The Lillian September 9 2007

The freighter Lillian met her end in a fog bank, on February 26, 1939. She and the German freighter Wiegand only saw each other when they were a few hundred yards apart. Both ships attempted evasive manuevers, but despite their efforts they collided with such force that the Lillian's bow shoved the Wiegand's portside plating through the superstructure and out the starboard side. Fortunately for the Wiegand the gash was above the waterline, but the Lillian was mortally wounded. With the floors awash the telegraph operator wired the key closed, in order to send out a continuous signal to would-be rescuers. It was a good plan, and all the crew were rescued without casualties. However, the Lillian wasn't quite ready to go down, and over the coarse of the next 8 hours the locked key screeched over the bandwidth, until the Coast Guard shot her aerial off. She finally did sink, 10 hours later and after a salvage ship had steamed to within a hundred yards of her. Bad news for her owners but a boon for wreck divers. Lying in 155' of water, the 238' Lillian has become a 500' long wire-dredged, depth-charged junk pile, and at 26 miles out its over the edge, depth- and location-wise, to what most folks would bother with. The debris is ideal for lobster in particular, and since it is so infrequently dived it tends to be loaded.

Seas were flat and calm for the trip out, and in no time we were tied in. Several years ago I had experimented with sidemount bailout, but never took the time to get it quite right. I always wanted to return to it, so I spent several hours last week tweaking my gear. I must say, I'm very happy with the results. Instead of having the weight of my tanks hanging from my shoulders, which have a tendency to get sore after long dives, it is now more spreadout. It also leaves me with significantly more mobility with the tanks tucked away. I still need to fine-tune things a little, as well as build muscle memory, but I think I'm hooked.

Dropping down the line, I was pleased to see visibility in the 30' range, maybe a little less. Divers may not come here too often but fishermen clearly do, as there was quite a bit of fishing line strewn about. Its pretty disheartening to see so much junk down there. Lemonade from lemons though, in two minutes I found a beautiful 4.5# bug caught up in some line. I was able to call Stephan over for some help, and after numerous snips we had him freed (I think Stephan was looking for something more than his shears to be handed back to him - next time!) Lobster definitely abounded, but most of them were barely legals, or else females, so I put them back (though I had to think long and hard about a particularly bodacious 4# hen.) In the final tally I had the afore-mentioned one, as well as a 3.75# and 2.5# one. The boilers were gargantuan, some of the largest I've ever seen, and the anchor too was just architectural in its immensity. It took some time but I eventually hit paydirt with the scallops, and scooped up several dozen. Flounder were absolutely everywhere; I don't think there was ever a moment there wasn't at least one scattering in front of me. Several goosefish eyed me balefully, they're tasty but way more of a project cleaning-wise than I was interested in.

Continuing my trend of long dives, I didn't leave the bottom until 90 minutes. At 70' the water changed from a brownish dingy 48 degrees to a warm and blue 73 degrees. I cleared one of my computers at 3 hours, the other at 3:35 minutes, and then hung until four hours for extra safety. Definitely a looooonnnnggg hang, but not a bad one. I got a kick out of watching folks drop down for dive two, then come back up, and some of them even climbed up the ladder while I was still hanging.

Back onboard finally, we relaxed and swapped stories and lunches. Fortunately for Charlie the Lillian was not quite so isolated as we thought, since he brought up a bottom timer still in excellent condition, in addition to a very nice cage light.

There had been some doubt as to the weather, but it held up for us the whole time - sunny and warm, with little one-to-twos. On the way in we heard the forecast on the radio: 18' seas with 50 knot winds, starting later that night. It just heightened our satisfaction at getting away with such a beautiful day in September.