By John Francis
The Men’s Breakfast is a peninsula institution; all those (men) who are interested gather for breakfast and a speaker one Saturday morning each month. It was first established in 1996, the brainchild of the late Merle Robinson. It shifted location a number of times in the first few years before settling on the community centre in Tobermory. If you’re interested, email: mensbreakfastnsbp@gmail.com
We’ve had some remarkable speakers over the years. Saturday, August 9 was one of those times.
The speakers were underwater explorer/photographer Kayla Martin and her father, Durrell Martin, who is President of Save Ontario Shipwrecks (SOS). They pack quite the one-two punch.
In his role with SOS, Durrell is a tireless advocate for finding, exploring/cataloguing and preserving Ontario’s historic shipwrecks. He talked about the exciting discoveries of recent years. Then he handed the microphone to Kayla, who dove into the minuscule detail of those shipwreck discoveries.
Recent advances in photography and computerized modelling have revolutionized the science and practise of mapping underwater artifacts.
35 years ago, Parks Canada staff spent weeks (months?) laboriously measuring and mapping the boat wreckage they found in Griffon Cove on Russell Island, just north of Tobermory. It proved to be a couple of small nineteenth century fishing schooners (not LaSalle’s Griffon as the initial discoverer had hoped).
It is shocking to compare that to the superb 3D models Kayla Martin and others have been creating in recent years.
Andrew Goodman (diver and photographer) and Ken Merryman (computer modeller and sometimes diver) have created (unbelievable!!) 3D models of most of the Tobermory shipwrecks. Just one example: The Forest City was a 217-foot, wooden-hulled, steam-powered bulk freighter that sank off Bear’s Rump Island in 1904. She sits on quite an incline, with the bow in 60 feet of water and the (largely intact) stern at 150 feet. She is known as one of Tobermory’s more technically challenging dives because of her depth. The rotatable, zoomable 3D model Goodman and Merryman created is accurate to within one centimetre. Goodman took the 2,986 pictures in a single 30-minute session; Merryman spent 6 hours generating the model.
Working with modeller Ken Merryman, Kayla Martin used comparable technology to map historic wreckage at a number of locations including Lion’s Head Harbour.
There’s the Cyrenian, of course, the 139-foot schooner that was destroyed in the White Hurricane of November, 1913. (The same storm blew the lighthouse off its mount and across the harbour, but that’s another story.) The wreck of the Cyrenian sits in shallow water at the south end of Lion’s Head Beach.
But the Cyrenian isn’t the only wreck in Lion’s Head Harbour (who knew??) There’s also the WE Gladstone, a 72-foot wooden tug that broke up on the rocks in the harbour in a November storm in 1908. She sits in somewhat deeper water, further from shore.
But the special surprise feature is a school bell that Kayla Martin discovered on the floor of the harbour. It’s about 100m northeast of the Gladstone, in about 6m of water, more or less intact. Accompanying Martin and Merryman’s superb 3D model is the following text: “Bell from the Town of Lion’s Head old two Room School House that burned down in [1945]. Story (not confirmed) is that years earlier the Bell was stolen by students and taken out onto the ice of Lion’s Head Harbour in the winter, where it fell through and was lost.”
Kayla and Durrell showed me how to access an incredible online database about the peninsula’s historic ships. I’m excited to share what they told me.
The website 3Dshipwrecks.org offers 3D models of dozens of ships including a number of the Tobermory shipwrecks: Alice G, Arabia, City of Grand Rapids, Forest City, James C King, John & Alex, Philo Scoville, Sweepstakes and WL Wetmore. In addition, there are several other boats — the Manasoo, the JH Jones and the Jane Miller — that made regular calls at Lion’s Head, Tobermory and other local ports.
At sketchfab.com, search Kayla Martin to see the models she (and Ken Merryman) created, including the three Lion’s Head Harbour items.
And then there’s saveontarioshipwrecks.ca
