Long-missing section of LI shipwreck found

A Baldwin dive boat captain's good deed appears to have solved one of the most enduring mysteries of Long Island's maritime history.

Sunday, Dan Berg hopes to further document the resting place of the long-missing rear section of the freighter Iberia, which sunk south of Long Beach in 1888 after being torn in two by a collision with another ship.

Berg, 51, and five crew members on his dive boat "Wreck Valley" in April found the missing 20-foot-long stern section of the ship in 90 feet of water 5 miles south of the rest of the wreck.

"It's one of those pieces of the puzzle that you're always looking for," Berg said. "People have talked about the stern of the Iberia ever since I started diving back in 1979. We were always looking for it very close to the rest of the wreck and never found anything."

The majority of the 255-foot Iberia, which was transporting crates of dates and other cargo, sits in 60 feet of water 4 miles south of Long Beach. It has been a popular destination for divers and fishermen for decades. But the location of the rear section, which includes the steering station and the rudder, baffled searchers.

"It's nice that a piece of maritime history that was missing has been found," said Stephen M. Jones, director of the Long Island Maritime Museum in West Sayville, who has not seen artifacts that Berg and crew have recovered.

Berg, who has written several books on shipwrecks and has previously helped find or identify five other shipwrecks off the South Shore, and his crew have brought up a few artifacts from the stern, including the lens for a navigation light, the brass cover for the compass mount, brass pieces of the 5-foot-diameter steering wheel and wine and handblown medicine bottles from the late 1800s.

Weather-permitting, he will return to the site Sunday with a film crew to further document the discovery. "We don't have conclusive evidence [that the wreck is part of the Iberia] like we found a bell with the ship's name on it, but we're 80 to 90 percent certain of what we found," Berg said. Other maritime history experts say Berg's claim seems plausible.

The discovery came about when in April the Wreck Valley was on its way back from the New Jersey shore and Berg assisted a man drifting in a disabled 16-foot motorboat who was waving a towel for help. He had been fishing off Staten Island and the current had carried him southeast almost 20 miles off the South Shore of Long Island. As Berg towed the boat toward Jones Inlet, he noticed a fishing boat anchored in a manner that made it clear that it was over an obstruction.

"I took note of where it was and the following week we went back and searched around a little bit and spotted several interesting images on the depth recorder" screen that suggested the presence of a shipwreck rising above the seafloor, Berg said.

Ed Slater, 45, of Patchogue, Berg's co-captain, dived to look at what he initially thought was part of a barge lying on its side, half buried in the hard bottom and covered with a fishing net.

"Then I noticed under a hull plate there was a piece of glass, which ended up being a lens for one of the navigation lights," Slater recalled. "While I was trying to dig that out . . . we started seeing a copper rim. That ended up being the cover for the binnacle" that holds the compass and steering wheel.

On their second trip to the wreck a week later, Slater said he began to think it might be the long-missing part of the Iberia because they had found the rudder, the steering mechanism that turns the rudder and pieces of the steering wheel -- all parts that were missing from the main Iberia wreckage.

Alvin Golden, a board member of the Maritime Industry Museum at Fort Schuyler in the Bronx, said the artifacts will be displayed there next year.

THE IBERIA

THE CRAFT The 255-foot steel-hulled freighter was bound from the Persian Gulf to New York with a cargo of 28,000 crates of dates.

THE COLLISION On Nov. 10, 1888, the Iberia collides in the fog with the 520-foot-long Cunard liner Umbria, bound for Liverpool, 9 miles south of Long Beach. The Umbria sliced off the rearmost 20 feet of the Iberia. That section sank while the rest of the ship remained afloat. The Iberia's crew safely boarded the Umbria. Later, the Iberia sank 4 miles off Long Beach.

THE WRECK The forward section lies in 60 feet of water. Diveboat captain Dan Berg and his crew in April discovered what they believe to be the stern section missing for 122 years.

Source: aquaexplorers.com/Iberia.htm