Dive team searches for artifacts from 1908 Saskatchewan river disaster
- On 10/09/2008
- In Wreck Diving
- 0 comments
From the Canadian Press
A Saskatoon dive team is searching for a sunken treasure of old champagne bottles, fine china and giant stern wheel spokes from the last steamboat to sail through the city on the South Saskatchewan River.
The fire department's water rescue team, with help from an archeologist, is diving each day this week to try to recover lost century-old artifacts from the S.S. City of Medicine Hat. The luxury ship crashed into a Saskatoon bridge and sank in 1908.
"This is an archaeological reconnaissance, not an excavation," said Butch Amundson, a senior archaeologist with Stantec Consulting Ltd.
"I'll feel like the project is a success if we find one artifact that we can undeniably say is from the S.S. City of Medicine Hat."
The divers, using metal detectors designed to work underwater, have only about a half-meter visibility.
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