Martyr to Neptune

Diving the sunken car ferry, SS Milwaukee

There’s no such thing as a drysuit. There are only wetsuits and damp suits, at least for me. Remember that scene at the beginning of Goldfinger, when James Bond emerges from the water in a diving suit, then peels it off to reveal a perfectly dry, well starched tuxedo? That would not be me. (Note: that scene was based on a real life caper during World War II, in which a Dutch resistance fighter was put ashore in Holland from a British navy vessel, wearing a drysuit and dinner attire underneath. When he stumbled on to the beach at a German officers’ party, he doused himself with booze to smell drunk and account for his disheveled and damp appearance.)

For the uninitiated, the idea behind a drysuit is that, instead of wearing a neoprene wetsuit that becomes saturated with water but still insulates via body heat, the wearer is sealed inside an impermeable suit, and wears insulating layers (wool, polarfleece, etc.) underneath. They’re intended for very cold water, or hazardous environments where waterborne substances could be toxic or irritating. In order to combat the “squeeze” that results from the intense water pressure at depth, an inflation hose is attached to a valve, usually on the chest, to puff in air that provides a bit of relief. That layer of air, warmed by body heat, also provides a tiny bit of insulation.

The damp suit.

I’ve owned a number of drysuits over the years, a necessity of diving regularly in the Great Lakes, where summer temperatures on the bottom can still hover within a few degrees of freezing. They’ve all leaked, and figuring out where and why has been an annual quixotic project of mine, followed by generous applications of Aquaseal. Sometimes it’s the vent valve on the shoulder, sometimes it’s the zipper, sometimes it’s the wrist or neck seal. This past week, I think it was the boots. But I’m not sure. I emerged from a 120-foot deep dive on the shipwreck of the railroad car ferry, SS Milwaukee in 41°Fahrenheit (5°C in new money) Lake Michigan water to the telltale slosh of wet socks. The good news was, I was still warm and toasty. I had on thin liners, then thick wool, then a pair of neoprene socks over the top of my feet, inside the attached drysuit boots. The rest of me was (mostly) dry.

The Grand Trunk Line’s railroad car ferry, SS Milwaukee, during better days.

This was my second time diving the SS Milwaukee. In the Great Lakes, there are a few marquee wrecks, and this is one of them, not only due to its interesting structure and features, but its grim history captures the imagination. The ship was, as its name suggests, a car ferry that crossed Lake Michigan, transporting people, goods, and railroad cars. It was this latter cargo that seemed to be its downfall. During an October gale in 1929, and against better judgment, the ship departed her namesake city bound for Grand Haven, Michigan. A few miles into the journey, the pitching caused by big lake swells caused some boxcars to break loose from secured positions on their tracks. The cars slid into the rear sea gate (the hinged door that closes after loading), causing it to buckle and allowing water to pour into the stern of the ship, flooding the lower compartments. As the vessel see-sawed on the mountainous waves, more and more water swamped the car deck and the Milwaukee foundered.

The captain, Robert “Bad Weather Bob” McKay, turned the ship and aimed for shore, but they didn’t make it and the ferry sank, taking with her 47 passengers and crew. Only 15 bodies were found, some in lifeboats, one of which drifted all the way across the lake to Michigan. There were no survivors. In the poetic, and perhaps hyperbolic prose of the day, a newspaper photo of Captain McKay had the headline, “Martyr to Neptune.”

A clue as to the cause of the disaster came in a morbid but evocative find: a veritable “message in a bottle,” in the form of the ship’s message case, a floating metal tube that contained a handwritten note: “Oct. 22, 1929. 8:30 pm. The ship is making water fast. We have turned around and headed for Milwaukee. Pumps are working, but sea gate is bent in and can't keep the water out. Flicker is flooded. Seas are tremendous. Things look bad. Crew roll is about the same as on last payday.” This last sentence was an acknowledgement that things were dire and that whoever found the note should consult the most recent payroll for names of the missing, presumed dead. The wristwatch on one of the recovered crewmembers had stopped at 9:35, when the Milwaukee took her final plunge to the lake bed, 120 feet deep. In comparison, I got away lucky, with only damp feet. My wristwatch didn’t stop either.

Heavy metal: the Benrus Type II.

Speaking of wristwatches, I was wearing the latest dive watch from the American brand, Benrus. Simply called the Type II, it is a faithful recreation of a watch the same company produced on spec for the U.S. military during the 1970s. As watch nerd lore has it, these watches were worn by members of the Underwater Demolition Team, Navy SEALs, and other shadowy operators during the Vietnam War. What makes the vintage ones particularly desirable to collectors is that they were never available for sale to the public back in the day, and most saw some sort of duty, often of the rough and deniable persuasion. “Type II” implies that there was also a Type I, and indeed, the two were made side by side, with the only difference being in their dials. The former was more of a simple dive configuration, with hashes, dots, and a triangle, while the Type II borrowed its numeral dial from a Benrus field watch and allowed for quick reference of 24-hour military time. 

Suited and booted.

I’m no UDT diver, nor shadowy operator, but a 20 fathom dive in near freezing water is as good a way as any to test the mettle of a wristwatch. I fitted mine with a very long nylon strap to fit around my drysuit sleeve, hefted my 100 cubic foot air cylinder to the side of our small boat, and backrolled into the lake. The surface temperature of Lake Michigan that day was a relatively balmy 65°F, but that was quickly a distant memory as I descended past the mooring buoy on my way down into the darkness. At around 90 feet, the temperature dropped to 50° before settling to 41° when we reached the muddy bottom. My longtime friend, and cold water dive buddy, Chris Winters, followed with the camera, 15,000 lumens of twin torches blazing. I was slightly overweighted and landed with a poof of silt, which, needless to say, is not ideal for photography.

We got oriented to the wreck, which was dimly lit from above by a distant sun. We’d arrived at the deepest point, where the ship’s starboard propeller juts from beneath the crumpled stern and, mysteriously, rests on top of a set of railroad car wheels. How it came to that odd arrangement can only be speculated, but presumably as the ship was enduring its final death throes, a train car rolled off the back and landed on the lake bed, with the ship itself coming to rest directly on top of it. It is an eerie sight, one that bears evidence to the violence of the event all those years ago.

The starboard propeller, seen through the silt at 120’.

At that depth and chilly temperature, the senses are dulled a bit, and the brain starts to play tricks. The phenomenon of nitrogen narcosis, what Cousteau called, “the rapture of the deep” is not fully understood, but can be enhanced by the cold, and I was feeling its creeping dullness and slight paranoia. It’s not dangerous if you recognize it, and I did. As soon as I touched down on the bottom, I heard a constant whooshing sound, like a regulator with its purge button depressed, leaking air. I checked both my primary and backup regs. No problem there. I checked my inflator hose and buoyancy wing vents. Nope. So I decided to keep an obsessive eye on my pressure gauge, and I got a full 22 minutes of bottom time, creeping slightly past the no-decompression limit for that depth, but finishing the dive with well over 1,000 psi left in my cylinder. As it happens, I think the sound I was hearing was air from my drysuit escaping through my rubber neck seal and up into, and past, my neoprene hood. Chris said he did observe an odd bubble “aura” surrounding me throughout the dive. I suspect my 40-pound weight loss this past year has affected the fit of my drysuit seals, since my neck is smaller than it used to be. It’s also the reason why I was wearing my old Diving Concepts shell suit instead of my Aquala rubber one, which was made to fit the former, much larger, me.

Tille Kess’s chilling handwritten note. (courtesy Brendon Baillod collection)

I have known the story of the Grand Trunk Line’s railroad car ferry SS Milwaukee sinking for years, and indeed dove the wreck once before, many years ago. But history continues to reveal itself, and I continue to learn new things. My friend, Chris, a renowned Great Lakes maritime author, photographer, and historian, told me on our boat ride out to the wreck, about some artifacts and mementos that belonged to the mother of one of the crew members. One of these was a newspaper clipping with a grainy photo showing one of the lifeboats that was found with the bodies of the deceased crew in it. Handwritten on the clipping were the words, “this is where my son was found.”

Rebirth.

As I drove home this week with my damp suit and soggy socks in the back of the Land Rover, I was again struck by the unique poignancy of shipwreck diving. It is a lonely endeavor, done in silence, often in gloomy places not for the living. It is, at the same time, peaceful but with evidence of great violence and tragedy. Plane crash sites are hauled away for scrutiny, car crashes removed from roadsides, but shipwrecks remain as memorials, seen by only the few who dare visit them. Many are not only final resting places for hapless souls, but the actual scenes of their demise. To visit them is to dip a toe into the grave and see the consequences of our own mortality, the realm of Neptune’s martyrs, and then to return to the air and light and warmth of life. It is almost like rebirth. Diving the wreck of the Car Ferry Milwaukee, I once again escaped Neptune’s clutches, wet feet notwithstanding.

All photos by Chris Winters. Archival material courtesy of the Brendon Baillod collection.