Diving the David W. Mills

By Philip R. Church

At 5:30 a.m. on August 11, 1919, the 202-foot steamship David W. Mills slammed into Ford Shoal, four and a half miles west of Oswego. The 925-ton vessel was the victim of freakish circumstances.

Immense forest fires in Canada, combined with late summer weather, blanketed Lake Ontario in a fog so thick you could see only a few feet. Visual navigation was impossible.

The Mills had just left Oswego. Captain Matthew Langan, a resident of the city, had ordered his wheelman to veer the ship southward in hopes of following the shoreline to Sodus. Before ever sighting land, the Mills grounded on the shoal.

Efforts to free the Mills proved futile and a violent storm tore her to pieces, ending her 45-year career of carrying lumber and coal throughout the Great Lakes.

Captain Langan's misfortune is today's SCUBA divers' delight. During recent years, the David W. Mills has found a new career as a popular recreational dive site.

In 1991, the Oswego Maritime Foundation (OMF), with support from New York Sea Grant and the Great Lakers Dive Association, began researching and mapping the wreck. OMF used the data and a grant from the NYS Council on the Arts to publish a "maritime heritage educational guide" to the wreck. The pamphlet guides divers around the wreck site, promotes the preservation of submerged historic sites, provides a history of the Mills, and tells the story of steam power on the Great Lakes.

On May 3, 2000, the Mills was designated New York State's first diving preserve in the Great Lakes - the NYS David W. Mills Submerged Cultural Preserve & Dive Site. The underwater dedication was broadcast live on regional evening news programs. A mooring buoy is now available at the wreck for dive boats, and a hazard buoy has been placed on the ship's boiler. Access is free.

Resting in only 12 to 25 feet of water, the Mills is a relaxing dive for divers of all skill levels. Because she broke apart during a storm, the Mills provides divers with a look at how steamships were constructed over a century ago.

So, let's take a swim, so to speak, through the wreck of the David W. Mills...

The largest intact section of the wreck is the bottom of the ship. As you swim along its 180-foot length, you can sense the size of the Mills, which could carry over one million board- feet of lumber. The ship' backbone, called the keel, runs the length of the section and rises four feet off the bottom.

You can see about 35 feet before the green tint of Lake Ontario obscures your surroundings. Zebra mussels coat everything and grasses gently sway in docile eddies and currents.

You swim northwest toward the stern. Passing below you are heavy oak timbers that once supported the bulk of the vessel, but are now home to spawning panfish and eels. To your right is a spare propeller blade and a thick metal deck support.

The keel ends and the propeller shaft appears, only to disappear again into the gloom off the stern of the ship. Following the propeller shaft, the four massive blades of the eleven-foot propeller suddenly loom ahead. You take a few moments to examine the six-inch nuts holding the blades to the shaft. The propeller was not a single unit: the blades could be removed independently. Now you know what that spare propeller blade was for.

Using the map in the OMF maritime heritage guide, you follow your compass to the next part of the wreck, a 103-foot section of the starboard hull. It lies flat against the rocky bottom. Small fish play and feed among its timbers.

Again following your compass you leave the starboard hull. Within a few feet appears the huge steam engine that powered the Mills's propeller. It's metal bulk rises several feet off the bottom. Swimming around the engine you observe the piston chamber, gears and engine framework.

Looking northwest you see another section of hull lying on the bottom. This is the port hull. You travel 150-feet down its length. Unlike the starboard hull, this piece is littered with large sheets of metal plating and piping.

Reaching the end of the port hull, you look westward and the most famous part of the shipwreck appears, the engine boiler. The boiler is well-known because its massive hulk reaches to within one-foot of the surface and many unfortunate boaters have struck it by accident.

The boiler rests on its side with the expansion chamber still connected. Fuel was burned to heat water in the boiler and produce the steam that powered the engine. A short swim from the boiler and you find the flat metal rudder of the Mills.

Returning to the boiler you set a course westward. After swimming 165-feet over rocks and grasses you discover the winch, sitting upright, still attached to a section of the forward deck. The winch was used to raise and lower the ship's anchor.

Looking closely you notice the anchor chain is still wrapped around the winch, one end trailing-off across the lake bottom. Curiosity sets in and you begin to follow the chain. It meanders its way among the rocks for 70 feet before turning at a sharp angle. You continue to follow it, wondering if it ever ends. After swimming the course of this wreck and chasing this huge chain, you are huffing and puffing pretty steadily by now.

Finally, after another 100 feet, the chain ends, but you're not disappointed. There on the bottom, still attached to its chain as though devotedly dedicated to its duty of holding the steamship in place, is the two-point, fluked anchor of the 121 year-old David W. Mills!

The wreck of the David W. Mills can be found using the OMF guide and NOAA Chart 14803. The wreck lies halfway between shore and the green Ford Shoal buoy. A mooring buoy is available May through Oct. near the keel.

On a clear calm day the wreck can be seen from the surface. Please do not anchor into the wreck. Anchoring on wrecks can damage them and hasten their demise.

The boiler is marked as a boulder on the nautical chart, and is now marked with a hazard buoy May through Oct.. Use extreme caution when approaching the site. If you run over the boiler, you could severely damage your hull and engine.

And please only take pictures! Shipwrecks are a part of our common maritime heritage and deserve protection so that we and future divers and historians can learn from them and enjoy them.

The GPS coordinates for the Mills are N 43.26.630, W 76.35.089.