Diver shares mysteries of the deep

For most of Dan Lieb’s life, he has been fascinated with what is found under the surface of the ocean. During his career as a member of the New Jersey Historical Divers Association (NJHDA), Lieb has helped locate 13 shipwrecks under the waters. He shared his vast knowledge of shipwrecks with patrons of the Howell Township Public Library on Thursday evening.

This event featured Lieb giving a slideshow presentation documenting the history of shipwrecks in the Garden State.

He began by asking the audience what famous shipwrecks they knew of, and he got back answers including Titanic, and Lusitania. He brought up a more famous local shipwreck, the Morro Castle, saying that he thought this shipwreck which took the lives of 137 individuals was much more fascinating than that of more well known shipwrecks like the Titanic.

“What happened with the Titanic was a mundane accident,” he said. “On the Morro Castle, you had scenes of corruption and murder, much more interesting events.”

Lieb then went into his presentation on shipwrecks, explaining that in the 1840’s, insurance companies did not want to offer monetary supprt to ships heading to New Jersey, since a great number of ships would end up getting shipwrecked. He explained these ships would crash through a myriad of causes, including storms, mechanical failures, collisions with other ships and even explosions.

“There have been about 7200 cases of shipwrecks off the coast of New Jersey,” he said, adding that number was just under the amount of ships that have crashed in all five of the Great Lakes combined.

During his slideshow presentation, Lieb showed off many images of ships that wrecked from the 1800s and 1900s. One ship in particular he showed off had black squares painted along the side, which Lieb noted was done so pirates would think the ship was armed with cannons.

“In actuality, many of those ships only had one gun on board to protect from pirate attacks,” he said, noting that the guns of many ships that crashed have been recovered and are on display throughout various museums in New Jersey.

Lieb said his major passion is diving underwater to find shipwrecks, and he does his best to recover whatever he is able to find under the waters. He explained what usually occurs is that he goes with a team of five other divers, and they each take 30-minute shifts of diving into the water and searching the shipwreck.

“We each do three dives of 30 minutes, so in all a normal day of exploration is about nine hours,” he said.

Lieb then told stories about the various items he found on shipwrecks, including pewter spoons, logwood, which is a piece of wood used to make various dyes, and how one time his team even found some dynamite.

“I had no idea what it was, and it turned out to be an un-detonated piece of TNT that was part of a larger stack of dynamite used to blow up a ship,” he said.

Interestingly enough, his team also located two locomotives underwater near Long Branch. When asked how the trains got there, he said it was quite possible that the locomotives were being shipped from overseas to New Jersey, and either the ship wrecked, or the locomotives were intentionally dropped off the back of the boat and into the water by those on the ship.

“We think we have an idea what happened, but we do not want to say anything further until we know for sure what exactly went down,” he said.

Lieb ended the presentation showing the types of animals that call the shipwrecks home, and was able to bring the story of these fish full circle.

“The shipwrecks attract small fish. The small fish attract big fish. The big fish attract fishermen. And fishermen pay taxes,” he said with a laugh.

Lieb was met with a rousing ovation at the conclusion of the presentation. Howell Public Library Director Dianne Reith thanked Lieb for sharing his remarkable story, and also thanked members of the Friends of the Howell Township Public Library for helping fund this program.

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