A digital terrain image shows the profile of a ship discovered by the NOAA research vessel Thomas Jefferson on the floor of Long Island Sound near The Race.

By PATRICIA DADDONA
Day Staff Writer
Published on 10/13/2003

New London — The NOAA Ship Thomas Jefferson has uncovered a new shipwreck in The Race while using sophisticated sonar to chart the ocean floor for hazards to seafaring commerce.

The 1,466-ton ship and its 34-person crew sail under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Jefferson docked at City Pier this weekend after surveying Long Island Sound and uncovering a 280-foot ship buried on the floor of the Sound, the ship's lieutenant commander, Donald W. Haines, told divers visiting the boat Sunday.

The shipwreck may well prove to be historic, but determining its identity and value is not the primary goal of the crew on the Jefferson, Haines said. They are more concerned with updating navigational charts to keep the nation's coastal waters safe, a mission begun by President Jefferson in 1807 and expanded with the formation of the NOAA in 1970.

“Our ultimate goal is to clean the chart up and get rid of the wrecks that don't exist but also to find the ones that do exist and chart them properly,” Haines said.

The shipwreck “is a major wreck but it's not a hazard to navigation,” Haines said. The Race, where it was found, is a 3.5-mile wide channel off the tip of Fishers Island.

His crew will work with Connecticut's state archaeologist to determine the wreck's historical significance, if any. At this point, they haven't even determined what type of ship it is, Haines said.

It takes between six months and a year to process the data gathered by instruments on board, he added.

In 1994, NOAA deemed Long Island Sound a critical area for proper mapping — just part of the 3.2 million square nautical miles in U.S. coastal waters that the agency is responsible for serving.

The three criteria used to select areas for charting updates — the amount of marine traffic, shallow water and the length of time elapsed since the last survey — were all factors in that decision, he said.

The depth that a ship can sit in water without touching bottom is called its draft. The U.S. Department of Commerce, which funds NOAA's exploration, has a vested interest in charting obstructions and wrecks in national waters 200 miles off the Eastern coast so that ship captains can plot a safe course of travel based on their ship's size and draft, Haines said.

“A ship being able to come into a port with a greater draft can be worth millions of dollars to the shippers, because they can put more cargo on the ship, or run bigger ships,” he said. “That allows them to make less trips and save money.”

The crew invited divers from the Gillmen Club, who have helped with similar explorations on the Ship Rude (pronounced “Rudy”) in Stratford, to tour the Jefferson and learn more about the latest technological tools available to precisely map the ocean floor. About 10 divers came from as far as Bolton and Framingham, Mass., and as nearby as Groton.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, the general public was allowed on such tours. Now tours must be arranged in advance, Haines said.

The Jefferson arrived in The Race near Fishers Island last Monday after working in waters near Boston. It is docked at City Pier until Wednesday. The 208-foot boat then heads to Newport, where it will dock while probing The Race, looking for objects buried in mud, as well as geographical features like rocks and reefs.

The ship is based in Norfolk, Va.

“Nowadays the average mariner knows right where he is, but the data on the chart might not represent what's out there,” Haines said.

The sextant originally used to plot a ship's course has evolved considerably, said Haines. He explained the difference between two invaluable instruments — side scan and multibeam sonar. The tools use sound waves in different ways and from different locations on the boat to map the positions of buried objects or geological protrusions, he said.

The side scan, which looks like a missile, produces a grainy photograph of the object and the terrain surrounding it. The multibeam scan, which is mounted under water on the hull, produces a colorful digital model of the terrain and anything lodged in or around it.

On a computer, Ensign Matthew Ringel showed divers a multibeam digital terrain modeling that included a small fishing boat The Jefferson crew found recently off Gloucester, Mass. As he rotated the three-dimensional image and zoomed in and out, the boat emerged as a tiny lump in the ocean bottom.

Thirteen-year-old Eric Johnson, who had been invited along with his father and uncle, snapped pictures of the side scan on deck and the engine room as he listened intently to Haines and Ringel.

Michael Landino of Meriden, who has been diving for about 16 years, marveled at the technology and described the “eerie” feeling when he participated in a dive to locate a sunken World War II German U-boat two miles off the shore of Block Island.

“You are seeing a piece of history,” he said. 
 

© The Day Publishing Co., 2003