Engines overboard in Buffalo area?

While at the library this morning i was going thru a roll of microfilm from 1852 and came across this short but interesting article.

Two Locomotives Lost Buffalo, Dec.8,1852

The brig Concord, which left this port yesterday with two locomotives for the Rock Island Railroad,when off Long Point lost both overboard and returned to port this morning.

Has anybody ever heard of this mentioned in The Buffalo area? Perhaps someone in that area could research it further.Sounds kind of interesting that 2 loco's from 1852 are at the bottom of the lake somewhere!

Probably not to much left of them after 150 years

Not necessarily. Cold lake water often preserves wrecks, there have been Revolutionary War era boats found in reasonably good condition, as well as Indian dugout canoes.

Sometime within the last two weeks, I watched a show on the History Channel on these two locomotives. Camera crew had some excellant shots. Even though the they were grown over it was still obvious what they were. The main topic of the show was these investigators were trying to piece together what had happened. Unfortunately, I never did see the ending.

I remember a Hist. Channel show on lost locos, but the ones shown were in NY Harbor! NOT in the lake near Buffalo!
Were there two different shows,or are you confusing two different shipwrecks?

Sorry about that, Cosmo. Guess I confused two different shipwrecks.

There was another history channel show about two locomotives, but these were off the coast of New Jersey or the Carolinas. They were still sitting like they were on a barge and in the wreckage near them they found evidence of several cars. This was almost a complete train sitting onn the bottom

Was that the show that identified the pair of 2-2-2 locomotives that were sitting perfectly upright side by side within 10 feet of each other? They estimated them to be from round 1835(?) and manufactured in Mass. and lost in shipment to Phila. harbor. They were figured to be 2 of 16 that were produced. Out of the original 16, records could account for all but 4, so they assumed these two were part of the 4 missing (the other two unaccounted for elsewhere).

The locomotives were destined for mid Pennsylvania and since back then, there were few railroads to begin with that it was easier to ship by boat than overland.

They never explained whether they thought that the engines were cut loose from a ship during a storm or were tied on deck to a barge that went down and rotted away. They could find no remains of a ship in the area because metal detectors did not pick up on any hardware that is typically left behind from a sinking vessel. Just odd that they sat next together, perfectly on line and upright on the bottom, like they were placed there.

man! a lot of misinformation about that show!

There was only one show.
it was on the history channel.
the locomotives are in the Atlantic ocean, off the coast of New Jersey.
they are from the early 1850's

there is no "complete train"..just the 2 locomotives..nothing else.

http://steamrailroading.com/ipw-web/por ... le&sid=127

the most likely theory as to why they are sitting upright and next to each other is that they were tied to a wooden barge that sunk.
they remained tied to the deck of the barge after it sunk.
the wood of the barge has since rotted away, leaving the 2 locomotives sitting upright nice and neat.

there has never been a documentary about any sunk locomotives near Buffalo.

Scot

I also watched that show on the History channel shortly after posting the subject on the engines overboard in the lake near Buffalo.I didn't mean to start any confusion between the two sunken wreck sites being in two different locations.It does seem rather ironic that the sunken locomotive site from the early 1850's documented on the History channel really does exist and the possibility of another from the same time period may exist in the Lake near Buffalo.I would imagine the two in the Lake near Buffalo that were destined for the Rock Island RR were probably 4-4-0's instead of the more rare type found off the coast.It would still be fascinating if these other two near Buffalo in the lake could be found or even more documentation or information on them.All i found on them was the short newspaper article in the microfilm at our local library while browsing for other RR articles.

CJPat wrote:The locomotives were destined for mid Pennsylvania and since back then, there were few railroads to begin with that it was easier to ship by boat than overland..

And there was no universal standard gauge as yet.

[crossposted from the DL&W section of theis site]
The caption for a color calendar painting about 1990 of the Morris & Essex RR's 2nd loco, the "Essex", said it was sold in 1850 to the Western Ohio RR and sunk aboard the steamer "Clarion" in Lake Erie, possibly near Toledo. Is there any more information? Lake Erie is shallow enough for S.C.U.B.A. diving, especially in the West end, and cold, fresh water is a good preservative.

(Some confusion, Geo. Hilton in his "Great Lakes Car Ferries" mentions a steamer "Clarion" sunk in the Detroit River North of Toledo in the 1890s.)