Serving Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Anmore and Belcarra since 1984
FRESH
WEDNESDAY April 27, 2011
It ’s easy to give
33
Add a Coupon to your cart and help support your local food bank the whole year through.
It ’s 0 2 $ 0 1 5 $ $
The Coquitlam Express head into their prospect camp with another hole to fill.
easy
FRESH
FRES H
FRE SH
bank in
your area
.
for
pon Add a Cou cart! to your
Food For Give this coup on Fami lies er and to the cashi sure $20 we’ll make the food gets to area. bank in your
Your source for local news, sports, opinion and entertainment: www.thenownews.com
Photo courtesy Ralph Drew and Vancouver Maritime Museum
This photo, taken in November 1928, shows derelict British Pacific and Coyle Navigation Co. log barges stored in Bedwell Bay. Earlier this month, divers found two previously undiscovered shipwrecks off the shores of Belcarra. To see more shots of boats stored in Bedwell Bay, including surplus warships, visit www.thenownews.com.
More sunken ships found in Bedwell Bay Jennifer McFee jmcfee@thenownews.com
Deep under the waters of Bedwell Bay, history meets mystery in a graveyard of sunken ships, including two new wrecks documented earlier this month. In mid-April, divers from the Shipwreck Exploration Team descended to murky depths in Bedwell Bay, located next to the Village of Belcarra near the start of Indian Arm. They had been planning to shoot a video of the four known wrecks sunken in the area. But when they asked the Canadian Hydrographic Service for a sonar scan of Bedwell Bay, they discovered two more mystery targets. Technical diver Dirk De keersmaecker was on the team that descended more than 100 feet to explore the underwater remains of a large wooden ship. “We saw a really large object. It was close to 100 feet long, six to eight feet wide, but it didn’t really look like a ship … It’s probably over 100 years old. That’s the reason why there’s so little left of it. Basically there’s the beam left, some of the decking, some of the side beams, but the rest of the hull is actually gone and there’s none of the super structures present anymore,” said De keersmaecker, a New Westminster resident. “It is quite thrilling if it is indeed 100 years old. We’re very curious of what it can be. We’ll have to do some future dives and do some more measurements and look at all the artifacts that are there to try to figure out the history.” De keersmaecker and the other divers hired a local charter service to bring them to the
w No
en op
other submerged target, located on the other side of Bedwell Bay. “It was a barge that was upside down. We do have the video. We do have the measurements. So the work is, of course, trying to figure out what it was used for. Normally a metal barge like this is a maximum [of] 40 years old,” he said. “If it is a fresh sunken barge, then somebody might salvage it, repair it and use it again. Now if it’s been down there for 20 or 30 years, which we think this one probably has, then it’s too rusted to use again so they would probably just leave it there. Very likely, nobody wants to admit that they own the barge because then they have to bring it up.” Jacques Marc, explorations director for the Underwater Archeological Society of B.C., said Bedwell Bay has historically been a dumping ground for abandoned vessels. “The challenge for us is we’re dealing with vessels that certainly didn’t go down in a storm or anything like that. They’re vessels that probably were purposely scuttled. Bedwell Bay is a bit of a dumping ground, if you will,” Marc said. “In the old days, what they did with the old sailing ships is they used to beach them and burn them. Then they would collect up all the brass because they were made of brass. But the more modern steamers or sailing ships that were built of wood were fastened with iron. There’s no value in the iron, so they wouldn’t want to beach it and burn it because you don’t really want the iron. “So for it to go away, you just pull the plug and hopefully it sinks.” Bedwell Bay was also used as a marine location for surplus warships after the First and Second World Wars, Marc added. Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew said four more
Paul vanPeenen/NOW
Belcarra Mayor Ralph Drew overlooks Bedwell Bay, the site of many shipwrecks. vessels have also been discovered under the waters of Bedwell Bay. A 136-foot minesweeper, which became a tugboat following the Second World War, sunk in 1956 after vandals burned it to the waterline. As well, the bay floor is home to a sailing schooner and a freighter, and a wooden submarine-chaser that became a fishpacker after the war.
“It’s right in my backyard,” said Drew, a local historian. Meanwhile, Marc said they have likely discovered all of the sunken ships in Bedwell Bay, based on digitized images of the bottom of the water. “You can see the rocks, you can see the CONTINUED ON PAGE 4, see DIVERS.
ch n u rl o f
STEAKHOUSE & LOUNGE
onyxsteakhouse.ca 604.917.0118