On Saturday we had great weather and managed to dive the wreck of S.S. Romance. The S.S. Romance was a passenger steamship that sank in September 9, 1936 approximately a mile north of Graves Light after she was rammed by the vessel S.S. New York in heavy fog. Miraculously all aboard were saved thanks to the quick thinking and professionalism of the captains and crew of both vessels: Captain Adelbert Wickins of the Romance, and Captain Roland Litchfield of the New York (source).
Today the S.S. Romance sits in approximately 80′ at high tide and is largely a debris field with one of her huge boilers rising within 54ft of the surface Part of the bow is also intact but is partially separated from the rest of the wreck. Visibility at the Romance is usually on average poor so it makes sense to run a reel at this dive site. Today we were greatly with approximately 10-15ft (closer to 10ft) of visibility. Later in the summer months visibility usually plummets to a scant 3-5ft from my experience but I have had a few days in winter/spring where I’ve had 30-35ft+ of visibility at the Romance. When that happens she is a fun wreck to dive and explore.
We arrived at the dive site around 10:00am and dropped anchor right at the boiler. Our position was spot on as our GPS coordinates usually almost always land us right next to the huge boiler. I hate dropping anchor at this site since someone usually has to inevitably free the anchor which is usually my job. One of my projects this year is going to be to install a mooring at this site. Unfortunately it’s a pretty heavily trafficked and fished boating area so I don’t really expect the mooring to last very long. I know other charters have installed permanent and temporary moorings here in the past. Seas were flat and calm and surface visibility was fantastic. Unfortunately that did not completely translate to visibility on the wreck. We were greeted with about 10<15ftft of visibility at depth.
This was also one of those rare occasions where we had more rebreathers on the boat than open circuit divers. 4 of us were diving rEvo rebreathers, my friend John was diving doubles and another customer was diving singles tanks. Team rEvo invaded Boston Scuba for the day. Since I was crewing I did not do a super long dive I splashed about 15 minutes after everyone jumped in for their second dive. Max depth of 74ft (22.5m) with a runtime of 39 minutes. Water temperature was around 42-43f (6c).
Not too much more to report. Nice little dive. A little bit warmer and it will almost feel like summer soon.
