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Joseph S. Fay Site Report
[click here for photo album]
We found the
wreckage of the Joseph Fay on the beach just north of 40 Mile
Point Lighthouse, sitting high and dry. The first comments ran along
the lines of:
“I thought we were going to work
on a shipwreck not a hunk of wood.”
“Where is the shipwreck?”
“Where is the rest of the shipwreck?”
For someone who
has never recorded a shipwreck before these are common questions. For
the METRO students of the Great Lakes Environmental Summer Camp these
questions were just another in a long line of wondering what the camp
was all about and why was the crazed Dr. Sheli dragging us onto the
beach. After all she had started the summer camp with a tortuous
bazillion-mile canoe trip calling it an “Adventure.” But there we were
looking at this long piece of wood stretching out across the beach and
both Dr. Sheli and Anne were grinning like the loons we heard on the
lake at sunset the night before. They both assured us that we would
come to love the hunk of junk -- we had our doubts.
We began by
measuring the entire length of the hull fragment 128.51 feet by 14 feet
and dividing into our assigned teams along the length of it to begin
measuring. Some folks from the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
joined us and asked us some questions. Mr. Lusardi, an older guy with a
nice smile, spoke wistfully about what he needed to know about the wreck
and didn’t. He asked if we could find out for him but the look on his
face told us he doubted we were that interested. Alongside him was a
lady named Ashley and she jumped in and got us started – setting up
baselines and organizing ourselves along the run of hull.
There were so
many names of things to learn, ceiling planks, hull planks, frames,
spikes, washers, treenails, keys, scarphs, knees and shelves. Who could
keep it straight? Nikki called the spikes with washers – washing
machines—but we all knew what she was talking about. It all seemed
pretty overwhelming the first day and the gleam in Dr. Sheli’s eyes
wasn’t happening for most of us. But neither Dr. Sheli nor Anne seemed
phased by our indifference. Anne kept on talking about site formation
and how the shipwreck conformed to the beach not the other way around.
She got really excited when Mr. Lusardi spoke of how the hunk of junk
was from the starboard or right-hand side of the shipwreck but it was
pointed the wrong way with the lower edge facing into the bank and the
upper edge facing the shoreline. They talked excitedly about the
wrecking process and most of us just rolled our eyes.
We left the site
and drove to Alpena to the Thunder Bay Sanctuary Headquarters. They
have a great museum area and more importantly a gift shop. We hadn’t
seen a place to spend money in over 48 hours some of us were starting to
shake. Ashley showed us a movie about ships and shipping on the Great
Lakes. There were so many ships and shipwrecks. Some of the stories
were really interesting. Suddenly, the Joseph Fay wasn’t just a
hunk of junk it was a ship trying to carry cargo from one port to
another on the huge inland sea system we know as the Great Lakes.
We went back to
the classroom and talked about what we had seen and tried to measure.
Anne’s conversations about site formation started to make sense and
before we knew it we were asking questions seriously looking at what we
needed to do if we were going to have a chance at answering Mr.
Lusardi’s questions.
The next morning
we filed into the Great Room and Dr. Sheli had us pass our journals to
the person next to us, then she asked us one by one to read what our
teammates had recorded the day before about the Joseph Fay. She
began to ask us about the details, we didn’t have them. She drew
pictures and gave a set of vocabulary words that helped us see where
things went on the ship’s hull.
By 9am we were
back at the shipwreck and things looked different. The wreck was in the
same place on the beach but now we knew the names of things. We began
recording in earnest. When the divers showed up some of us got to go
along and help them get in the water. Everyone wanted to go but the
team that had gotten the furthest the day before got chosen to help
carry gear to the water’s edge. We all watched as they walked and swam
out over a quarter mile to the rest of the shipwreck of the Joseph
Fay. Every now and then we looked out to see if they were
finished. Mr. Lusardi came over and worked with us some more. He no
longer had that look in his eye like we didn’t care. He talked to us
about the ship but now we felt like he believed we were serious.
By Tuesday
afternoon we were sure we had recorded everything possible and couldn’t
imagine coming back for more information. We happily went back to
Ocqueoc Recreational Center to watch the Birds of Prey. We were pretty
cocky. We had measured a shipwreck in two days.
The next morning
we filed into the Great Room with our notebooks. Time to put our data
on paper but first we had to chart our information out so we could see
the whole picture. Mr. Lusardi gave us needed graph paper to make the
map. Anne and Devin got the map ready for us to start, but by the end
of an hour we realized we did not have enough complete data to draw a
site map so we asked to go back to the site. Mr. Lusardi and the
archaeological divers were there and they were all surprised to see us.
We had been so sure the day before but now we knew we only had a few
hours to get the information we needed.
As soon as we
got to the shipwreck Dr. Sheli started asking specific questions knowing
we knew how to get the answers. We did and as we answered the questions
she asked more. Suddenly, we had questions of our own. We had things
to find out. Kelsie was on the hunt to bust or prove Mr. Lusardi’s
hypothesis on the wooden keys we’d spotted all along the hull. After a
walk down the hull she looked up a smile on her face announcing, “myth
busted.” Wooden keys, which were really little rectangular wooden
blocks that pierced the hull from outside to inside between frames, had
been set to relieve pressure along the hull and keep it from sheering or
breaking apart lengthwise. Mr. Lusardi showed us where they were and
hypothesized that they were placed along the hull under the hanging
knees. The hanging knees had long ago disappeared or eroded away, but
the long iron pins that held them in place under the deck were still
sticking out of the hull. All were bent over but they stood out and
were easy to spot. Kelsie found keys exactly where Mr. Lusardi
predicted but she also found the keys down near the bottom curve of the
hull or what Dr. Sheli called the ‘turn of the bilge.’ So, we knew that
there were two sheer points down the length of the hull and the keys had
done the job keeping the hull together between the two lines of keys,
one up under the deck and one lower near the lower turn of the hull.
Colin began to
examine the shelf where the deck beams sat. He measured the distances
between each cut-in along the shelf, most were approximately 4 ft
apart. Dr. Sheli told him that was normal. But, in one place the deck
beam cut outs were over 7 ft apart. Dr. Sheli got excited and so did
Colin. Eight feet was the normal distance between deck beams at the
hatch. It was possible he had found evidence of a hatch, which will
help Mr. Lusardi and his team more accurately place the hull fragment we
recorded.
At the north end
Keanna led her team in excavating the edge of the hull fragment to see
if it extended further under the sand. At the opposite end Adnane and
Bryan did the same. In the middle Ian and his team began to excavate
between two obvious frames. Time was against us but we pushed on. We
discovered that the hull extended at both ends under the sand. We found
the outer hull underneath the center of the hull fragment and as Ian,
Nikki, Nick, Lena and Hayden began to measure and photograph they
noticed that one of the outer hull planks was thicker. Dr. Sheli
explained that it was a wale or thick plank that ran from one end of the
hull to the other. Seeing the outer hull lying perfectly underneath was
cool and we all stopped and went to look.
Lunchtime came
sooner than we would have liked. We filled in all our trenches and made
sure that we left nothing on the shipwreck. It was our last look at
the Joseph Fay. We had taken lots of measurements but would it
be enough? We didn’t walk away from the shipwreck as fast as we had on
the other days.
We had lots to
do and did not get back to our data until Friday. But on Friday morning
we were ready. We had learned and we knew our data. When Dr. Sheli
called out for our numbers and measurements we called them out without
hesitation. We had documented frames, spikes coming in from the outer
hull, spikes that originated in the inside of the hull. We recorded the
wooden treenails that originally held the outer planking, frames and
inner ceiling planking together. We knew how many keys there are and
where they are. Then we settled in to put all the data we had collected
onto our site map. It took a while and each team put its best artist
forward. By noon we had a map. Included with our report is a matrix of
all the measurements and data we recorded.
Also, included
in this section are pictures of the ship and ship parts we saw and
recorded. We hope they will be of help to Mr. Lusardi and his team. We
hope the information will help the people of Michigan treasure their
heritage.
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