loaded his boat with the codfish and they had uh wooden wharf like coming out here you'll see in the old footage of the 50s and that [Music] long before adam and leonard clark mcmax and europeans exploited fish seals and whales but it was another marine creature that established settlements and propelled the economy of the islands [Music] [Music] god there were no place in north america with such an abundance of walrus as they had a maglin and they wanted it for the oil and the eyes [Music] [Music] walrus would have been taken from the outside at sea cal pass and just basically heard it like cattle in inland to the killing area right here in this field here be several hundred at a time and they would have been shot with a musket and they would probably be three four hundred years old you can use a metal detector and you could find a lot of musket balls all over this field [Music] i just found one there it was really really flat must have been a direct hit ball respawn i bought a detector about 30 years ago about 33 years ago i use it a bit but nothing like the last three years my wife says it's an obsession not a hobby yes i have known leonard for 40 years did you ever go out i don't talk to you yeah actually in 1979 yeah and uh we had it was ironic we both had the same type of detector you know and at that time leonard had found numerous musket balls all together like i did but he had found more actually [Music] as far as treasure we're not in the caribbean so i don't think the spanish came this far well out with their treasure ships anyway but again it depends on what you call treasure i've gotten uh like the old coins and the brooches and the rings and the axes this okay just a jungle lid but the significance of it is it was the cause of the extinction of the walrus and magma mounts last one they saw here was in 1799 um throughout the 19th century human activity increased in the gulf of st lawrence timber trade brought tremendous marine traffic from europe legions of ships sailed and sank around the archipelago perpetuating the cycle of disaster and new beginnings [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] i've always been interested in the people that come off these ships and the people that have helped the people that's on the ship i've always been interested in the emotional side of these shipwrecks [Music] the miracle was a famine ship from ireland and they had the fever on board it struck east point and james allen clark was the first clark on the islands and he settled at east cape with his wife mary goodwin when the ship wrecked they went down to try to save people and she caught the fever and she died as well she's buried in east cape i think it was 180 people are buried in the sand dunes like in unmarked graves everything that washed ashore had an impact on the evolution of the island sometimes it was the materials sometimes it was the people you know there's people who come ashore and they stayed ashore they stayed here on the islands leonard my grandmother wrote and they had people brought in from shipwrecks when they were younger they could still remember it and my great grandfather from honolulu was one of them my grandfather was wrecked in in 1891 he was only a kid he ran away from home belfast ireland stowed away aboard this whole boat that he thought was going to sydney australia when the fact was going to sydney cave britain and on the way up it struck brian island over here and he and two other young fellows they stayed here on the island my great grandfather whose name was paul chanel was shipwrecked on brine island in the early 1800s around 1830 or so and he lived there he brought his family up [Music] yeah this is [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign everybody who has a long family history on the islands is linked to a shipwreck one way or another but in some cases for instance leonard's case some families are more deep into it it is living history basically that's what it is and it is fascinating to engage somebody who not only knows about history but really transpires it and lives [Music] [Music] the islands drastically change shape every season varying sea levels and shifting sands unveil new territories new beaches emerge miles long new lands for wild foxes new dunes for old ships [Music] [Music] some of the lumber from the wrecks were sold at public auction a lot of them was probably stolen because they had a piled on the beach and then you know they didn't have anybody watching that over the day and night the quango off brian island that went ashore with a million dollars worth of grade a lumber headed for england to build homes that lumber came ashore that built old hairy church a lot of people got their homes built from that ship sheds barns shipbuilding they got their boats the fishing boats so it's nobody died on the ship but it really did it had a massive impact on the maglin islands these are things that people at the time needed and there's no way they could afford so in many ways to study the shipwrecks is a study of the history of the magnum islands you can find driftwood on the beaches some different areas old wood that you could assume comes from a shipwreck as archaeologists you know we encourage people to always report archaeological sites both on ground and underwater it's in fact against the law to knowingly interfere or damage an archaeological site [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] madalenos continued to discover relics from the deep washed up on their beaches but what about out there under the sea sunken vessels trapped in a sandy cemetery how many treasures are buried down there waiting to be discovered i would always research i would take my spare time like on the weekends and i would go research as a belief but shipping companies would be compelled by law to record wrecks i made the map i went to the lloyds in london went over to a lady that asked and he said what field are you working in well i said i'm working in shipwrecks hmm sable island and the magdalene islands are two of our most important shipwreck sanctuaries [Music] there's a good chance that leonard's map is quite an accurate map in other words we know where ships are around the islands we know where those wrecks are the problem reportedly [Music] what you have in the magdalen island is the potential of finding very old shipwrecks and very well preserved shipwrecks when you find something say i can and the thing to do is to leave it there and it's obviously tempting to bring everything up when you find something you want to show people right and that's the first inclination however you have to resist that uh and if you do find a shipwreck you have to report it to the provincial and to the federal authorities that's the proper thing to do is [Music] [Music] i [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign charles cormier has discovered several shipwrecks around the islands but his search for the simcoe continues while shifting sands cover and uncover new ruins underwater [Music] is foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow [Music] leonard was convinced is convinced that there's a viking ship somewhere in the sand at the tip of the islands the treasures that come through here would have been timber the payroll ships have been carrying paper money for me monetary value is totally irrelevant within a wreck comes a sense of place there's nothing like seeing objects on the shipwreck for me that's the pure treasure the treasure you know for me is the fish it is they say the essex which was the first registered sunken ship here was carrying a load of gold coins that's what's fascinating about the whole aura around shipwrecks it's the stories the stories that are true but also the legends and for us it's to try to make sense out of both [Music] i know there's a couple of good characters on mag lane but i will tell them i said that one i know is very good and i know she's there i got her coordinates everything know where she is leonard mcconfis [Music] [Music] we [Music] so [Music] when the sea swallows boats it creates new ecosystems for life underwater some shipwrecks end up feeding the people of the sea while others rest in sand igniting their passions [Music] leonard had that kind of optimism that not everyone needed to appreciate what he was doing or know about it what mattered is that it had to be done we knew of leonard's maps of course and you can only respect the amount of work that goes into one of those and more specifically the passion he was always very upset if he saw information come out that was incorrect that really bothered him oh he had great respect from mario as a as a man as a diver but then mario has always been interested in shipwrecks and so who's the man to go to to find out about shipwrecks people like leonard as they leave we lose that connection to that generation who experienced firsthand those stories of shipwrecks whose parents brought in shipwreck survivors whose families built things with material they had salvaged from ships i think we're lucky because leonard has left us a great deal to work with in his research but there's a lot more that has to happen [Music] [Applause] do [Music] 169. [Music] 33. [Music] 16. you

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Keywords: History, Full Documentary, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, Channel 4 documentary, history documentary, documentary history, sea documentary, shipwrecktreasure documentary, magdalen islands, nautical documentary, ocean documentary, secrets of the ocean, legends of the sea

Id: eMwhB4PAdCs

Length: 42min 58sec (2578 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020