Lady Mary Divers Photograph Wreck

CAPE MAY — Harold Moyers, a volunteer diver who with seven other men twice dove down 210-feet to photograph and video the wreck of the Lady Mary scallop boat, believes the fishing boat was hit by the cargo vessel Cap Beatrice. (See related story for a possible scenario.)
The Lady Mary sank 60 miles off the coast of Cape May on March 24 taking the lives of six crewmembers.
Moyers along with divers Tom Packer, Steve Gatto, Rustin Cassway, Bart Malone, Joe Mazzrani, Bradley Sherd and Paul Whitticker have volunteered their time. They all have ties to Cape May and boating.
The group also does light salvage work recovering lost clam dredges and raised the scallop boat, Captain Charley, three years ago from 140-feet of water.
Moyers said the massive damage to the Lady Mary’s heavy stern ramp happened on the surface, not when the boat sunk to the bottom. He said the ramp is crushed in.
The ramp normally had four stay wires. Now sitting on the ocean bottom, the stay wire on the starboard side is hanging in space.
The Lady Mary’s rudder is bent with its veins are pushed over in different directions. When the fishing vessel, the Dictator, was struck by the Florida, a 965-foot British-registered container ship, 20 days after the Lady Mary accident in the same area, it had similar damage, said Moyers.
He said the only thing that kept the rudder from breaking off the Lady Mary is that the rudder hit the step the CORT nozzle fits on. Moyers said there was no damage to the transom.
There is red paint on trailing edge of rudder, which was primed with gray primer and then painted blue. The Cap Beatrice is painted red.
The hub on the propeller shaft has blue paint on it as a result of the rudder getting slammed against hub, Moyers theorized.
“Something came in and took off the rudder and bent the shaft down, there is a bend and a tear,” he said.
While the ramp is crushed, the gallows are still intact, similar to damage on the Dictator.
Moyers said he would like to recover the rudder for the Coast Guard. He said he does not believe the Lady Mary will ever be raised since it weighs about 100 tons and is in 200 feet of water.
Could the stern ramp been pushed down when it reached the bottom? Two reasons it seems unlikely: the gallows above it is undamaged, like the Dictator, and all the damage is below the water line.
Could the scallop dredge have become caught on the ramp when the crew was bringing it on board and they pulled so hard with a winch that it was bent?
Moyers said the company that serviced the winch said it had 7,000 pounds of pulling force. He said a dredge filled with scallops weighs about 5,000 pounds leaving about 2,000 pounds remaining.
Moyers said other captains agree 2,000 pounds was not enough pressure to bend the ramp.
Another theory was the Lady Mary was incorrectly lying on the dredge. That theory envisions a problem with the dredge with the dredge striking the rudder, which then went into the propeller, immobilizing the vessel.
Photos from a remotely operated vehicle camera showed what appeared to be a new splice on the dredge cable as if the crew was trying to re-hook it. Moyers said he found it was not a splice but just a loop.
He said the divers couldn’t imagine how the propeller shaft could be bent down while it is still protected by a skeg. Moyers said hitting the bottom wouldn’t seem to push it down and the skeg not damaged.
Tim Harper, captain of the Dictator, raised a question. Should freighters be sailing up to 18 knots in speed in an area crowded with fishing vessels in any kind of weather?