It started with a charitable act, as a solo diver reportedly went on a mission to remove a tangle-threatening line from a shipwreck – and ended with his death and the sinking of a rescue boat in challenging water conditions.
The body of 72-year-old Patrick Kelly of Winthrop Harbor, Illinois was recovered from the 36m-deep wreck of the steamship Wisconsin in Lake Michigan on the morning of 11 September.
The scuba diver had been reported missing by his wife the previous morning, after he had failed to return to their boat by 11.30 as expected. The iron-hulled wreck, built in 1881 and sunk in 1929, lies 10km off the south-west coast of the lake, near the Illinois/Wisconsin border at Pleasant Prairie.
A search and rescue operation was launched in the vicinity of the wreck, involving the US Coast Guard, Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office and Pleasant Prairie police and fire department crews and using sonar equipment and several ROVs.
‘Caretaker of the wreck'
By around 5pm that afternoon adverse weather conditions on the lake meant that what was now regarded as a search and recovery operation had to be suspended until the following day.
Well before then, however, at around 2.30pm, the Kenosha County Fire & Rescue Association’s dive-rescue boat had started taking on water, and was forced to send out its own distress signal.
Other boats responded and the eight crew were rescued along with most of their equipment before the vessel sank in a depth of 20m, about 3km from the Wisconsin wreck-site. The association said that it would be working with the state Department of Natural Resources to retrieve its boat.
Relatives of Kelly told press that he had been an experienced diver who had dived the Wisconsin many times before, and considered himself a “caretaker of the wreck”. He had said he had planned to retrieve the line for fear that it might have endangered other divers.
Also on Divernet: Tech-divers’ dream: 150-year-old masts-up schooner, 108m-deep steamer wreck had ‘new look’, Couple die on deep Great Lakes dive, Early schooner found in Lake Michigan
