Navigation

Understanding the Adriatic

Just a few feet below the surface, between two round orange buoys and surrounded by the paint fumes, barges passing by and construction sounds of Bay Shipbuilding lies the Adriatic, the ship Caitlin Zant will study for the next year.

Zant and about 30 of her fellow maritime archaeology students have been surveying the Adriatic. They came all the way from East Carolina University to dive the wreck and map out what they find.

Caitlin Zant gears up before she dives into the water to survey the Adriatic. Photo by Carol Thompson.

“You can practice on land as much as you want, but it’s not the same as in the water,” Zant said.

The Adriatic was a 202-foot schooner barge built by James Davidson, who was famous for building massive wooden boats with steel frames when most shipbuilders had moved on to using just steel.

The ship was built in 1889, and outfitted with a self-unloading mechanism that allowed the crew to unload cargo in a matter of hours instead of days. The self-unloader is still there, as well as other pieces of equipment and much of the ship’s frame.

“What seems to be down there is five feet of the hull,” Zant said while heading out to the dive site. “It’s fairly intact for such a shallow wreck.”

The Adriatic was abandoned in 1930, 10 years after its boom fell on the captain and killed him. Eventually, it rotted and sank.

Tamara Thomsen, a maritime archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society, is helping lead the students on their survey. A year ago, she dove the Australasia, a wreck near Whitefish Dunes State Park and one of the eight Davidson vessels wrecked in Wisconsin waters.

“Now that we have this sort of array of vessels over the time of his shipbuilding career, we can now look at all of them and determine how changes were made in the way he made these vessels,” Thomsen said. “It’s going to be a great comparison study.”

It’s important to get the studying done now, said student Lauren Rotsted, because wrecks are not always preserved and the cash to study them sometimes dries up.

“There’s only so much funding,” Rotsted said. “The real goal is to get as much information as we can before it gets destroyed.”

A student surveys the shipwreck. Photo by Tamara Thomsen.

Destruction is a real possibility. The wreck is just feet from the shore next to Bay Shipbuilding, and has limited the work the company can do in the water.

“It’s very close to the dockwall, what we call the south yard of Bay Shipbuilding,” said Bill Chaudoir, executive director of Door County Economic Development Corporation. “Because that wreck is there, Bay Shipbuilding has not been able to do any dredging in that area and they have not been able to repair the dock wall.”

Chaudoir said it would be best for the company to have the wreck removed. It could even be removed in pieces and taken to a museum. Todd Thayse, manager of contract services at Bay Shipbuilding, could not be reached for comment.

But the first step to getting the wreck preserved or removed is understanding what’s beneath the water, and that’s what the students were there to do.

“Our hope is they’ll inventory it, they’ll document what’s there and maybe we’ll partner with somebody to save a piece of it,” Chaudoir said. “[Bay Shipbuilding’s] mission is to get access and use of that dock. We knew the first step was to document what’s there, and have the experts come in and make an assessment of what’s there and how significant it is.”

Students also took a morning to learn about modern shipbuilding on a tour through Bay Shipbuilding’s shipyard, emphasizing what maritime archaeology professor Bradley Rodgers said about the value in learning more about Wisconsin’s maritime history.

There’s a sailor on the state’s flag, after all, and shipping has been a foundation Wisconsin’s economy and culture.

While his students were under the water mapping the Adriatic, Rodgers was aboard a blue speedboat, watching the fins and air tanks bob up and down.

Rodgers, originally from Green Bay, often brings students to the Great Lakes region for their field study. Wrecks are usually better preserved in the cold freshwater, and the shipping industry shaped the area’s culture.

These student field studies have enhanced the understanding of that culture. Trips have resulted in 15 master’s theses, 12 academic reports and four books, all about underwater history and sunken ships. Perhaps another will come about the Adriatic.

“This is literally the first … self-unloader,” Rodgers said before gesturing to a huge ship docked nearby. “Literally it’s the grandfather of that thing over there.”

What students put together will help cultural resource managers like Thomsen understand the historical significance of the Adriatic, and help determine what will be done with the wreck.

“It’s all for the better we know what’s underneath the waters here,” Rodgers said. “Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not important.”