Where is William Randolph Hearst when we need him?

And I need him now, because I want his help riling America up for a war--a WAR!
He did it well back in 1898, beating the drum for war against Spain. He and Joseph Pulitzer used their newspapers to convince America that we should go to war against Spain to avenge the destruction of the USS Maine in Havana harbor and we wound up teaching Spain a thing or two about messing with us.

Well now we have another upstart country that seems to have forgotten it's place in relation to the United States: Canada!

It seems that our "friends" to the north have enacted a new policy (as referenced here) requiring that boats leaving our ports on the Great Lakes to dive on shipwrecks in those lakes must now dock at a Canadian port on the other side of said lake before venturing to any wreck that's allegedly in Canadian waters. This means that wrecks like the Wexford, (blogged previously here) and others which American divers have enjoyed exploring are now essentially off-limits to American-based dive charter boats, because going all the way to some Canadian port-of-entry is just not worth the trouble.

So I say that it's time to remind Canada how things stand. We basically took control of those lakes during the War of 1812 when we swept the British from them quite handily. But being magnanimous in victory, we let the Canadians have access to part of "our" lakes, basically because we're really a nice country. But now they're pulling stuff like this? How quickly they forget. So maybe it's time to remind them again, perhaps by moving a carrier battle fleet onto Lake Huron and basing a Marine Amphibious Assault Transport or two in Buffalo. I mean, what are they going to oppose us with? A couple of fire tugs and an ice breaker at best. We can whoop 'em.

You Canadians had best not think that just because we didn't take Toronto that last time (when it was rather provincially known as "York") that we can't just reach out and take it any time that we want it, and Windsor right along with it! You guys are just lucky that we don't want those cities due to your silly-looking money, that consarned metric system and all that cleanliness ya'll got going on up there.

Still...I would formally advise you Canadians not to push it. Translated into your language: Take off, you hosers. Back away from our lakes and our wrecks and don't make us come up there. If you thought that the Red Wings were tough, just you wait until you meet the rest of us, EH?

Day #6. Diving the Wexford.

Well here we were--a year later but going out on a charter boat, the Sylvia Anne, owned and piloted by Captain Gary Venet, formerly of Macomb County Sheriff's Dept. (Hell, I knew he was my kind of guy from the first minute I shook his hand.) We motored out of Port Sanilac onto Lake Huron and after about an hour and a half, moored over the bow of the packet freighter Wexford, lost along with her entire crew of 22 during the great storm of 1913.



Undiscovered until 2000, the 250 foot freighter now sits upright and intact in about 80 feet of water and we'd lucked out in that the weather was great and water visibility was fantastic. As Aaron and I dropped down the line onto the bow, I was amazed to see the Wexford's massive steel prow materialize out of the murk. Her anchors still hang in her hawsepipes, and over the bow, her open and empty cargo holds beckon.



As the picture shows, the amidships pilothouse is mostly gone but the hull is complete and intact. On this dive, we entered the forward holds and swam around a bit, making it as far astern as the boilers. Returning to the bow, we exited the water. Our next dive took us down onto the stern and this time we made it forward to the bow and swam in and out of the superstructure and around the boilers before finally ascending to the surface again. It was a great dive on a real piece of history that was only discovered relatively recently. View some other Wexford photos here and here and read the Shekel Blog about our dive here.

(Please note that in his version, he had us arriving at the dock in plenty of time. He neglects to mention that this was only because I took over driving and ran the two-lanes at a more expedient 70-80 mph to make up for his earlier rather sedate 35-40 mph pace.)