New Chapters to Minnehaha’s Story: Resurrection (part 3)

Locating the streetcar boat in the ooze and dark waters of Lake Minnetonka was only the first step.

Jerry Provost’s five-year search for a streetcar boat had been a success but now the question was; what comes next? Was the boat salvageable? If so, was removing it from the bottom of the lake the best thing to do? And, most importantly, once the boat was brought to land, who would protect and restore it?

Jerry had approached the most likely sponsor, the Minnesota Transportation Museum, about the project. Unfortunately, the MTM had already scheduled its resources for the coming ten years. With no immediate options, Jerry put the project on hold and left the boat in the relative safety of the lake.

Situations Change

During 1980, Jerry continued to monitor the streetcar boat’s condition and observed that it was slowly being destroyed by the anchors dropped by fishing boats. In the immensity of Lake Minnetonka’s waters, the streetcar boat lay in a spot known for good fishing. Coincidentally, people interested in the boat began to network and connect Jerry with the resources he would need to raise the boat.

On such resource was Bill Niccum, the owner of Minnetonka Portable Dredging, located in Gideon Bay. Niccum had the barges and cranes necessary to assist in the salvage effort.

At the same time, Jerry’s company had several teams of experienced professional divers working around the U.S. There would be a lull in projects at the end of August, around Labor Day, and these drivers would be available for the effort.

After coordinating with Bill Niccum and others, Jerry decided to go ahead with raising the boat.

August 25th, a Monday, was set as the start date. Jerry assembled a crew of professional and volunteer divers to handle the variety of tasks that had to be done. Niccum offered his barges and personnel, even though this would be a busy period for him.

A Complex and Dangerous Operation

The boat was large: 70 feet long and 14 feet wide. It was heavy: being both water logged and filled with the debris that had been used to sink it.

Divers working at depth must be monitored, time spent at various depths and amount of exertion, followed by appropriate decompression stages as they return to the surface. All equipment would require monitoring during operation and frequent inspection and maintenance. Also, there would be the logistics of getting to and from the dive site and feeding the crews.

As the Dive Master, Jerry was responsible for all that and more.

August 25th was overcast and cold. A tug pulled a barge loaded with divers and their equipment to the wreck site. The morning was spent preparing for the following days of diving. Air compressors for the divers were set up and down lines attached from the barge and buoys to the streetcar boat. Divers use down lines to guide them directly to where they must work. This saves time and increases safety.

Many of the divers got their first look at the boat. She was sitting in about 55 feet of water, at an angle with her bow pointed upwards and her stern buried in the mud.

By the end of the first day the salvage effort was underway and progress had been made removing debris from the inside of the hull. Dredging had started along the keel.

August 26th dawned wet and windy with a slight chop on the lake. In his book, Salvaged Memories, Jerry observed, “Workers would get seasick today.” Despite the weather, the divers went below to remove debris from the hull and dredge more mud from the area of the bow: in preparation for the use of lift bags. These bags, with the ability to raise 2000 pounds each, would be attached to the hull and inflated with air. If a bag broke loose it would head for the surface, “… like a missile launched from a submarine” as Jerry wrote. A rogue lift bag could easily flip over any of the many boats gathered to watch the salvage effort.

August 27th started like the previous two: cool, wet and with a light wind. Divers removed the sticky mud from around the bow and attached lift-bags to the boat. With safety foremost in everyone’s minds, the bags were slowly inflated. The plan was that as the bags lifted the bow, the entire boat would be pried out of the muck and come free.

Instead, the suction of mud was greater than the lift of the bags and, rather than pull the boat free, its stern was sunk deeper into the gluey bottom of the lake.

Niccum sent out another barge, this one with a small crane, to add lifting power to the effort. Despite the added power, by the end of the day, the lake was still winning the tug-of-war over the boat.

The divers, support people, onlookers and press were disappointed. Jerry was asked if he was going to give up. He replied, “Heck no. We’ve come too far to let a little setback stop us now.”

Niccum agreed to send a second barge and crane the next day. That night, members of Jerry’s dive crew slept on the barge.

Jerry recognized that the delay in lifting the boat only added to the reward when they finally succeeded. As he wrote, “It’s been a perfect pre Labor Day activity for Lake Minnetonka. What could be better than this intense labor of love, to bring back one of the lake’s great excursion boats.”

August 28th, cool with light wind. By now the prolonged diving in the cold dark water is starting to take a toll, ear infections and colds sidelined a number of volunteer SCUBA divers.

The divers worked at digging out the stern and slipping a lift strap under the boat. By mid day, with three barges, two cranes, and lift bags Jerry was ready to again try to raise the boat. Spectators, in an estimated 100 boats gathered to watch.

This time, the bow of the boat rose too quickly. The two lift bags attached to the boat’s bow bollard, a mooring post, tore free and rocketed to the surface.

Later in the evening, Jerry and his crew tried again but the ooze once more won and the boat remained on the bottom.

August 29th, much warmer and more humid, a brisk wind with slight chop. An experienced commercial diver, Gene Denbeste, set about tunneling under the hull of the boat with a suction hose, clearing the way for a lift strap.

Dangerous Work

There was little space in the tunnel, the water was churned into a thick soup of mud and silt, visibility was almost zero, and the diver had to constantly clear his regulator to maintain proper air pressure. In this environment, DenBeste crawled under the hull.

Suddenly, the tunnel collapsed trapping Denbeste under the boat. His scream over the dive radio silenced everyone on the barge.

But this is what a skilled Dive Master plans for. Immediately a team of safety divers entered the water and went to DenBeste’s aide. They quickly dug him out and began the critical process of decompression: a multi-staged ascent that allowed him to naturally exhale the nitrogen dissolved in his blood. Coming to the surface too quickly would have been life threatening.

DenBeste’s close call did not stop the operation. While divers dug channels from both sides of the boat and slipped lift straps under it, Niccum delivered a third barge with a crane. The lake would not be allowed to hold the boat another night.

Late afternoon, the next attempt to raise the boat began. Slowly, the boat came free from the mud. For the first time in fifty-four years, the streetcar boat was off the bottom of Lake Minnetonka.

Cautiously, tugs pulled the barges with the streetcar boat in tow, towards shallow water where she would be more secure. As they moved along, the cranes gradually raised the boat until she surfaced.

Throughout the day, the fleet of onlookers had grown until several hundred boats were gathered waiting for their first glimpse of a streetcar boat. When she emerged the roar of sirens, horns, and cheering exploded across the lake.

Jerry wrote, “It was a moment I would not forget and I’m sure that everyone aboard the working barge that night felt the same. You could see on their faces the pride that everyone shared in that moment.”

Originally posted 06/06/2011, Lake Minnetonka Patch.

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