A team of about 10 people just returned from their second trip mapping and surveying the old shipwreck site of the Star of Bengal, about 80 miles west of Wrangell close to Coronation Island. Over 100 cannery workers died when the ship went down.
Local fisherman and mariner Gig Decker first dove at the site in the 90s.
He’s a member of UChart, Underwater Cultural Heritage Archeological Research Team, which has been investigating the site for a few years. Decker said the team had a goal in mind for this last dive – to recover the ship’s bell. He said a biologist found the bell at the site a few years ago, and they wanted to recover it for conservation purposes.
“For shipwreck enthusiasts, the bell is as important as the anchor,” he said. “It’s a very important part of it (the ship)”.
The Star of Bengal sank during a storm when it was heading from Wrangell back to San Francisco.
Star of Bengal’s artifacts
The UChart team shipped the vessel’s bell to Texas A&M Conservation Lab with the intention to preserve it at the Wrangell Museum in the future.
The group wrote about the bell on their Facebook page. It says “Watching it breaking the surface after 117 years under water was an emotional moment. Once the conservation is completed, we will hear the voice of the ship again.”
Decker said they also located other artifacts – the debris pile, the anchor and the chain. But there’s something else that’s more pressing on his mind.
“The thing that we’re more interested in than anything is the fact that the majority of the Asians that died on the wreck were locked in the forward hold,” he said. “And of course, there’s been a lot of testimony both ways about whether they were locked down or not.”
Researchers found that over 100 cannery workers, mostly Chinese, Japanese and Filipino, perished in the boat while roughly 30 mostly white crew members survived.
“we’re all in kind of the same game”
Decker said he hopes an underwater forensic investigation leads to some answers.
The team researching the shipwreck included the captain of the research vessel Endeavour Bill Urschel, cook and Endeavour Program Director Corky Parker, underwater archaeologist Jenya Anichenko, divers Stephen Prysunka, Gig Decker, Shawn Wells and Kevin Landowne; remote sensing specialists Sean Adams and Tayller Adams.
Decker said UChart is a sister organization to the Wrangell Mariners Memorial, which honors people who’ve died at sea. He’s also a board member of Friends of the Museum, which will eventually help rehome the bell at the museum.
He said, “I think it’s really important to recognize the fact that we’re all in kind of the same game; we’re trying to preserve the memory of the history of Wrangell and the significance to our community.”
Decker said that Wrangell’s history goes back hundreds of years and the stories that UChart is uncovering at sea will help enrich the local museum.
Uchart will put on a talk about this experience at the Friends of the Museum spring membership meeting at the Nolan Center on Thursday, May 29 at 6:30 p.m..
The event will also be a potluck.
