The Wreck of The Portland

and now the Science Channel presents us science of the deep special November 1898 a storm raged through the New England darkness for those at sea whether it be a mile or just yards offshore it must have been a lonely and chaotic struggle a struggle with destruction and death massive loss was certain coastal freighters and passenger ships like the paddlewheel steamer Portland were out there a full 24 hours later hundreds of vessels have been destroyed from Maine to Connecticut and soon it became chillingly clear that one vessel faced a terror that overwhelmed all of us [Music] fragments at first then body after body drifted out of the night and snow was it sudden was it painful the mysterious fate of the paddlewheel steamer Portland with nearly 200 restless souls has lingered unresolved to this day [Music] three generations later the extent of his tragedy can finally be revealed as scientists take a pair of remote operated vehicles with powerful lights and a high-definition camera to the debts of New England's most famous maritime disaster that's nice that's a that's a real nice image another first we haven't seen this before [Music] few ports can claim to have met it as much living wealth in the sea as the fishing town of Gloucester Massachusetts few have also lost so many to the darkness of the deep this is the point of departure for the research vessel Connecticut Ivar Babb a biologist with the National undersea research center is co-leader of this expedition I'm hopeful that when we get down there today with a thousand watts of light cascading onto that wreck that it's just gonna light it up and we'll say there's the Portland look at this look at this or the priority the mission is to survey the steamer Portland a collaboration between the National undersea Research Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA is it possible to come in somewhere you know in this zone Bruce Terrell is a maritime archaeologist for NOAA his job is to assess and protect historic and cultural objects with the National marine sanctuaries this is a the sponson and it was deck beams held it out and the whole purpose was to protect the paddle wheel when the ship was important it was in dock that was a bin cow Haskell is the maritime heritage coordinator of the stowaway ghen Bank National Marine Sanctuary where the wreck lies he is the team's other co-leader so what we're considering today is an approach from this area with the ROV coming up and over the side approaching the stacks we want to try and determine why the ship sank did it lose power did the main shaft between the two paddle wheels snap we want to learn whether there are artifacts on the hull or on the main deck and we want to learn about life in 1898 on a steamship a new generation of high-definition or HD cameras and lights are custom mounted upon a remote operated vehicle this robot on a leash will be controlled from the surface if all works is planned the imagery of flooding upwards to the ship will be far more detailed than anything ever witnessed in these waters trying to develop optical systems to look at a wreck our extremely challenging we need to have that optical approach to camera systems to really look at the details of the wreck to ensure that that's what we're looking at in the case of working in these waters where the visibility is not very good that work is even harder okay there on [Music] [Music] the other way in 15 minutes back with the crew of ROV technicians maritime archaeologist and biologists the vessel heads for Stellwagen bank National Marine Sanctuary it's tranquil waters give no hint of a fury that raged the night Portland disappeared [Music] there was a simple beginning to Portland's last passage nearly 200 people waved goodbye to friends and family off Boston's India Wharf it was Saturday evening the weekend after Thanksgiving in 1898 the families aboard expected to retire to the 168 elegant staterooms and wake the next morning for hot tea and the arrival in Portland Maine [Music] coastal travel by steamer was common and popular over the previous 75 years these ships had ferried millions of passengers along New England's many routes it was the easiest way to travel and the overnight trip to Maine cost only $1 Portland was only eight years old at 280 feet the sleek white craft was one of the grandest in the steamer fleet behind twin smokestacks was the diamond-shaped walking beam a derrick like structure that transferred the steam engines power to tea giant side paddle wheels pushing the boat along at a top speed of 13 knots [Music] these wheels dipped into the water only a few feet the ship's hull also rested lightly reaching underwater a little more than ten feet the design worked well in the shallow rivers and protected harbors at either end of the voyage but the shallow-draft was less stable on a rough and exposed open sea the steamer Portland left Boston Harbor that evening in 1898 and it never reached another port [Music] weeks months and years past decades of searching but no one saw the ship again until the arrival of too persistent Cape Cod errs Arnie Carr and John fish nearly a century later John and Arnie are the principles of American underwater search in survey with some specialized equipment and a keen interest in maritime history they locate downed aircraft and ships that have been lost at sea we had an interest in looking for the Portland because it was one of the true maritime disasters in the in the region the Portland was a major event it really devastated New England in 1898 and has been in New England folklore as a legend since and remains a major event even today the government did mount a search to try to locate the vessel they did some fairly extensive wire sweeps and they were unsuccessful in locating it when John and Arnie aren't employed to find sunken objects they do it as a hobby the tools of their trade sleek torpedo-like devices are called sonar towfish the ocean is an opaque substance that covers in blankets much of the Earth's surface and for as long as history has been recorded people haven't been able to accurately see what's there and now the technology that's been developed just in the past 25 or 30 years we're able to see great distances in and very fine details of the seafloor and it makes a job of what Arnie and I try to do much much easier when we can map large areas New England was very dependent on shipping up and down the coast shipping was the prime means of travel prime means of sending cargo as well as passengers to the various locations hence given the winter storms and the strange weather we have here we've had tremendous numbers of shipwrecks here I think we've catalogued over 6,000 shipwrecks it just is a perfect place for for disaster oh this is side ski and sauna which is an underwater imaging device it's a very highly developed over the past several decades consist of an electronics bottle which is inside here and transducers which emit the acoustic pulse will the sound ping that we use to image the seafloor and then it listens for a certain period of time to register the echoes coming from the seafloor and any objects that are on it or sticking up from it and those are sent up electromechanical cable up to a deck unit in a computer system in a network so that we can register those those returning signals and may can actually make a picture of what's on the bottom you want me to hold the cable you have the cable I do fish this sophisticated underwater acoustic equipment offers small operations like there's the capacity to scan vast tracts of the seafloor with incredible accuracy I'm heading for that white buoy okay twelve meters Arne pilots the boat towing the sonar fish back and forth and I'm mowing the lawn pattern with a networked laptop John monitors the images sent to the surface by the towfish below what's the bottom side flat scenes I'm seeing ways mobile sediments no targets all right now I have boilers boy time what side okay buoys right there okay now we're crossing over the middle of a second boiler third boiler 30 feet below throat the toadfish is passing over a large steel boilers of a shipwreck it's sonic sensors are collecting an acoustic imprint of their size and configuration the results often need the interpretation of a trained eye but side-scan technology allows remote collection of near photographic quality images for six years John and Arne systematically dragged their sonar fish around Massachusetts Bay in their hunt for the steamer Portland we knew from the research that we've done in the historical reports that we'd studied that there was really nothing left of the Portland except her hull and machinery we found dozens of shipwrecks in this area and we studied all of them photographed some of them were able to tell that none of them had engine Machinery and boilers at times we may have become discouraged but it was temporary discouragement and year after year weekend's whatever time we could amass we would go out and continue to look they knew they needed to change their focus with the expertise of Woods Hole Oceanographic scientists declined burner their big break came not from the ocean but the beach and the historic storm that splintered Portland in 1898 saturday 8:00 a.m. November 26th the first of the two daily weather forecasts was telegraphed in Washington to the Boston office unsettled weather a low-pressure center over the Great Lakes back into another off Georgia by noon they joined forces a special advisory was dispatched nonetheless by evening Boston remains snowless with excellent visibility and a breeze described as light and serene aware of the forecast and of the calm local conditions Portland's captain Hollis Blanchard cast off lines promptly at 7:00 p.m. several vessels reported passing the outbound steamer as it headed northeast along the coast to Maine for the first 25 miles the shoreline would have offered some protection to any headwind and wind-driven waves by then however the two lows had merged into the turn of the centuries perfect storm the wicked nor'easter Leigh was about to catch captain Blanchard and his passengers 1/4 of their way home the deal would rage all night long once maybe 15 miles north of Boston she rounded Cape Anne she felt the full strength of the storm and we know from further sightings later in the evening that Blanchett took her out into the middle of the bay unable to turn around because of the high seas a vessel with the design of the Portland who can never be turned around in high seas because if a sea is a beam or coming to the side of the vessel the rolling and twisting of the ship could severely damaged the paddle wheels the propulsion system and possibly even capsize her the paddle wheels had paddle guards on the outside of them but underneath the sides of the hull where structures called sponsons these sponsons tend to increase the buoyancy during rolls to one side or the other the captain knew that he had to keep her bow into the sea [Music] two fishing schooners are coming back what that saw the Portland leaving could see it pitching and having a problem in maintaining Sturridge and way and showing some signs of distress and reaction to the building see one of the biggest problems he had is he didn't know where he was could only guess with no navigational equipment no satellite navigation no radios he could only guess that he would stay in the middle of the bay just ride the storm off near midnight who was blowing 8090 miles an hour and snowing the visibility was was low and even if the ship was under full power it would have been very uncomfortable I think that anything that wasn't tied down on the ship would be flying I think people would would be sitting down they would be getting sick and they would be scared I'm sure that has happened Hollis Blanche had really tried to maintain the vessel jogging into the sea that he was overcome probably the bow turned at one point and once it was broadside the ship would roll violently almost to the point of tipping over doors would be broken open water would be penetrating the ship and it would really be horrible it was probably a very slow process of sinking slow meaning probably several hours in which there was probably total panic and it'd be very uncomfortable people would be scared to death once enough of the ship came off is beaten off by the by the Seas I think the end game might have come fairly quickly [Music] but wasn't until two or three days later in Boston actually got the information at the port had gone down whereas in Provincetown on Sunday night when the debris first came ashore they knew instantly that no ship could survive having lost this much structure stateroom doors and other gear from the upper saloon deck drifted many miles to shore possibly with passengers and crew clinging and frozen embrace the storm had devastated New England's coasts houses were battered roads vanished over 200 ships were lost or thrown onto the shore like pieces of straw [Music] the disaster would come to be called the Portland Gale at least 192 passengers and crew were believed to have boarded the ship in Boston but only 36 bodies were recovered the exact number who perished will never be known the only passenger list went down with the ship Portland's wheel and other Beach fines would ultimately become the clues that led John and Arnie to the wreck they recorded locations of 200 pieces of debris and nearly 40 bodies that had washed ashore from the steamer Portland we researched we're every bit of flotsam came ashore and took that data to declined burn at the Woods Hole Oceanographic who processed it decline burner is an oceanographer who studies ocean circulation and currents shipwrecks are not typically part of his work but like most who have heard the story of the steamer Portland he became personally intrigued the ship disappeared it left port was seen once briefly and disappeared nobody survived and it was a mystery and I think I was drawn to the tragedy and and the mystery of trying to understand what actually happened I try to predict the track of something floating in the ocean there's four influences on something floating the first is the winds the second is the tide the third is the mean current and the fourth is a slowly varying current they sometimes call it a low frequency product now would take those four components and add them together and I would come out with a track for each piece of debris this chart was prepared by John fish and we're on this chart he's located all of the debris that was found that was related to the sinking of the Portland the first piece of debris that came ashore was a lifejacket and this was about 7:30 at night and shortly after that empty ice cream cans began to come ashore on the beach by 9:30 at night the majority of the wreckage the doors there were large Timbers the entire upper portion of the ship came ashore in this short stretch of the beach right here also shown are the locations of various bodies of people that were on the Portland and these came ashore all along the beach all the way down to Chatham this is a distance of about 30 or 40 miles [Music] line Bernie wrote a computer program that resolved all variables of drift and degree tracks of one hour but how could he determine how many hours the bodies had drifted here is an example of the track of a single piece of debris and what was interesting that on many of the bodies that came ashore the watches all said 9:30 they all stopped at 9:30 if it sank at 9:30 in the evening it would have been close into the beach and so I went on the premise that it sank 12 hours earlier at 9:30 in the morning and so for the different debris tracks that I predicted I predicted him back to 9:30 in the morning when line Berner reversed the debris track 12 hours the search area was much farther north than anyone else had predicted and this is where I estimated the ship was located right at this location right here so we actually started marching up declined Berners suggested flotsam path locating more and more shipwrecks all the way and it took us several years to examine all of those to determine which ones were not the Portland which one it was at long last John and Lonnie found the steamer Portland the year was 1989 in 2002 NOAA confirmed their find with side-scan sonar one of the century-old mysteries where Portland sunk was solved but what happened and what was left of the ship remained unknown nor archeologists brewster l remember seeing that first ghostly sonar image of the steamer portland it haunts him still when we first ran a sonar over this and got our first image at the portland we were all pretty well steeped in the story but to find it so intact sitting on an even hoe and see that the a-frame and the stack sitting there is hushed silence in the rooms not not the usual feeling of a scientific expedition very touching basically when you're looking at the side scan you'll see that the hurricane deck and the saloon deck are gone just completely sheared off to see so graphically whether what the last moments must have been like for the people on board you could sense the hope listen to the say most FL secured on deck the RV Connecticut has reached a station directly over the steamer Portland before the ROV zan HD camera can be deployed the crew launches its own side-scan sonar to scout the site below they are collecting baseline data of the abandoned fishing nets that shroud the wreck and could entangle the RO bees there is a lot of ghost gear or fishing nets that have tangled on the wreck it makes it quite a challenge for us to get the ROV and to film this so we have to be very careful and move in slow and trying to identify and map the ghost gear with sonar before we get the cameras in close the HD ROV is launched first it carries its own sonar to high output HMI lights the high-definition camera and thrusters it is tethered to an underwater teammate called Isis a secondary ROV which carries additional lighting underwater Isis also acts as a cable manager dampening the bobbing effects of a vessel above and defining which part of a wreck can be imaged by the primary unit Brewster L and Ben Callie Haskell will monitor what the ROV is seen while a team of three will control its movement these men must function like component parts of one technical creature swimming 400 feet below their seats it's the ultimate million-dollar video game you land on the sediment and then and then the pilot pans up with the camera and you peer out into the darkness and then they start to head towards the wreck and sort of we want to crawl into the video monitor because you want to get beyond that that darkness he's a real sense of anticipation because you know that you're the first human eyes to see this wreck after went down right sticking out you see that there's that chain so this is the anchor I think yep yep there's the anchor [Music] so we're at the bow it's net covering something because your anchor fluke okay your er there's the bow and certainly as an anchor this breakfast I can't believe how narrow that's like a knife edge let's say six inches see see via yeah drift pens so if that's nailing in the dead wood or the 20 kings gone it's where the plank rabbits in your planking is missing they're beautiful and enemy's sponges have a Costco over here hiding the right side [Music] the first time we come on come upon a rack it's extremely exciting exhilarating we're explorers we're seeing something for the first time ours are the first eyes they're being laid upon this cultural resource this this landmark and is the polar I'm looking at it also as a scientist I'm very interested what is the condition of the wreck what is living on the wreck now in terms of the the biology that is associated with this habitat now we're gonna work our way down the ship on the port side investigating things as we go along like we're gonna look down this staircase I'm gonna see if there's anything on this deck and then I'm going to look here along the port side where the paddle box area is very cautiously you mind you a lot of a lot of nuts on this wreck these lost Nets represent a century of effort to catch the fish on Stellwagen bank they could easily catch an ROV sonar technician Alan Gon's uses software to assign each pixel of a side-scan image to a precise geographic position below the boat the ROV the now be flown with the software map to avoid obstacles as well as with the visual information provided by the cameras crossing the territory itself flying by the map has been done by fighter pilots for some time but Alan believes this is the first time the technique has been used on a shipwreck here here come the bits yep so where do you think they are before this bit we can go inboard and possibly find the stairwell if we're on if it's this pairs of bits then we're already after that twisted steam pipes are all over the deck here well that's a cup it's a cup that's a ceramic cup here there you can see the handle right there yeah you know twist it open Ben I'm thinking it's like Dorothy's house in The Wizard of Oz she's getting all the foundations this was the left all right the cause I'm at the hole can you tell what I'm thinking right now Craig Craig bustle is the camera ROV pilot you're feeling pretty brave today great excellent well we did we know it's eroded back long ago water entered this hole and sought this ship Craig takes a peek but risks getting stuck if he goes too far he continues down the port side she goes here exactly what we need to avoid there's some hat sticking up in the watermelon lots and lots of gear yeah I see that hey you only live once right it's insured right Evo the pan back to the right here we go back to the right crank or net nothing but net we were just in a really bad area and we had to get out fast now you're fine 350 we're in the clear so no we can't go down along to this side yeah just just answer that question for you that's why you're the captain we're moving aft along the paddle guard if possible Craig it'd be great to go in bored of the paddlewheel space take a look and see if we can see the shaft well here's here's the flange here I think yeah once you get to the flange if you can look look inward and see if we can possibly follow the shaft okay there's a nice shot of the spokes coming out of the flange you can see the curvature and the paddle flange these are the spokes of the paddle wheel going out from the planes or the paddle hub out to the actual paddles that load the paddles are what hits the water and propels the ship forward [Music] actually I think they were called buckets bucketz paddle buckets I don't know why so together there were three flanges if he can return going here he's gonna come right into the frame because mr. Muntz just about any accident so it was like yeah yeah looks like it okay we have just come up to the chimney which is a cast-iron round too hot what are going to call it basically it is directing the ash and exhaust from the firebox out through the smokestack but the smokestack itself is gone this is this is good Creek I've got an overhang here there's the top of the stack Thank You Craig it narrows at the top and we can see the collar that the actual stack would have been attached to the smokestacks aren't all gone this is just a some kind of chimney or some tires that's excellent that's great this is real real nice very helpful are you comfortable turning to the right craig and trying to take a look at the top of the walking beam which is right behind us yeah there's some more gear hook [Music] yeah so the pink yep there's the top of the war for that I walk and be beautiful [Music] this is the peak of a walking beam this beautiful shot this is a 20-ton piece of metal cast iron it's shaving the diamond and each Anna's crank in the middle is a pivot and attaches to to a frame pieces like this transfers the energy from the engine to the cranks it runs the paddle wheel I've never seen this before we've had Center images that suggested this was here but this is really the first time we've set eyes on finding out what happened to the engine especially the connecting rod to the crank that runs the wheels finding that rod is going to be the key to figuring out what happened to the engine how it stopped running well that was it now that was the shot the ROV sonar picks up an object they want to investigate see a green steam pipe runs right over here almost immediately they come upon a steam release pipe if the end of this pipe is bulbous there will be one additional piece of evidence confirming that the wreck is a steamer Portland thankee Craig music beautiful it's a long grass pipe and on the end it has bulging and it's called the spittoon it's a defining characteristic of steamboats at that time it was usually mounted after the stacks which used to release excess steam so worth about [Music] oK we've moved up over very tip with a forward bow [Music] like this to go across that [Music] this would have been the birth area for the crew right now looking into the forward stairwell that went down into the dining area and what we think was the crew quarters well yeah yeah let's get they don't miss the boom instead of bull right the teapot there's a lantern right above yeah and that baby bottle will want to get close-ups on all three of these things machine from glass it is yeah okay that's that's a glass liner that's nice that's nice yeah hey you can see where the wrench would fit on see the threads as HD is her say this is where the galley was we're the kids who wants look what is this right we're in the kitchen area right here it's like a seat saddle cups 20 hours a bunch of cops that actually looking at each scallop yeah this is nice [Music] glass yep that's what it is they don't like gazelle affected store together viewing these landmarks these wrecks for the first time we look at them from the perspective of what they are as cultural resources but we can't help but think about the human element associated with every one of these racks in the case of the Portland we know that it was a tragedy of immense proportion [Music] [Music] good and lucky I know the best Drive never seen appreciated excellent outstanding with their mission complete the Connecticut crew takes a moment to remember once again the unseen struggle that ended in this spot in memory of the 192 passengers and crew who died here made this spot forever be a sanctuary for their souls [Music] well Portland's site is a is a large grave and we felt very strongly that it should be protected and should be not have many divers visiting it it's illegal through the National sanctuaries act to disturb remove or harm historic resources in the sanctuary now that we've imaged some of these artifacts and it's become clear how delicate they are now delicate the wreck is because it's it's slowly deteriorating we simply need to do everything we can to protect this irreplaceable resource to protect the remains of the steamer Portland NOAA is keeping its exact location a secret the portland tragedy did lead to changes for the coastal ferries for greater stability stern propellers replaced side paddle wheels the uncertainty of exactly how many lost their lives led to the reformed practice of keeping duplicate lists of passengers ashore [Music] the distance between Portland's final journey so long ago and the blue skies above will never go away but that distance has lessened with what this survey is seen a future generation of small ROV s may be able to travel below decks and determine the cause of Portland's demise until then Portland rests [Music] [Music] [Music]

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Views: 203,571

Rating: 4.762918 out of 5

Keywords: Shipwrecks, Steamer Portland, Portland Gale

Id: YGxcaruGAho

Length: 44min 55sec (2695 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 15 2017