Dan Lindsay has been diving for 27 years.  Six years were spent in the commercial diving industry.  He worked as Diver-EMT with Canadian-based companies in the Beaufort Sea, Davis Strait and the Great Lakes.  

Dan is now an Electronics-Electrician by trade, but his greater love is in deep-water wreck exploration, video photography and filmmaking. As a member of the Ontario Marine Heritage Committee he and other members of the OMHC recently were successful in identifying the famous Mystery Schooner X as the schooner St. James. 

Through his company SeaView Imaging, he has created video from the Red Sea, the Andrea Doria, Tobermory, The Empress of Ireland and most recently an historic production on the maritime history of  Lake Erie’s Long Point. 

Lake Erie’s Long Point – New Discoveries

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The legends and lure of Long Point are as long as the point. Once having an actual cut through the origin of the point during the 1800’s the point now protrudes as a peninsula a distance of 25 miles from the northern shoreline.  Travel by ship on the lakes during the 1860’s was at an all time high and of all the lakes; Lake Erie seemed to attract the most activity.  The popular run from Buffalo to Detroit often ended in the Long Point area.  During the earlier years of shipping the point was a virtual magnet for shipping disasters.  Because the point was a navigational gateway for travel up and down the lake, sail vessels would try to head toward the shelter of the sand spit during storms and quite often be driven onto it or founder in the violent seas that can occur here.  The early steamers were not much better off with their limited steam ability of doing only four to five knots in a gale.  This left opportunity for navigational hazards in the fierce storms that can erupt in Lake Erie.

Shipwreck incidents in this area reach more than 200.  Previously many of  these wrecks have not been found and/or visited due to extremely poor visibility and the ever-present danger of fishing nets.  Now days the zebra mussel population has given us remarkable visibility and laid down many fishing nets.  Modern technology has in the recent years provided the means for finding these wrecks.

Some deeper waters off Long Point have been producing remarkably intact shipwrecks.  The tug “Smith” with its intact wheelhouse and the Mystery Schooner X with both masts standing brings forth the history of yesteryear shipping in the Great Lakes.

Dan’s presentation will include the identification process of the St, James as well as the introduction of several new (virgin) wrecks discovered off Long Point this past summer. 

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