Scuttled War Relic a Watery Tourist...

It had snowed the night before, and a stiff October wind blew across the lake as the soldiers struggled to sink the boat.

The French threatened to raid their Lake George encampments, so the British wanted all their new boats on the lake’s bottom before the winter of 1758 closed in. That would seal them beneath the ice, safe from a French attack.

“Provincials” allied with the British loaded the boat with rocks and scuttled it once, only to watch it pop up like a cork. So down it went a second time; this time, it would not be seen again for more than two centuries.

The ship, called the Land Tortoise, is finally being called into duty 236 years after its inaugural launch--as a tourist attraction. New York state is allowing certified divers to view the unique French and Indian War ship.

Researchers say the ship, 105 feet underwater near the southern end of Lake George, is a remarkably well preserved artifact from a time when the British and the French fought for control of the New World with cannons and muskets.

“It’s like it was put in a refrigerator. It’s 95% clean,” said Joseph Zarzynski, executive director of Bateaux Below, a nonprofit group formed to protect Adirondack shipwrecks.

Zarzynski was part of the boat crew that in 1990 discovered the Land Tortoise after sonar picked up a ghostly image on the lake bottom. Many other, smaller transport ships--called by the French bateaux--were sunk at the same time and had been found on the lake bottom. But the Land Tortoise was a unique find.

Fifty-two feet long and 18 feet wide, the Land Tortoise was a floating fort, outfitted to accommodate seven cannons and sides that jutted out diagonally to the water to repel musket fire. Flat-bottomed with an oak hull, the class of boat was aptly called “radeau,” the French word for raft. In the water, it resembled a giant tortoise.

Ragtag provincials built the Land Tortoise and maybe more than 200 other boats as part of their edgy alliance with the British.

“You are talking about a vessel largely constructed by farmers who were carpenters. It was supposed to be simple to make,” said Chuck Vandrei, the archeologist for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The British, in turn, hoped to sail the fleet up Lake George to aid in an assault on Carillon, France’s stronghold to the north on Lake Champlain. The two lakes were crucial links in the water route between New York City and Montreal and thus important to control of the continent.

The Land Tortoise was sunk Oct. 22, 1758--two days after its first launch--with the thought that it could be resurrected after a winter in cold storage. The troops, with no fort, would have had a hard time defending their boats against a French onslaught, Vandrei said.

But the scuttling had a few hitches, according to a journal entry by Massachusetts shipwright William Sweat.

“We sunk her once; But one side rise again, so that we were forced to work the chief of the night, Before we could keep her down,” Sweat wrote.

When British Gen. Jeffery Amherst completed in 1759 his successful siege of Carillon (soon after renamed Ft. Ticonderoga), he brought up a schooner from the lake bottom and some bateaux, but left the Land Tortoise.

Zarzynski thinks the soldiers who sank the Land Tortoise in those October winds might have inadvertently sunk it too deep to be easily recovered.

The boats would have had to be hauled back up with ropes. But before that backbreaking work, a soldier would literally have had to hold his breath in water 45 degrees or colder while dragging rocks from the submerged vessel.

No such obstacles exist these days for divers visiting the site. A buoy bobbing within sight of Lake George Village marks the spot.

Some of the boat’s wood is so fragile that even bubbles from a diver’s tank or water roiled by a kicking fin could damage the wood, Zarzynski explained.

The boat, lacking the oars, masts and cannon it was outfitted with, is still intact and upright. Schools of sculpin fish live in its crannies.

For added control, all divers must sign in with the state Department of Environmental Conservation at an island campsite. Divers who wish to view the other Lake George shipwrecks, which have been open since last year, do not need to sign in.

State officials say the caution is justified because the Land Tortoise is a one-of-a-kind find.

“Essentially, there is an irreplaceable library down there of historical documentation of what is an important period of our history,” said Langdon Marsh, the state environmental commissioner.