by George Mathewson for the Sarnia Observer
(2003) Angler Don Chalmers has caught some big fish, but nothing like the whopper he hooked in August of 2000. The retired autoworker was down-rigging in Lake Huron when his fish-finder detected something massive on the bottom in 75 feet of water. Curious, he backed his boat over the object and snagged his fishing gear on it.
Chalmers had hooked the Wexford, a 270-foot freighter that went down with all hands in the Great Storm of 1913 and had eluded all seekers ever since. There was irony in the fact a salmon angler found the ship while an American researcher specifically commissioned to search for wrecks was working in the area.
“This researcher brought in all this expensive equipment and Chalmers found it with a hundred dollar fish-finder,” Goderich resident Tim Cumming told The Observer, the first daily newspaper to tell the story.
The Wexford was an ocean-going freighter built in England in 1883. Loaded with grain and under the direction of 26 year-old Captain Bruce Cameron, she sailed from Fort William and into a maelstrom. The great storm of 1913 blew for three days, whipping up 30-foot waves. It killed 235 sailors, sank 12 ships and drove another 25 ashore.
All but three of those ships had been found. And now after 87 years the Wexford had reappeared, just eight miles from the mouth of Grand Bend harbour.
By any measure the wreck is beautifully preserved. Divers say a lifeboat davit still stands upright on her port side with a block pulley suspended delicately from it. The lifeboat is missing, possibly launched in the dying moments.
A formal survey has since been completed by the Ontario government and a large mooring buoy marks the site. “Low impact” diving is permitted.
Chalmers, the wreck discoverer, offers this advice: “Take only pictures, leave only bubbles.”