Trip Report: 05/26/01

Dry Tortugas Rhein

Capt. Jeff Hunter on Gulf Business

By: Andrew Donn

Four AUE divers decided to head for some wrecks off the Dry Tortugas over Memorial Day weekend. The boat we charter is docked out of Ft. Myers which is only a few more miles run from the more usual port to depart from of Key West. The plan was to dive the Rhein three times on Friday, do one or two dives on the Araby Maid on Sun., move over to the Oil Wreck for a dive that evening and hit a couple other wrecks on the way back to port on Monday.

I departed from DC Reagan on what turned out to be an experience in Air Travel aboard a Spirit Airlines flight headed for Ft. Lauderdale. I know, I should have known better, but there weren't any other flights left, honest. Several delays later and 2 hours behind schedule, I finally arrived in Ft. Lauderdale. Joe C. was kind enough to pick me up at the airport and after loading a bunch of gear into the back of his truck, we were headed off across Alligator Alley for Ft. Myers. Soon we met up with Jeff M., Mike B. (Barney) and the Capt. Jeff Hunter at the marina and finished loading the boat. The original plan was to depart at 12 midnight. The Capt. would drive out to the site, approximately 130 miles off shore as we slept so that we could be on site and ready to dive at first light. Because of the delays we didn't actually get under way until closer to 2:00.

The ride was a little on the bumpy side but not bad at all. As I heard the main engines shut down and felt the boat stop some time in the early morning, I figured we were on site and it was time to get ready to dive. I noted that it was 9:00, a little later than I had thought our arrival time to be but then again we hadn't left until late. This was the last time I would use my watch for this purpose. As I headed topside, I learned that this was not the case. As it turns out, about five miles from the site we ran over a huge hawser line left in the water by another boat. Mike B. was selected to volunteer to head under the boat and attempt to unfoul the prop. With hacksaw in hand, in he went. It really wasn't to bad a project. The line hadn't fouled to badly and hadn't done any of the nasty things like fuse to the drive shaft. Before to long, we were back under way.

Once over the site, we painted the wreck immediately on the bottom finder. The Capt. made a few passes to get a feel for how the wreck was laying and then dropped the anchor attempting to hit the tallest part of the superstructure. The king posts come up to 140' the first in tact deck is found at 190' and the sand is in the 145 range. Once we were confident that we had a good hook in, it was time to gear up. Joe and my self were going to go in first and after a last minute analysis and final gear assembly it was time to put wet suits on. I had my 3 mm one piece on pulled up to the waist and figured I'd cool off by jumping in. As I hit the water, the aging Velcro on my watchband gave out. I looked frantically but with out a mask, couldn't see a thing. I yelled over to the boat and someone tossed me a mask. After sticking it to my face I looked under the water and amazingly was able to spot it on its way to the bottom. I noticed a few barracuda eying it as it went past. I swam hard for it but the suit being only hiked up to my waist was producing a tremendous amount of drag. I was gaining on the watch, but without fins I just couldn't get down fast enough. Oh well, another sacrifice to Poseidon I thought as I headed back to the surface. This was turning into some morning. We finished gearing up without incident and before long it was time to head for the bottom.

The Rhein was a 454-foot long German freighter built in 1926.  At the outbreak of World War II, she attempted to make it back to Germany from Mexico.  Several U.S. warships were monitoring German shipping activities, recognizing the increased European hostilities, although at the time we were not at war with Germany.  The U.S. destroyers Simpson (DD-221) and MacLeish (DD-220), shadowed the Rhein as it sailed for home in December of 1940.  Before making it out of the Gulf of Mexico, she was caught by the Dutch Navy sloop Van Kinsbergen.  The Captain of the Rhein attempted to scuttle the ship by setting it afire, but before it sunk the British cruiser Caradoc joined the fray and placed several 6-inch shells into her superstructure while the USS MacLeish and USS McCormick (DD-223) witnessed the event.  The Rhein now rests upright and intact in approximately 250 feet of water. (Wreck description borrowed from Mike Barnett, AUE Historian)

Joe and I dropped into the water first. As Joe was clipping into his scooter, I dropped under the boat and met up with the anchor line. There was very little current and the vis looked to be 100 ft. As I dropped down the line the wreck came into view from about 100 ft. We had hooked in right where we planned. The anchor line was snagged on a piece of wreck by the upper superstructure by what used to be the boat deck. Several lifeboat davits still extend up from the hull in this area. I dropped off my stage bottles close to the line and checked the hook. I looked up to see that I was staring at a med sized Jew fish face to face through a little bit of broken down superstructure. As I was doing this, I heard the sound of Joe's scooter and looked over to see him touch down on the deck and begin to doff his stages. When I looked back to the Jew fish, he had slowly moved on keeping me in sight. After a few hand signals with Joe, I was off to explore the wreck. I have dove the wreck four times before and done very little penetration choosing to stick to the outside of the wreck. This dive, I wanted to check out two areas. I wanted to do some penetration of the extreme aft section of the wreck. This section was torn away from the main structure of the wreck in the blast that sent her to the bottom. It is still attached to the main portion of the wreck, but is canted at almost a 45-degree angle as it lays over hard to port in the sand. I also wanted to explore the main engineering space of the wreck, which was directly under the portion where I currently was.

I worked my way towards the bow a little ways. Just forward of the tall superstructure is a portion of the wreck that is heavily damaged. It looks like Godzilla stepped on this portion of the wreck. The bridge should be in this location, but is nowhere to be seen. The main deck plates are crushed downward. This makes for a few entry points and I dropped down into one avoiding the sharp edges of the plates and entered into one of the engineering spaces of the ship. A line had been tied off to one of the twisted plates and ran forward. Following the line, the space between the bent plates got small and I decided that aft was the way to go noticing a sizable room in that direction. As I dropped in, I noticed some very large sea water pipes with large gate valves. As I swam into the compartment, the daylight disappeared and I was glad that UK Light Cannon I had just purchased, a 12.5W HID, was doing a good job of cutting through the darkness. It is a handheld unit and packs a little easier for travel than a big canister light. I was able to illuminate the backside of an enormous generator. Attached to the generator was a hefty sized engine used to drive the unit. It was large enough to require a catwalk in order to access the head with a set of stairs that lead down into the gloom and a large amount of rubble on the bottom of the compartment. The valve train along the top of the engine is exposed and the pushrods, lifter springs and rocker arms are clearly visible. I swam along slowly being careful not to stir up the large amounts of silt in the compartment and not to run into any of the many pipes and beams the made their way across the ceiling. As I continued aft, I encountered a second generator identical to the first and a third beyond that. I took some time to check this set out as well as what appeared to be some spare gears stored along the wall. As I continued my swim, I came to a bulkhead. There were large sections of the wall missing and I headed between the intact supports and made my way into a large cargo hold. The main drive shaft makes its way through this hold and a cover several feet tall runs up and over the shaft amid ship.

I headed up to the deck level and after heading forward a few feet encountered the two main kingposts rising up out of the deck and high off the structure. Since I wanted to explore the extreme aft section of the wreck on this dive, I turned around and headed back to the stern. I passed over the heavily damaged portion and pulled myself along one of the fallen rear kingposts to get to the stern. This portion of the wreck is still intact but looks as if it has been twisted and pulled off the main structure. I located a door on the front side and made my way inside. Again, the light was doing a good job of illuminating the large surprisingly empty room I had just entered. I dropped down one level through a hole in the floor in search of something more interesting. As I entered from above, I immediately noticed two intact portholes on the stbd side and headed over to check them out. The first one I examined was missing about half of the glass. I was surprised at how dark the compartment became as I stuck my light through the hole to the outside of the wreck. The second was completely in tact with the glass being solid. The dogs were undone but the glass was still closed. The watch glass was open and intact. I found myself wishing I had packed my wrecking tools, a crow bar and a large hammer. These were smaller than the portholes found on the rest of the wreck and one was in excellent shape. It would have been nice to take it home. Unfortunately, the tools don't pack so well for trips on an airplane. Resolving myself to the situation, I headed to the front portion of the compartment. The door to the room in front of the one I was in looks like it had been blown inward. I poked my head through the twisted metal and could make out the backside of what appeared to be a large electric motor or generator. A small door on the backside was swung open and several creatures had taken up residence. Looking at my bottom timer, it was time to start making my way back to the anchor line.

I made my way out of the room the way I came in and swam over to where we were hooked in. As I swam towards the line, I checked the scope and estimated approximately where the boat was located on the surface. I looked off into the sand directly under that point and wondered where my watch was. I finned a couple of kicks and looked hard through the water on the off chance that I would catch a glimpse of it, oh well. I could see the rest of the team milling about the area finishing up with various tasks before beginning their ascent. As I was picking my deco bottles up, Joe came scootering up towing something with his scooter. He had found a small bell and was busy rigging it to a lift bag to bring it to the surface. The main bell had been removed several years before by the first team to dive this wreck. After congratulating Joe on his find and waiting a few minutes to see if he needed any help, I began my ascent. As I made my way up the line, the rest of the divers made their way to the ascent line and we began our long decompression starting at 100 ft. Several large schools of amberjack accompanied the divers below and began a large circling pattern. It was a pretty cool site looking down at each of the divers surrounded by a large school of circling AJs. They got tired of the game at around 70 feet and made their way back down to the wreck. The remainder of deco was uneventful as we all made our way up the line.

Back at the surface, we retrieved the bell and all of our stage bottles and discussed the plans for the next dive. Because or our late start and the encounter with the hawser, we would only have enough time for one more dive today.