There are many things I am excited to try while diving and one of those is artifact hunting!

The coastal waters of New England offer so much in terms of exploring the past with everything from shipwrecks, to sunken U-Boats, to simply discarded items hundreds of years old. There is something satisfying about bringing back to the surface things once lost to the depths. I am very new to artifact recovery, so most of my pieces are from shallow wrecks or just simply lucky finds. During a presentation at one of the weekly meetings of my dive club, I was enthralled by a collection of old bottles and jars. These were especially interesting because they were all collected in less than twelve feet of water from the harbor outside of the yacht club where the meeting was held. I was impressed with the excellent condition of the bottles and learned it was because they were preserved by the fine mud and silt in the harbor which protected them from the harsh effects of sand and water. As I looked over the collection, I imagined how nice a couple of those would look on my mantle next to my wreck artifacts. I knew I had to have some.

I was talked in to diving for some of these bottles. The catch? It was February in northern Massachusetts and I was diving in a wetsuit. I was told the bottles had to be collected in the winter before the boats were put back into the harbor and the boat traffic was too heavy for diving safely. As I stood on the dock adjusting the last bits of my gear and preparing to plunge into the frigid water, I couldn't help but look around at the freshly fallen snow and think to myself, "well, this seemed like a good idea". I had thoughts of returning to the warmth of my dry clothes and heated seats in my car. I considered feigning illness so I would not look like a wimp backing out of the dive. Surely, I could not be expected to dive with a sudden and nasty bout of the two-hour-flu, right? Alas, there was no chickening out now. I stepped to the edge and, against my better judgment, jumped in.

I had been winter diving in a wetsuit before this bottle dive. I had been diving all fall and into December. I attended the annual New Year's Day dive and mustered over 30 minutes underwater that day. On January 1st, the water temperature was in the high 30's and the air temperature was unseasonably warm in the high 40's. The day of our bottle dive the water temperature was quite a bit colder and the air temperature had not even hit 30 degrees. This was a different experience entirely. While I was prepared for what I would be encountering, I wasn't quite ready for it. I would soon learn that winter diving is not something for the faint of heart.

The split second of free-fall into the water was as exhilarating as always. Then I felt the slap of the icy water and the moment of fun was over. I grunted loudly into my regulator as the water worked it's way around my body. I bobbed back to the surface and spat out my regulator along with a string of expletives. I knew this would take most of whatever macho qualities we "tough girls" are supposed to posses. My buddy and I decided to surface swim out a ways so I set my mind to moving every part of me that I could to keep the blood flowing. I was playing air-piano with my hands and wiggling my toes with every flick of my fins. I was warming up very quickly with the fast pace of the surface swim and I began to feel more comfortable. I knew the key to staying warm would be to just keep moving.

After quite the warming swim, we decided to drop down. The visibility looked awesome the entire way out. It looked as if we could reach down and touch the bottom. Well, we were almost right. We went to drop down only to find the bottom no more than six or seven feet below us. It was easier to simply "snorkel" along the surface until we saw something worth investigating and pop down to grab it. Soon, I was weighed down by the bottles in my goodie bag attached to my BCD. I emptied some of those to the bag attached to the dive float and was relieved without the strain of the extra weight. Not long after that, I was weighed down again. I could not believe how many bottles were here and how easily I was finding them.

It was only when I started to feel cold that I decided to head back. I signaled to my buddy that I was cold and he gave the "turn around" signal. I checked my compass to find the heading back to the dock and took off swimming. At one point, I decided to poke my head out of the water to see how far away I was from my relief from the cold. I was surprised with how far out I was. The dock had to be over one hundred yards away. I could really feel the cold sinking in and I knew I had to get out of the water quickly. I dropped back down and began kicking hard. Along the way I found an old, discarded screwdriver with a long handle. I began jamming this into the mud so I could use it to "pull-n-glide" along the bottom to speed up my return. This worked well except in order to grip the screwdriver, I had to stop moving my fingers. The cold sank in twice as fast and my hands went pretty numb.

I finally made it back to the ladder on the dock. With some help from my buddy, I wriggled out of my BCD and scrambled up out of the water. I took off running towards the warmth of my dry clothes. I managed to start my car and turned the heater up to high. I placed my towels on the warm vents while I wriggled out of my wetsuit and dive skin. By the time I was stripped down to my bathing suit, my towels were warm and I gladly warmed up and dried off. I put on some dry clothes and hustled back to the dock to inspect my catch. My buddy had already rinsed most of the bottles off in the water and I was thrilled to see that two of my finds were old clay jars. These were the type of items we all hunted for. Because they had been buried in the soft silt and mud, each stamp put into the wet clay when the bottles were made was still perfectly clear. One bottle was stamped from London, England and the other was written in German. I could not believe my luck with these finds.

It took no more than five minutes online to learn the origin of the bottles. Just a quick search of the names imprinted in the clay told me they were both made in the mid 1800's. I could find every detail of the history from these old clay jars from where they were made to what they once contained. Despite the bountiful information of their origins, I can only imagine the journey they took to get here, buried in the mud in the harbor for over one hundred fifty years. I wondered what person brought them here and how they wound up in the water all those many years ago. The mystery is enough for me to decline selling the bottles despite their value nearing two hundred dollars a piece. They have more value to me on my mantle, conjuring up both memories from the dive and imaginative tales of their voyage to the bottom of a harbor thousands of miles from where they were created.

I have been back to dive for more of these pieces of history despite the freezing water and unpredictable conditions. I am always looking to find another piece of history and the story that goes along with it. One never knows what will be found when we venture to the depths. The adventure is almost as great as the treasures we find. That is one more thrill we divers can enjoy. Not many people get to recover artifacts once lost to the sea. We are especially lucky here in the murky waters of New England. The sea floor is littered with artifacts. It is clear I have been stricken with "artifact fever" and it is also becoming clear that I will soon need a bigger mantle.

 

To read more about Laurens adventures in diving please visit http://northshorefrogmen.com/