The S.S. Sachem - Ghost Ship of the Ohio River

[Music] she sat here for over three decades on this small Creek off the Ohio River she's been called a ghost ship a paradise for urban explorers and a fun destination for kayakers but her history has been largely forgotten except by a small group of enthusiasts this vessel is over 120 years old served in both world wars and has an interesting connection to the Lusitania disaster originally we were told it was built for president Theodore Roosevelt she went by many names the celt the USS phenic Heights the sightseer the circle line five but most often she was known as the SS Sachem in this adventure we're stepping aboard her seeing what remains and diving into her history like never before we dive into the history of this ship please subscribe and turn on post notifications so you'll be alerted with each future video [Music] the story of the Sachem began over 120 years ago three states away pusian Jones Shipyard in Wilmington Delaware was founded in 1848 and boomed during the American Civil War making sloops and cargo vessels for the Union they continued after the war making groundbreaking ships including the first iron-hulled ship built in the U.S and also some racing Yachts including winners of the America's Cup they furnished some large vessels with their engines including the paddle steamer TJ Potter which sailed the Columbia River in Oregon and is a shipwreck that I've also filmed for my channel but they also made luxury yachts and the ship we're exploring today was both a luxury yacht and a racing yacht yard number 306 was commissioned in 1901 by a man named John Rogers Maxwell Maxwell was a businessman and owned more railroads than a railroad Tycoon 2 player on Windows 98 with stakes in the Lackawanna and Western railroad the Durango Central Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey in addition to being president of the atlas Portland cement company which later supplied materials for the Panama Canal and the Empire State Building while this man was obviously a millionaire and the next natural step for him was that he wanted a luxury steam yacht Maxwell was irish-american and chose the name celt for his yachts she was to be 186 feet in length 24 feet wide with a gross tonnage of around 217 tons when we peer down into her engine room from the main deck we see a newer engine rather than the ship's original four-cylinder triple expansion steam engine however we also see several exposed cross beams part of her framing celt was built with 100 of these steel frames from her stem to her Stern all neatly riveted together it was on April 12 1902 that celt was launched into the Christina River of Wilmington after which she was towed to The Yards fitting out Worf here her Interiors were completed smaller Machinery installed and this ornate scroll work on the bow was added so many beautiful details like this were lost over time and Decades of repurposing and remodeling have removed nearly every Last Remnant of her early yacht years nothing remains of these lavish interior fittings she once had nine richly furnished State rooms each with electric fans ice boxes and finished in Mahogany she had plenty of bathrooms on board tiled in green with Mosaic floors foreign [Music] s there this must have been a head right here toilet I did actually find some green tiling on board in an area that was certainly once a bathroom could this actually be the final trace of her luxury yacht interior well that certainly is Victorian era wrought iron on top of the tiling so I take that back I suppose there actually is something remaining from her early years in addition to the passenger quarters this was obviously a very large vessel that required her own dedicated crew the owner couldn't simply have a fleet captain that drove whichever ship he wanted driven that day no the kelp actually required its own dedicated Captain stewards Cooks engineers and firemen for the boilers the Celts was delivered ahead of schedule to Maxwell for a sum of 250 thousand dollars Maxwell was pleased with his gorgeous new yacht the flagship of his Fleet of 27 personal crafts it plied the Waters of Long Island Sound for almost a decade often turning heads and impressing everyone who sailed on her with each passing summer her fans grew in number to the point where Maxwell began chartering The Vessel out to his rich friends in 1910 just off of Battery Park Manhattan celt ran into a barge damaging both vessels but minimally she was patched up within four months and sent on her way but shortly after that her owner John Maxwell passed away his widow sold the celt to a new owner a man named Manson Metcalf Metcalf loved the boat making it his own private yacht but renamed her the Sachem it was most often seen in New England Waters between Long Island and Rhode Island always proudly flying the flags of her owner in 1914 Metcalf gave the Sachem a complete overhaul however trouble was brewing overseas on May 7 1915 the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania was attacked and sunk by German U-Boat u-20 Germany had been engaging in unrestricted Warfare against Allied Shipping and even though the United States was neutral it was apparent that the U.S would soon be entering the fight against the Kaiser Thomas Edison famed New Jersey inventor had long been pushing for the U.S government to support his research into anti-submarine tactics and technology and the aftermath of the Lusitania finally gave Edison's requests the attention they deserved however it would still be a solid two years before any actual support arrived it was in 1917 that the United States finally entered the war the U.S Navy was leasing private yachts from citizens for coastal defense and other at-home military purposes and our friend Manson Metcalf lent them the Sachem now the SS Sachem was officially the USS Sachem with the designation of sp192 the first proper assignment the USS Sachem was given was a 10-week loan to Thomas Edison the ship was kitted up for dozens of experiments the supplies for the 10 weeks and modified to accommodate the inventor his wife his son and his crew of up to 20 technicians for these 10 weeks the Sachem sailed up and down the East Coast out past Florida and even into the Caribbean now it's easy to believe that this Voyage was more about pleasure than business and indeed Edison did enjoy himself but he got very little rest they got a ton of stuff done in terms of experiments and trying out new things they developed camouflage methods for various vessels and his notes seemed to indicate that it was used on a Cunard ship they developed ways to minimize a ship's turning radius when under attack improved the abilities of Maritime searchlights and even developed the precursor to radar Edison used these specific successes to later go on and establish the U.S naval research laboratory now I know that's a very generic name but it is an official Department of the U.S military so one could actually argue that the USS Sachem right here was the first official U.S naval research laboratory this is something of incredible historical significance and yet she's sitting here in the mud rotting away in the middle of nowhere [Music] all told Edison conducted experiments on 49 different projects aboard the Sachem many of which were successful but the Navy lost interest in this work and recalled the ship the following spring instead the Sachem was fitted out for Coastal patrols she was fitted with two 37 millimeter cannons on the bow and a 57 millimeter cannon on the stern as well as machine guns and depth charges Sachem patrolled the entire East Coast to the United States but never saw combat Sachin was returned to her civilian owner Manson Metcalf he kept it briefly as a yacht but sold it to Philadelphia Banker Roland Taylor as the prohibition era came to the United States when alcohol was banned Nationwide Taylor used the ship as a Rum Runner sort of as a Mothership kind of thing where he would Anchor It offshore and then have a smaller boat smuggle the alcohol to a local Coastal Village he did occasionally use Sachem as a personal yacht but the prohibition era was succeeded by the Great Depression and in 1932 Roland Taylor sold Sachem for a fraction of her worth it was bought by a captain Jacob Martin who used it as a charter boat for fishing parties out of New York and New Jersey here's Captain Martin standing aboard the Sachem shortly after he purchased it he's on the starboard side Upper Deck facing forward I'd absolutely love to have been able to recreate this angle while I was on board and inset this photo as I do in a lot of my videos but the upper deck doesn't exist anymore however just so you know he's standing right around this spot business for Captain Martin prospered his vessel could accommodate 250 passengers per voyage and the luxury yacht fixtures inside made it a popular choice for Charters within just a few years Martin wanted to give the Sachem an overhaul replacing the old coal boilers and steam engines with a more modern diesel engine it was indeed cost effective but it had a lower horsepower and therefore a slower speed output this engine from 1936 ordered by Martin and built by Fairbanks Morse is the engine that we see on board her today [Music] now some of you may recognize Fairbanks Morse as the company that built the coal Tower in Thurmond West Virginia featured in one of my other documentaries funny enough I explored the sshm the day before I filmed my documentary on Thurmond Fairbanks Morse was a company I'd never heard of and I encountered them twice in a single weekend anyway it was a seven cylinder 37d14 diesel engine which generated 805 horsepower the engine room today is flooded out and completely inaccessible but I was able to lean down and reach the camera inside [Music] the engine sits in mud and water rusting away despite the fact that it is one of only three surviving diesel engines of this type left in the world [Music] the high for Martin didn't last long on February 17 1942 two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into the second world war the U.S Navy requisitioned the sshm once more this time they rented her from Martin for 65 000 dollars and that would last for the duration of the war unlike in the first world war where the Sachem managed to maintain her charm throughout the war and preserve most of her fine Interiors this time around the Navy completely changed her you'd almost be unable to tell that she was once a Millionaire's high-class yacht instead she looked a little bit like a Navy Corvette and was ready to chase down any U-Boat that she encountered she was re-armed once more this time with a three-inch gun on her Stern four 50 caliber machine guns and two depth charge racks in the end she was practically a completely different vessel as such she was given a new name the USS fennekite Captain Harold HomeField seen here at her Helm was her commander during this time we were told it was built for president Theodore Roosevelt this was completely refitted they put on Armor plate all around we had the same caliber Cannon we call it a 3 inch 50 gun on our vessel with lots of machine guns around her primary use for the first part of the war was Coastal Patrol but in late 1944 she was reassigned to the fleet sonar School Squadron of Key West Florida where she primarily acted as a sonar trainer for new recruits and our job was to take out people who were attending classes at the sonar school learning anti-submarine Warfare and we and about 10 other ships or so working from the same area would take out these groups enlisted personnel and office of personnel separately we'd work with our own submarines we had about a dozen World War One submarines that were being utilized to do this work the fennekite was ready for action if she ever encountered the enemy on her training missions but this never occurred by the end of the war the fennekite had still never seen significant enemy action however the war wasn't completely uneventful for her in 1943 fennekite was involved in a rescue of a ship that was torpedoed and later she unsuccessfully pursued a German U-Boat after it had shot down a U.S Navy blimp her Captain who lived to be 99 years old also recalled among other stories a terrible experience while the ship was on patrol sitting in the ward room finishing my breakfast and one of the officers came in white-faced Man Overboard so of course rushed out there and saw that there was a sailor in the water and he was sort of struggling and I knew from my Red Cross training that you get a boat out there you don't jump in yourself we were operating in shark infested waters well anyhow this poor young fellow that suddenly went under and didn't come up again and so we kept looking way into the night we were never able to recover the body so it was obvious to us that some shark had gotten him she was initially supposed to be returned to her civilian owner Jacob Martin but the Navy kept such poor maintenance on her that they didn't tell Martin and they just offered her for scrap well Martin found out about this and he had to actually buy his own ship from the Navy I think it was around five thousand dollars however after taking such a financial hit and finally seeing the damage they had done to her he realized he didn't have the money needed for repairs in 1946 he was forced to put her up for sale [Music] meanwhile there was a sightseeing company in New York City known as Circle Line sightseeing cruises well they were called that because well they circled Manhattan they purchased the Sachem which had been reverted back to her civilian name and once more renamed her this time they called her the sightseer the stripping that the U.S Navy did to her gave the circle line more or less a blank slate to do what they wanted they were proud of her wartime service and they wanted to maintain that modern steel warship feeling that she got from the U.S Navy but they also wanted to embrace her fine yacht lines and go back to her origins in the meantime her superstructure was enlarged so that the ship could now accommodate up to 500 passengers far more than her initial Builders had ever dreamed she'd be carrying he sailed with the circle line for years popular with their customers as the fleet's flagship she would round Manhattan on three-hour voyages departing the company's new location at Pier 83 sailing South to the Statue of Liberty from there she'd sail around Battery Park and North up the East River [Music] sail through the Harlem River and then back south along the Hudson passing the ocean liner terminals until returning to her home Pier these voyages were often said to be the best way to view the city and the sightseer former Sachem was the most popular of their vessels in the late 1950s she was renamed the circle line 5 as the company restructured their Fleet on the bow her Circle Line name was painted still visible today on both sides at some point they removed the ship's classic original wooden wheelhouse and replaced it with a more modern one in 1977 after 31 years of serving the circle line and carrying nearly 3 million passengers she was deemed obsolete as her operating costs were too high and she was retired she was stripped of anything useful donated to the Sea Scouts towed to the New Jersey side of the Hudson River and she sat there seemingly abandoned there were actually passive efforts to maintain her perhaps even eventually restore her to her former glory but these always fell through usually because of money reasons the years went on and the ship fell further and further into disrepair well that is until 1986 when Robert Miller a businessman and a maritime Enthusiast decided that he wanted to buy the ship as his own personal pleasure yacht he paid seven thousand five hundred dollars for her and he promised to have her towed out and removed from the site within seven days the first thing he did was he renamed her the Sachem once more and for the following weeks he would tow her from peer to peer all around the Hudson basically dodging mooring fees and skipping out on paying as he was doing the basic maintenance to the vessel all the while he was making the 10-hour drive from his home near Cincinnati Ohio all the way out to New York Harbor and back every weekend it was around this time when Robert was working on the ship that a limousine pulled up onto the dock and a music studio producer got out and approached Robert and explained that they were producing a music video for Madonna's new song Papa Don't Preach and he asked him can we use the Sachem in the background he agreed and the ship makes a brief Cameo appearance in the video well Robert couldn't keep dodging those mooring fees for long nor could he keep driving 20 hours a week to work on the ship nor could he keep vandals off of her who had now twice broken into her stole his tools and stripped things off of the ship now what he had to do is if he wanted to keep her he needed to bring her home so that he could work on her more regularly and keep a closer eye on her but the ship couldn't move the Fairbanks Morse engine inside of her was dead and she was in terrible condition she was too big to haul over land so what could he do well from that pier in New Jersey in the summer of 1988 he set out on what was no doubt an incredible Adventure [Music] he along with his wife some friends and his dog set sail up the Hudson river through the Erie canal through the Great Lakes into Chicago and down the Mississippi River and then back up the Ohio River to his property in Kentucky near Cincinnati Ohio a 2600 mile Voyage on an aging vessel that now looked more like a drug Smuggler's boat in Southeast Asia than a former luxury yacht to make this incredible journey he improvised a number of fittings and Machinery on the ship including a makeshift Helm on the upper deck he essentially had a lawn chair up there on that deck that he would steer from and an engine mounted down below him and to control that engine from his lawn chair he had a broomstick that he would just lean back and poke at the engine until it did what he wanted but that engine that was by far the wildest improvisation he had he cut out a portion of bulwark from the fan tail and welded a z Drive propulsion unit to power it he used an old bulldozer engine that he salvaged in ideal conditions he could make eight knots but when going against currents he could barely do two knots that old bulldozer engine is still mounted on the ship's fan tail although the odds and ends off of it have been pilfered by souvenir Hunters somehow the sachem's final voyage from New Jersey to Kentucky seemed more like a grungy trip on a makeshift junkyard raft then a triumphant Voyage of an antique vessel on her way to Restoration now Robert and his team were actually detained by Canadian Port Authorities because when they were sailing through Lake Huron they accidentally crossed into Canadian Waters they were briefly detained but things were sorted out and they were allowed to continue on their way pretty quickly the Sachem puttered up the Ohio River worn out and exhausted and was tucked into a small tributary near Petersburg Kentucky at the time this was Miller's property and from here he'd be able to work on her more regularly his Incredible Journey was over but the same might be said for the Sachem herself Miller was out of money on top of that the water level in the river dropped and the ship now stuck hard in the mud Miller at this point gave up he eventually retired sold this land and moved to Mexico he always hoped that some restoration efforts would come together and take the ship off of his hands and she'd be given a new life but there was no such luck at least not yet Robert Miller died in 2016 and the Sachem still sits here in the same mud that she got stuck in over 30 years ago [Music] the Sachem now sits all but abandoned on a small Creek feeding into the Ohio River the hull has rusted through in many areas exposing every last compartment of her to the river nothing on the ship remains watertight and fewer and fewer parts of her upper portion are structurally sound [Music] I kayaked out to her again after seeking permission in advance and I climbed aboard the gun mounts from her service in the second world war are still on her deck having been preserved by the circle line as part of her Heritage but they're now buried deep under nearly a foot of silt and mud just look at how thick the mud has caked on this deck mud's so thick that foliage and even a full tree are growing from it this visit was in the winter when more of the vessel would be exposed but in the summer the ship looks like a garden covered in green and in Parts impenetrable by brush [Music] [Music] her Stern points out towards the river the old bulldozer engine hanging off the fan tail and the after compartments sit deeper in the water it was impossible to access the lower levels but we could peer down at times [Music] this Companion Way may have led down to a galley area as the compartment below was adjacent to the dining room [Music] if her layout can be compared to the other luxury Yachts by pusian Jones then this compartment forward of her engine room would have been State rooms likely one on either side of the ship and a corridor up the center line [Music] foreign the next compartment forward may have been crew or additional staterooms [Music] we can see tanks at the bottom of this compartment likely part of a CO2 fire suppression system I wouldn't be surprised if that was added by the U.S Navy [Music] before Peak the one and only compartment not flooded at the river's current height [Music] walking along the Promenade on the sides of the ship reminds me of much of the ship's history I wonder how many people stood along these railings waving to friends or pointing out fish as they drifted by or shooting at them a stairwell was added on the after deck by the circle line for a second level of passengers although today I wouldn't trust those steps one bit the circle line by the way which owned the Sachem for over 30 years and by far got the most mileage out of her is still in business today offering tours of Manhattan and are indeed one of the best ways to see the city if you ever visit the celt the Sachem the fennekite the sightseer the circle line five the Ghost Ship of the Ohio River call her what you will but she's a fascinating piece of obscure Maritime history rapidly being claimed by Nature perhaps her story isn't over or perhaps it ended over 30 years ago there is actually a Grassroots effort that still wants to restore her and take her out of here and turn her into some sort of a museum ship converting her and bringing her back to life it would be a Monumental undertaking just to move her out of this mud to say nothing about the work needed to repair her however given her rich history you would almost think that even the U.S Navy would want to step up I mean this is the first official U.S naval research laboratory Thomas Edison sailed aboard her for 10 weeks and up to four U.S presidents were on board we know Warren G Harding and we know Herbert Hoover it's possible that Teddy Roosevelt and FDR were on board that's both the Roosevelts two very opposite people but you know the same ship and not at the same time you can find out more about the Sachem at USS sachem.org [Music] those historians actually helped with the research and material that went into this video to make sure that this documentary thoroughly told the entire history of the Sachem so that she's properly documented no matter what her future holds well thank you very much for exploring the history of the Sachem with me don't forget to subscribe and like this video comments if you want and please share the video as well as always thank you to my supporters on patreon especially Marlo Perez Kelly black Kaiser Wilhelm II Zach Richards Donald Anderson Cody henricks Joan Haynes Sean Kimball Glenn bidiscombe Stephen schwankert Gabriel colombe Nick K RGB Rob M Amos Mayhew Corey Andrews Nicholas masella coltanic Sophie baber Rob Oliver chin Chen John miloski David watipka Tiffany Raritan er um Manti media Nathan Gutierrez Max Metcalf David Littlejohn Sean sohi Fraser and Nikki Chan 92. foreign

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 1,904,295

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Id: e7ZyfJ_shrY

Length: 30min 5sec (1805 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/iateyourmom22]

It's kinda creepy to see in person

[u/s0c1a7w0rk3r]

I saw this the other day, it was really interesting. I like his channel, he does good work.

[u/Julius----]

Only in ohio🤓