On June 1, 1854, the ARABIA cleared Montreal for Glasgow with 13,676 bushels of wheat and 500 barrels of flour. She made the return trip home in 27 days that September.
The three masted schooner ARABIA was launched at the Marine Railway shipyard in Kingston, Ontario, on April 26, 1853. She measured 134 feet over all, 25.8 feet beam and 11 feet in hold. Built for trading on the lakes and rivers, she could carry about 4,500 barrels of flour.
The ARABIA sailed for over 30 years. On October 1, 1884, she sailed from Chicago to Midland with 20,000 bushels of corn. While off the Ducks, she encountered a heavy gale and began to leak – very badly. She sank in a few minutes in about 100 feet of water near Echo Island at the entrance to Georgian Bay. The crew managed to get to the small boat and was rescued by the tug CLARK.
Unfortunately, she seemed to avoid all photographic equipment during her career as we have no above water photos of her. Thanks to photographer Cal Kothrade we do have photos of her on the bottom.
Here is Cal’s story of how those photos were obtained.
When one conjures up mental images of shipwrecks, they see the barque ARABIA in their mind’s eye. She was a three-masted wooden sailing ship that sprang leaks in a storm, took on more water than her crew could expel and foundered in over 100 feet of water off tiny Echo Island just north of Tobermory, Ontario. She is one of the most photogenic shipwrecks of the Tobermory region, and that’s saying a mouthful, because there are quite a few world class wrecks within 150 feet of the surface here.
Tobermory has been widely recognized as one of the hotspots on the Great Lakes where anyone interested in diving historical wrecks must visit at least once before they hang up their fins. I remember hearing about this magical shipwreck heaven many years before I was able to actually get there. Like so many things in this world that get built up in your mind as the ‘end all, be all’, this place had reached mythic status in my imagination long before I rolled into town with a truck full of dive gear. But after just a few days of soaking myself in the crystal clear blue waters of Huron, it became clear that the actual place did not match my imagination, it exceeded it! Not many places on the Great Lakes can consistently boast water as clear as Tobermory. I don’t really know why, and I don’t really care. All I know is the diving is spectacular, and the ARABIA is one of the crown jewels.
She sits upright, intact, on a slight slope that achieves 100 plus feet in depth at the stern. With her two massive wood stock anchors, intricate windlass, center board trunks, and the fallen mast with the wonderful trestle tree, there are enough points of interest to keep even the most discerning diver fascinated for multiple dives. Oh, did I mention the helm at the stern, and all the rigging blocks? What about the giant bowsprit and jib boom? The fact of the matter is this beauty looks good from virtually any angle the photographer wants to frame her.
For whatever reasons, the stern has fallen apart due to age just a bit more than the bow and midships. The wheel actually rests on the sandy lake bottom, and next to it is a commemorative plaque placed in 1985, to honor the 100th anniversary of the loss.
I was lucky enough to dive ARABIA three times over a three year period. Tobermory is about a 13 hour drive from my former home in Milwaukee, Wis., and was not just a quick little jaunt. I typically don’t go back to the same place three times in a row when there are so many other places I’ve not been to once, so this speaks to just how great the wreck diving is there.
I had wonderful dives each time, no issues, no drama, just varying degrees of visibility, and slightly differing hues of blueish-green, which is the status quo for the Lakes. In retrospect, this barque provided some of the better images of my career, thanks to being so photogenic and resting in such clear water. Knowing I had great subject matter allowed to me focus (pun intended) on nit-pickier things, like trying to get the divers in my image pointing the right direction, shining their light at the wreck, and proper lighting from my strobes on the foreground parts of the vessel. These are all things that turn a good shipwreck photo into a great shipwreck photo when done correctly.
From above leaving the wreck
If and when I ever go back to Tobermory, I will insist on visiting this wreck again, even if I only get one dive.
About the black and white image…sometimes, the color of water in the Great Lakes is a bit much, a bit monotonous. Too much color can drown out the finer points of some pictures. Sometimes, an image has more going for it than color, like contrast, balance, and sweeping lines. When a picture has a plethora of these qualities, taking color out of the equation can really let the underlying subtleties shine through. That is the case for the dynamic range, high contrast black and white image in this gallery.
Images were taken with a combination of a Canon T1-I Rebel DSLR mated to a Canon 10-22mm super-wide rectilinear lens, in an Ikelite housing using natural light and Ikelite DS-161 Movie strobes X2, and a Canon 6D full frame DSLR mated to a Canon 16-35mm wide angle lens, in an Ikelite housing using natural light and Ikelite DS -161 photo
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Cal Kothrade is the Shipwreck Ambassador of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society, a diver, a photographer and an artist. His work can be viewed at www.calsworld.net
All underwater photos of the ARABIA are by Cal Kothrade
This story was originally posted on June 1, 2024.
