The Keystone State has always been of interest to me.
I just love these early pre-Civil War side-wheelers.
They were such important ships, and yet they're almost entirely vanished without a trace.
There's only several examples still in existence, and they're all in the bottom of the Great Lakes.
I usually start with a line drawing, but it's like working almost backwards,
because I do a picture or a line drawing of what you would expect to see.
I think I will add that other ship to the background here.
And then through the series and many meetings, I with Dave and some of the people that have
dived with him, we just add or detract or change it to reflect what's actually on the wreck itself.
He just seems to have this drive that has never gone away.
And it's like one shipwreck leads to the next one.
I think if you had to ask him which was the most important one he'd ever find,
he'd probably say the next one.
You look good over here. You watch your side. You're good over here.
I had been hunting for Great Lakes shipwrecks since 1977 with a very talented group
of divers and marine historians.
And it's been one of life's great adventure to discover some of these long-missing ships
in the Great Lakes.
Do you ever find any boiler plates or anything on the Detroit?
No, we did find one on the arty back there at the engine.
My dive boat, the obsession two, is 32 foot in length.
We have heavily modified the vessel for survey work as well as diving activities.
There we go.
And oftentimes we're moving 30, 40 miles offshore in preparation for some of the
diving activities on some of the shipwrecks that we discovered over the years in Lake Huron.
Got about 50 feet.
Divers prepare for the 38 degree water that they will find on the floor of Lake Huron.
They meditate before entering the water, making sure that they are mentally geared
to make the dive.
Got a huge fell relief.
The diver begins to long descent down the line, taking as much as three to four minutes
before he'll actually come to the wreck's site.
It is a rare and great opportunity to swim back into history and actually
for the first time see the Keystone State since she was lost in 1861.
These huge pre-war wooden side-wheel steamers were one of the most important types of ship
that ever sailed the Great Lakes. To find the remains of one is extremely important.
The Keystone State was last seen off of Port Austin in the thumb area of Michigan in 1861.
And she ended up 50 miles further away when we actually found the site.
Unlike some of the ships we have found virtually intact, she is largely scattered on the bottom
except for her intact engine, giant paddle wheels, and her two steam engines.
So all this really adds a lot of information to the story of her sinking.
She very well could have been carrying military supplies
and was rumored to be carrying gold and gold coins at the time of her loss.
Divers have spent 18 to 20 minutes exploring the Keystone State.
They have begun a slow ascent to the surface allowing the excess nitrogen to bleed from
their system so that they do not have a decompression sickness called the bends.
Once the diver surfaces, it's very important that we get the information on what he has seen
and what he has found on the exploration dive.
If you found the gold and silver, I consider it a very good dive.
We found the doors. The one boiler scraped them off, couldn't get them open.
I couldn't see a name tag on it either. There's some writing there, but I couldn't see what it was.
Truth might have a better idea. I can't find a gauge panel, but the
zero muscles are two and three feet thick. They just obscure everything.
I was looking for those big side wheels, man. They're impressive.
They're at least they're all 20 feet in diameter, maybe more. No, they're closer to
them, between 30 and 40. There's your other arch.
One of the great advantages of video is the ability to go back and study what we have seen.
What better resolution here? So you guys are heading towards this
Look how she's. Once you get by the boilers, there's nothing left.
Why these shipwrecks are so important is because they tell a story. When something
sinks on the water, there's nothing left. There's no evidence of it on the surface.
There's no monuments, no markers, but we have something that's found nowhere else in the world.
And that's these almost perfectly preserved shipwrecks due to the cold,
clear water of the Great Lakes. And I don't think that's possible to see or experience
any place else in the world than on the Great Lakes.
On the horizon, who knows, there's still a couple of very interesting historical ships
that have not been found that we'd certainly would love to find and understand what happened
to them in their final hours of tragedy. Yeah, I do love shipwreck hunting, the team effort that's
involved in making it happen and the opportunity to see things that no one has seen before.
This is what she called a here on bath.
All right, Bob, she's all yours, buddy.
Can you tie it, man? It's refreshing.
