Augustus W. Snow

We actually marked this wreck in the summer of 2003, but at the time weren't ready to dive it, and then got sidetracked on a few others in deep water.  Besides the depth, this is a challenging dive due to poor visibility as well.  It seems to be in an area of particularly fine mud, and a constant current causes the bottom 30-40 ft. of the water column to be very cloudy.  It's frustrating to cruise down through a very clear water column only to have the visibility go to hell in the last few feet.  Visibility couldn't have been any better than 5 feet on two dives a week apart.

While I'm not entirely positive yet, this is very likely to be the Augustus W. Snow and I'll take the chance of assigning a name rather than a moniker until I'm certain.  The Snow was a 4-masted wooden schooner build in Brewer, Maine in 1909.  It was 183 ft. in length with a 36 ft. beam and displaced 671 tons.  It was owned by the Crowell & Thurlow Steamship company at the time of its sinking in 1940.  It was likely scuttled based on its location in the general area of the dumping grounds.  A rough survey with a reel seems to indicate a ship of approximately this size, and a quick search of the records shows no other wooden ship of this size to have gone down in the area.  The photo shows the ship after a collision in 1905 - it was kept afloat and repaired.

The remains of the deck can be found at around 275 ft.  Most of the decking is gone now, but a few areas remain intact.  We saw many very large anemones on the beams and on the sides of the wreck, and almost all were fully extended feeding on all the material in the water.  This would be a beautifully colorful wreck if you could see more.  The photos I managed to take are very poor quality for the same reason - the light scatter was significant and my photographic skills are non-existent.

We'll come back to this wreck later in the season when the visibility may be better to see if we can get some better pictures and to see if there are any items left behind that we can bring up.

A cross beam with the remains of decking attached.

Large anemones cover much of the large beams and the sides of the ship.

A cluster of anemones cling to a large beam fallen into the hold.

A section of the wreck with decking still intact.