There are so many ways to explore New York and scuba diving is a great way to see history where it lies. Time Warner Cable News reporter Katie Gibas has more about one shipwrecks off the Buffalo Harbor that people can still explore today.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Buffalo is called the Queen City for a reason - being the largest and most prosperous city along the Great Lakes in the end of the 1800s to the beginning of the 1900s. Much of its history still lives beneath the surface.
"Once the canal was built, Buffalo goes from really a backwater town or village to a major city, in a matter of seven years," said Jack Messner, Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society vice president.
In 1846, a line of steamers carried goods and people back and forth between Buffalo and Sandusky, Ohio daily.
"The Alabama, when she first came out, is what we would call one of the luxury liners of her day, but technology was changing so rapidly at that time frame that she didn’t last as a luxury liner for more than a few years. Then suddenly, she was relegated to carrying whatever she could get ahold of," said Messner.
The Alabama had a history of mechanical issues and a few collisions. On Aug. 29, 1854, she left Buffalo to have repairs performed in Ohio.
"Buffalo had so much construction going on in the way of shipbuilding that there wasn’t any dry dock space available for her," said Messner.
They were about a mile and a half off the Buffalo Harbor when the water put out the boiler fires. The ship sank within minutes, but all the crew made it off safely. By that night, commercial divers had already visited the wreck.
"They have the big helmets, canvas suit and heavy boots, and heavy lead weights... these guys would walk erect along the bottom of the lake picking up whatever they could basically get," said Messner.
Several attempts to raise or move it failed. Eventually, demolition crews ripped it apart to make navigation safer. It was forgotten until about 1980, when Jack Messner was one of the divers that rediscovered it in about 30 feet of water.
"We found a reference to it in a fisherman’s guide. Unfortunately all of their sightings they used which were land sightings were all gone," said Messner.
If you want to dive the Alabama today, not much remains to be seen, but many divers still go there for the history. If you have a boat and the GPS coordinates, you can get there yourself... or many of the local dive shops will charter trips out there.