Dan's Papers - July 11, 2008 - Shipwreck Diving on the East End

Spotted around Long Island are hundreds of shipwrecks. Some are known and marked on maps, others rest on the flat sandy bottom of the ocean, only to be explored by the multitude of fish that call the wrecks home. The East End has been built on the backs of brave seafaring men who have risked everything on the open ocean. Although technology has changed drastically over the past 200 years, trading in wood for fiberglass, and switching from sails to steam to diesel, the ocean poses just as larger a danger as it did all those years ago when men and women watched the grandest ships of their time sink to the greatest depths of the sea. Wrecks are always tragedies, but over time the sea has way of distorting the history, creating a breathtaking sight for visitors willing to go down into their depths.

While the seas around the Hamptons aren't the warm crystal blue waters of the Caribbean there is plenty of scuba diving to do out here. Some wrecks are still undiscovered, like the "Money Ship" off the beaches of Shinnecock, whose silver coins still occasionally wash on shore, but many others rest on the ocean's floor, beckoning divers to visit their watery graves.

As the 637 foot long Andrea Doria headed toward the Nantucket Lightship (a vessel stationed 45 miles southeast of Nantucket used as a floating lighthouse to warn ships of the dangerous Nantucket South Shoals) the Andrea Doria changed its course to a bearing of 261 degrees, so to pass a mile south of the Lightship. It was nine o'clock in the evening, July 25, 1956.

An hour later the Stockholm, a Swedish ocean liner, made a two-degree change in direction, it was now 17 miles west of the Andrea Doria, but almost directly in its way.

The dense fog made it impossible to see and at 11:11 p.m. The Stockholm pierced the Andrea Doria tearing through six decks of the massive ship. Water quickly began to fill the hull. By 10:09 the next morning the entire ship was gone, slowly descending 250 feet to the bottom of the Atlantic. When it was over, 51 people were dead and hundreds injured.

The ship almost instantly became a draw for scuba divers. Fifty-two years later, it is considered one of the most impressive wreck sites in the world. At only 107 miles west of the site, many divers contract boats out of Montauk in hopes of exploring the ship. Called the Mt. Everest of diving, its incredible depths require a great expertise and skill that only few have, and even then it is still an extremely dangerous dive, which has claimed 14 lives.

The United States was at war in Europe. Unknown to the American public, German U-Boats patrolled our waters creating havoc. The 15,000 ton USS San Diego was heading south from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, planning to meet as the convoy ship for a transatlantic voyage in July of 1917. The ship, which was outfitted with four 8-inch, fourteen 6-inch, and eighteen 3-inch guns, and two torpedo tubes was 11 miles southeast of the Fire Island inlet when it hit a floating mine dropped by U-156, a German submarine. The USS San Diego sunk in less that a half-hour, resting upside down in about 115 feet of sea.

As another testament to the German infiltration in American waters during wartime, the U-853 is the last submarine sunk during WWII, in fact it was sunk after the cease and desist order was sent out by Admiral Karl Doenitz of the German Navy. May 5th, 1945 - the war was hours from its official end, but for a still unknown reason, U-853 either ignored or did not hear the cease fire order. Some speculate she was actually given different instructions altogether. The 252 foot submarine waited in the waters off Block Island, ready to strike anything that came in its vicinity. Sadly, the S.S. Black Point entered into the U-boat's range and was sunk. Their distress calls sent the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard into action, searching and laying strikes against the submarine for almost 24 hours until a direct hit dropped from a blimp sent the U-853 130 feet to the ocean's bottom, where it has stayed ever since. Some postulate that the submarine was carrying cash, gold and mercury worth millions.