Posted at: 08/27/2009 3:18 PM | WHEC.com
Updated at: 08/28/2009 3:37 PM
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Watch amazing video of newly discovered 1890 shipwreck in Lake Ontario
Thursday, off the southern shore of Lake Ontario, shipwreck explorers Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville discovered the Samuel F. Hodge steamer. The discovery was made in the lake near Oak Orchard, New York.
Back in July 1896, the Buffalo steamer caught fire in the middle of Lake Ontario. It was on route from Cleveland, Ohio to Prescott, Ontario carrying a cargo of 600 tons of iron wire. When the ship was near Oak Orchard, a fire broke out and spread inside the steamer. All of the crew was saved from the burning ship by the Steamer St Joseph, except for a fireman.
The nameplate for the steamer could not be found within the burnt remains of the ship, so other characteristics had to be utilized to make an identification of the shipwreck. Measurements made by the sonar equipment indicated that the length of the ship was approximately 150 feet and its width of 30 feet. The shipwreck was a steamer with one propeller that had burned somewhere out in the lake off of the town of Oak Orchard. A search of several shipwreck databases provided only one possible candidate that exactly matched the ship measurements and was lost by fire in that area of Lake Ontario. It was the steamer Samuel F. Hodge.
The Hodge was built in Detroit in 1881 and was classed as a steam barge. The ship was owned by the Farrell Brothers of Buffalo, NY. All of the crew was saved from the burning ship by the Steamer St Joseph, except for the fireman.
For more information and a photo gallery, click here.
Watch the video here
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