Divers find ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ pristine shipwreck near the bottom of Lake Ontario

Quagga mussels cling to the wood of a shipwreck found 100 metres below the surface of Lake Ontario near Toronto. (Jeff Lindsay)

Long-time diver Heison Chak says he won’t forget the moment his team found a pristine shipwreck near the bottom of Lake Ontario.

The shipwreck was first seen as a large anomaly in 2017 during a fibre-optic cable survey on the bottom of the lake between Buffalo and Toronto, and it caught the attention of Trent University archaeologist James Conolly, who organized a dive team alongside Ontario Underwater Council president Chak to investigate the site back in August.

The team initially thought the coordinates might be the site of a wreck called Rapid City, a two-masted sailing vessel built in 1884 and lost in 1917, but at first glimpse the dive team knew the ship they found had to be much older.

Chak said his team found the ship 100 meters deep and that it was very intact, with its standing masts and topmasts still in place. He added that most of the ships he’d previously found had lost their masts because they had been knocked off by boats or anchors.

“It’s very, very rare. I would call this one a once-in-a-lifetime … to find one in this shape, it’s the first one, and maybe the only one I have found like this in my career,” Chak, a veteran diver with more than 20 years of experience, told CTV News Toronto. “It was very cool finding a preserved, untouched shipwreck. It was just one of those special moments that will always be in my heart.”

Chak said it’s likely the ship is older than they first anticipated.

“We shared it with a marine archaeologist, and he said that, based on the features that we have found, it’s earlier than the era that we thought it was,” Chak said.

“The technology that we found in this vessel, it’s pre-1850 and maybe even earlier. We don’t know, but if it is really that era, from the 1800 to 1850, I think we will have even more celebration because we hit the jackpot where there is very little history or studied documented material about shipwrecks, ships or shipbuilding in that era.”

Chak and his team will return to the shipwreck site next summer to collect measurements and a wood sample to accurately date the ship.

“This is not just the remains of it. This is a very intact and complete structure that we see underwater,” Chak said. “In order to make it a worthwhile exploration, to make it a successful exploration, we want to be able to share the information that we have learned and hopefully piece together a story.”