Lake Ontario - West End
Port Dalhousie
Tiller
When I first visited this wreck four years previously, the conditions on the bottom were really bad. Visibility was about 10ft and there was a noticeable current. My first impressions were not positive and I was not in a rush for a return visit. Four years later, riding the boat to the wreck, in very nasty surface conditions, being constantly covered with water and and shivering in single digits temperatures, very unusual for late April, I was mentally preparing for the worse conditions underwater. Instead, the lake underneath was calm, serene and visibility was unexpectedly good at between 50 and 70 ft.
The wreck appeared much smaller than I remembered thanks mostly for the viz so good that I could almost see the stern frorm the bow and the whole wreck from the mast end (mast in on the ground on starboard side). This wreck was located a while ago, and for some time the finders were thinking she was a ship called Henry Clay, but this was later proved wrong. Despite many people trying, no one yet figured out what she was called, so everyone just calls her a Tiller.
She was one of those early sailing vessels with a rounded bow and the tiller instead of a wheel.
Highlights include the tiller and the rudder that still are at the same angle. Bow is nice and relatively intact, although the bowsprit is broken off.
