There are many shipwrecks beneath the waters of Lake Erie

But a salvage outfit called Northeast Research LLC believes one sitting in 176 feet of water 20 miles off the coast of Dunkirk to be of significant historical interest.

“If it’s the ship we believe it is, then it was built in 1797,” said
Northeast Research videographer Pat Clyne who has made several dives on what he now believes is the Caledonia, a warship once used by Admiral Perry in the war of 1812, and later refitted as a commercial schooner called the General Wayne.

“Even if it isn’t, it’s still a turn of the century built ship in absolutely perfect shape,” Clyne told 2 On Your Side.

As they continue to pull up artifacts and do research to positively identify the vessel, they are also working on a plan to raise it and display it in a large aquarium on Buffalo’s waterfront.

It would be a monumental task both technically and financially.

“Absolutely. It’s never been done before in North America,” Clyne said.

While he says private funds will cover the millions needed to salvage the ship, he’s been meeting with representatives of the federal, state and local governments to see if they’re interested using grant money from the inner harbor project to bring it here and create what he insists will be an attraction to rival other national treasures like the Alamo and the Liberty Bell.

“We like to call it Buffalo’s missing icon because in the seal of City of Buffalo you have a schooner right in the center of it. This ship belongs to Buffalo, …this is Buffalo’s lost son come home. We believe it’s going to create a tourist destination area here in Buffalo just to see this historical ship,” Clyne said.

Clyne insists most of the remaining legal hurdles, including a federal court’s granting of ownership of the ship to his company, and permission from the state to actually move it, will be cleared by the end of the year.

To see what the shipwreck looks like, be sure and click on the video icon on the upper right hand side of this story.

A team of divers is set to plunge into Lake Ontario near Kingston, Ont., next week in a bid to confirm the discovery of a legendary Canadian-built ship from the War of 1812, the HMS Wolfe.

In collaboration with marine archeologists from Parks Canada, the divers plan to take detailed measurements, drawings and photographs of a sunken wooden sailing vessel that appears to match the size and last known location of the famous 32-metre sloop: the flagship of British naval commander James Yeo and star of a dramatic 1813 battle west of Toronto that helped thwart the U.S. invasion of Canada.

The suspected discovery comes just three years before the 200th anniversary of the war, adding urgency to the efforts to identify a possible new showcase relic for bi-national commemoration activities.

“We’re hoping it’s the Wolfe,” said Dianne Groll, a Queen’s University psychiatry professor and avid diver who made a preliminary inspection of the wreck site in May.

“We’re 99 per cent sure it is,” she told Canwest News Service on Wednesday. “With any luck, we should have the formal survey done by the end of July.”

The underwater probe, to be carried out by the Kingston-based heritage group, Preserve Our Wrecks, with support from Parks Canada, will include making bow-to-stern measurements of the rotting hulk, producing sketches and photos of joints, ribs and other telltale features of the ship’s construction, and taking core samples of the wood to determine the types of trees used by the builders.

Groll said the wreck has been known about for years and has been studied by federal archeologist Jonathan Moore. Last summer, Kingston diver Kenn Feigelman generated media attention after taking sonar readings and pictures at the wreck site.

The potential find follows the recent discovery in Lake Ontario of the Revolutionary War vessel HMS Ontario, and last year’s Parks Canada-led high-tech probe of the sunken Hamilton and Scourge, two American ships from the War of 1812 that went down in a storm near Hamilton.

The ship, renamed HMS Montreal later in the war, was built on the Lake Ontario shore and played a brief but important role in the crucial struggle against the Americans for control of the Great Lakes.

In a famous 1813 engagement known as the Burlington Races, a damaged HMS Wolfe was under intense fire near present-day Toronto, but just managed to escape the enemy assault by retreating rapidly westward to a gun-protected shore near Burlington Bay.

A defeat in that battle — which came just days after a major U.S. victory on Lake Erie — could have given the Americans free rein over the lower lakes and, according to a leading War of 1812 naval historian, made certain Ontario became “a state of the American union.”

The ship, which was involved in numerous battles throughout the 1812-1814 war, was scuttled years after the war in waters off Kingston, along with several other vessels that had outlived their usefulness in peacetime Upper Canada.

Naval historian Robert Williamson has called the Burlington Races “a pivotal engagement that would determine the outcome of the War of 1812.”

In a 1999 essay published in the journal Canadian Military History, Williamson reconstructed the events of Sept. 28, 1813, using the logbooks of the Wolfe, which had only recently been opened to researchers by the U.S. national archives in Washington.

The historian debunked a popular tale that the British ships had actually vaulted a sandbar to escape their American pursuers, but Williamson concluded that the survival of the Wolfe and the other vessels was a true turning point in Canadian history.

“Yeo’s Lake Ontario naval squadron survived the scrape of 28 September as strong as ever,” Williamson wrote. “In fact, it went on the offensive in the following spring and helped to capture Fort Oswego. . . . By maintaining the integrity of his squadron, Yeo played a far more important role in the events of the War of 1812 that shaped our future than generations of historians have been prepared to grant him.”

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A Queen’s University Psychiatry professor who studies how disease affects quality of life will be doing research of a very different sort this summer, in the murky depths of Lake Ontario.

Along with other volunteer divers, Dianne Groll hopes to resolve once and for all whether the remains of a 200-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Kingston is a flagship from the War of 1812. One of the project’s organizers, Dr. Groll will join nautical historians from throughout Ontario in surveying remains of what may be the Wolfe, the infamous warship of Captain Yeo.

The preparation work will begin the first weekend in May, when marine archaeologists from Parks Canada’s Underwater Archaeology Service will run a course for Preserve our Wrecks Kingston to certify divers that could then go on to help in the survey.

“It’s delicate work,” says Dr.Groll, a member of Preserve our Wrecks Kingston “but it will be very exciting to finally identify this ship — especially if it turns out to be the flagship of the War of 1812, as we hope.”

Divers who complete the course in May will receive their Nautical Archaeology Society Level One certification. In early June, they’ll help other certified divers take measurements, drawings and photographs of the shipwreck.

The shipwreck is lying in about 50 feet of water in the mouth of Navy Bay. Organizers expect that about three weeks of people diving almost daily will be required to accurately survey the wreck.

Once the survey work is complete, marine archeologists will comb through archives at Queen’s and in Toronto and Ottawa to compare data and determine the identity of the ancient vessel. The group is looking for a variety of volunteers who would like to be part of the historical hunt.

“We need boats, and people to coordinate on-shore activities and take videos,” says Dr. Groll. “There are a number of opportunities to get involved.” And with the bicentennial anniversary of the War of 1812 quickly approaching, this identification could play a significant part of the celebrations.

For more information on the Nautical Archaeology Society course in May and the survey of the shipwreck in June, visit www.powkingston.org