New York explorers find 1862 shipwreck in Lake Ontario

NEW YORK, Oct 20 (Reuters) - A team of shipwreck explorers
has discovered a mid-19th century sunken steamship, believed to
be the oldest of its kind ever found in Lake Ontario, one of its
members said on Tuesday.
Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski found the wreck off the
lake's southern shore in upstate New York in August after months
of fruitless exploring using a sonar system.
"We were thrilled," said Kennard, a diver and lake shipwreck
expert. "It had been a really bad season for us because of wind
and waves and then long hours on the lake and finding nothing."
Kennard and his partner first spotted the ship when they
passed over it in their own vessel while scanning the lake,
which reaches depths of 800 feet (74 meters).
They measured the wreck using sonar and identified it using
a database Kennard created of 600 ships that have sunk or been
wrecked on Lake Ontario over the past 350 years.
The vessel, measuring 137 feet (42 meters) with a beam of 26
feet (8 meters), was known as the Bay State, according to the
database, which used local newspaper articles published at the
time.
It was near Oswego, New York in November 1862 during the
U.S. Civil War when a violent storm hit, sinking the ship and
killing as many as 18 people aboard.
General merchandise aboard and bits of the wooden vessel
itself washed ashore in Oswego in the days following, according
to the news articles. Locals helped themselves to the goods.
Some 6,000 to 8,000 ships have been wrecked in the Great
Lakes, often by being driven ashore, burned in harbors or
smashed to pieces. Today, about 200 ships remain in Lake
Ontario, which borders Canada to the north.
Over the past four decades, Kennard has found more than 200
shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, New York's Finger
Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Only one older propeller-driven steamship is known to have
disappeared in Lake Ontario. It has never been found.
So little is known about the steamships that maritime
researchers are eager to study the find, Kennard said.
"We're really bringing maritime history to the surface," he
said.
The wreck itself, which is considered historic and belongs
to the state of New York, will remain in place. Researchers will
study images captured by Kennard and Pawlowski.