Manasoo
This is the wreck you’ve trained for!
The Manasoo sits upright in 210 feet of cold, clear water with her wheel in place, her lifeboats still on deck and on the bottom beside her, her fire axes mounted where the crew left them, and a 1927 Chevrolet still sitting in the hold. She is one of the best preserved wrecks in the Great Lakes. Getting to her takes normoxic trimix training and real experience in cold, deep water.
The Manasoo sits upright in 210 feet of cold, clear water with her wheel in place, her lifeboats still on deck and on the bottom beside her, her fire axes mounted where the crew left them, and a 1927 Chevrolet still sitting in the hold. She is one of the best preserved wrecks in the Great Lakes. Getting to her takes normoxic trimix training and real experience in cold, deep water.
On the wreck
The Manasoo went down fast and settled upright on a flat clay bottom. Cold fresh water and depth have done the rest. Nearly a century later, the wreck reads less like a ruin and more like a vessel paused in time.
The wheel is still standing in the wheelhouse. The lifeboats are still on the boat deck, with another on the bottom alongside the hull where it floated free as she sank. The fire axes are mounted where the crew left them. In the cargo hold, a 1927 Chevrolet that was being shipped along with the cattle still sits where it was loaded, recognizable down to the body lines.
Visibility on the site is often excellent. The water is cold year-round. The light at depth is what you would expect of a wreck this far down in clear fresh water, and a good light brings the detail out.
Built in Glasgow, run on Lake Ontario
The Manasoo was built in 1888 at the Aitken & Mansel yard in Glasgow as the passenger steamer Macassa. She was 197 feet long, steel-hulled, and designed for the Toronto-to-Hamilton run across the western end of Lake Ontario, a route she worked for most of her early career under the Hamilton Steamboat Company.
In 1928, after four decades of passenger service, she was sold, converted to carry cargo, and renamed Manasoo. Her new owners put her into service on the Upper Great Lakes, running freight between Owen Sound and Manitoulin Island. She made the run for only a few months.
September 15, 1928
On the night of September 14, 1928, the Manasoo left Manitoulin Island bound for Owen Sound with a crew, a small number of passengers, and a cargo of 116 head of cattle aboard. In the early hours of September 15, she ran into heavy weather off Griffith Island and foundered without warning. Sixteen people went down with her. Five survived after spending more than 60 hours adrift on a single lifeboat before being picked up.
The wreck was not located for another 90 years. She was found in July 2018 by a team led by shipwreck hunter Ken Merryman and Cris Kohl. The Manasoo is a protected site and a grave site, and is dived under a site agreement.
Dive her with the team that’s been here since the start.
Greg was personally selected by Ken Merryman to take part in the first photographic documentation dives on the Manasoo in July 2018, days after the wreck was found. FullyTek has been on this site as long as anyone, and that experience shows up where it matters: the briefings are detailed and honest, the run plan accounts for the conditions you’ll actually find, and the topside support is built for the kind of dive this is.
Michael MacDonald of Advanced Diver Magazine lists the Manasoo among his top ten Great Lakes wrecks and recommends FullyTek as his operator of choice for diving her.
This is the wreck you’ve trained for. We’re the team to dive it with.