Steam Locomotives Found Off Jersey Shore

David Telesha wrote:Hi Guys.

Okay, this maybe old news to some of you, but its new to me, so I thought I'd pass it along just in case.

Apparently, two very old steam locmotives were found in the ocean off New Jersey.

Now, to answer all you questions, the History Channel will have a 1-hour show about this TOMORROW MONDAY SEPTEMBER 20th 9PM

Looks interesting..

David Telesha

Didn't know that. That is weird wild stuff. I won't be able to watch it though tomorrow but keep me apprised please.

Here's a post I placed on a similar thread in another service:

"Will be interesting to see. I suspect that these are the two steam
locomotives that were deck cargo on the Arundo, a freighter that was
enroute from New York Harbor to north Africa area and was torpedoed
and sunk a few miles off the mid-NJ coast in (I think 1942) by a
German U-boat. It has been a popular sport scuba diver site for
many years. In the remains of the sunken freighter there are piles
of jeep parts and tires, etc. 90 or so feet of water is about right
for the Arundo wreck."

As well as my follow-up to a question:

"I don't know the gauge, the photo of the Arundo I've seen, taken
just before it left NY, looks to me like they are standard gauge
size, (not little dinky engines) but no way to tell the actual gauge.

See: http://www.njscuba.net/sites/wreck_arundo.html

The locomotives are to the left in the photo.

---Ken Brown WWW.W2KB.ORG Lebanon Township, NJ 2-1/2 miles north
of CNJ Califon Station."

This is great!
I had no idea!!
Wow...
Great heads up, David, thanks!
BigDell

Ken -

I think ya just blew the suspense for tonight, LOL !

I first heard this story about 23 years ago....guess it's now getting recycled for t.v..

Yeah, I caught the last 20 minutes of it. Interesting. They didn't really answer any questions- just gave the most likely solution. It left it open for they are still searching for answers. Certainly interesting though.

I saw the special too, thanks for the heads up everyone.

What they didn't say was what was going to happen to them. Given what was mentioned about the further decay and possible illegal salvaging operations, I was hoping that a resolution to bring them up out of the ocean would be reached.

Recovering a multi-ton iron object from the sea is an expensive proposition. The Navy raised USS Monitor's turret, wieghing 120 tons, at a cost of $6.5M, not including conservation. Recovery and conservation of the 7-ton Civil War submarine CSS Hunley ran around $20M. Raising and conserving two 35-ton (wild guess) locomotives: probably more than anyone can afford.

The sea gives freely its weather, and nothing else.

Great Show.

Thanks for the head up!

I find it hard to believe that anyone could just push 35 tons over the side of a ship. Especially in a bad conditions. Its hard enough for me to push my 2 1/2 ton car!

I think they need to be raised. Looters will take everything in time. Look at the all the stuff that has been recovered (looted) from the Titanic.

I know it sounds expensive to salvage it, but look at what you get! A formally unknown 2-2-2 locomotive!

Pushing a locomotive over the side is easy , as soon as ship lists cut the lashings.

DutchRailnut wrote:Pushing a locomotive over the side is easy , as soon as ship lists cut the lashings.

I used to work for a company that provided tank trailers for RORO to Puerto Rico. They had to have (6) 3' around lashing points and a rub rail. The owner told stories of Crowley/TMT using a barge & ocean going tug for RORO work. When a big storm came up they would let the barge drift and just watch it on radar. When they recovred the barge; it was often missing some of the shipments...

I remember one tanker that was on a RORO ship & it broke loose. It was next to two loaded van trailers that stayed lashed to the deck. The sloshing of the liquid load in the tankers must have played hell on the lashings. The round tank looked similar to a triangle from rocking, side to side between the two vertical van loads.

I had met John Chatterton, the host of the show, back around 1991 when he lead some other wreck divers and discovered an previously unknown German WWII U-boat offshore NJ. He and others had some of the artifacts on display at a dive shop in Staten Island where one of the other divers was a manager. Was neat to see and handle the china etc. form the sub! Took John and a couple other divers and several historians working with him about 10 or 11 years of intensive research, travel to museums and Germany, and a number of very deep (230 feet!) dives to determine the true identity of the U-boat. Hopefully the locomotive history will be quicker <g>.

What amazes me is that back in 1991 no one at the dive shop or any of the NJ boat dive guides made any mention of these two locomotives. Just the two from the Arundo. And 90 feet depth only 5 miles offshore is close to a beginner level dive. No need for any specialized wreck diving equipment and a reasonable amount of bottom time with no need for true decompression ascents, just a precautionary one would do for the carefull diver. And the dive boat captain Paul Hepler apparantly had charter dives there, with the (loran) numbers for the location on public charts. It might be that the dive was unlikely to yield more artifacts of interest such as the porthole covers, cargo, etc. found on shipwrecks so was of little general interest.

>>>possible illegal salvaging operations<<<

Unless they get an arrest warrant for the locomotives from an Admiralty Court of competent jurisdiction there is nothing illegal about removing anything from the site.

>>>deterioration<<<

This is the prime reason that removal of artifacts from the hundreds of wrecks up and down the east coast is beneficial, even if much of them wind up in private hands. Another few decades and the wrecks, artifacts, etc. will be essentially dissolved in the salt water and disappear anyway. If sport divers remove them there is at least a chance that they will be preserved in a museum some day.

Note, with some finds, such as the U-boat which still has the remains of the crew aboard, the remains should not be disturbed. Likewise for truly historic finds of interest to professional acheologists, e.g., a Viking vessel, the wreck should not be disturbed pending professional salvage. These 1850-vintage locomotives fall into the latter category. If the structural components are still sound bringing them to the surface will not be terribly difficult given the shallow depth and bottom conditions. Maybe even a training exercise for Naval reservists. But if they are too badly deteriorated for easy retrieval, it would be very costly.

This year's diving season is about over, but come next spring it will be interesting to see what progress is made.

Hmm, I wonder if Howard Hughes' "Glomar Explorer" is still around...