The ocean floor is an amazing place not just for its natural features, but for the many artifacts of days gone by that litter its surface. While the majority of these items are nautical in nature – think boats, anchors, and barges – researchers often make some surprising discoveries. A pair of 1850s locomotives found about five miles off the Jersey shore offer a glimpse into the past.
Locomotives Frozen in Time
Before the days of the transcontinental railroad, locomotives and railway cars had to be shipped to their destinations from the places where they were made – for example, if a train was needed in California, the equipment had to be shipped from New England, where many locomotives and cars were made.
In 1985, a charter boat captain named Paul Helper was busy mapping the ocean floor off the coast of New Jersey when he got a startling hit on his magnetometer. Helper dove the site to see what he could find; during the first dive, he couldn’t tell what he was looking at due to poor visibility. When he returned for subsequent exploration he was amazed to see the locomotives, which are sitting upright and which are side by side as if racing one another. Frozen in time and encrusted with marine life, the locomotives are easily recognized by their massive boilers, huge wheels, and classic lines.
On subsequent dives, Helper retrieved whistles and bronze bells from the locomotives. An inscription on one whistle read “H.N. Hooper, Boston, #3.” The ornate bells weighed in at 25 pounds; based on markings and other information, researchers now believe that the locomotives were most likely being shipped to a port in the Mid-Atlantic from a factory in Boston.
The real question is, how did a pair of pre-Civil War locomotives end up under 90 feet of water, five miles off the coast? Dan Lieb, a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Explorers Club, a technical illustrator, and an avid diver, is the director of the Sunken Locomotives Project for the New Jersey Museum of Transportation, which is a nonprofit educational organization that now has custodianship of the sunken locomotives. “We had the option of bringing them up, leaving them on the bottom, or bringing up parts of them,” he told reporters. “We have been recovering pieces, examining them, and trying to answer lingering questions.” The engines’ wooden cabs have deteriorated over time and the front cowcatchers were smashed when the locomotives landed on the bottom. The remainder of the locomotives mechanical features are still in good condition.
Lieb and his team have been exploring various theories concerning the cause of the locomotives’ demise. One theory is that the engines slipped off the deck of a transport ship during a storm; another is that they were intentionally dropped to lighten a load. In either case, these fifteen ton locomotives represent a significant archaeological find – one that represents the history of America’s railroads and one that evokes memories of days long gone.