Visibility had been excellent farther South in Sannich Inlet recently so I was hoping the usually-terrible visibility in Mill Bay would be good enough to re-visit the wreck of the Lord Jim. I was curious to see how much it has deteriorated since I was last here 4 years ago.
Natural Resources Canada sidescan image
of the Lord Jim wreck back when it was intact:
An old photo of the Lord Jim back when it was called
the La Bonne. The photo was posted by Gordy Eliason
on the Ancient Mariners of B.C. webpage.
This is pretty much how I remember it looked when I
first started diving it 11 years ago:
Unfortunately the visibility today was only 8-10'. I swam out to the left underwater following the bottom contour 25' deep. This is what I did last time as well and, like last time, the swim to the wreck seemed to take longer than expected.
I was almost going to give up, but then I saw the wreck in the distance.
Almost the entire wooden portion of the wreck has disintegrated. The railing around the stern seemed to be made of metal and is still intact. The deck at the stern was coated in fiberglass resin or something so it is still lying like a flat sheet. The starboard side of the hull is gone. The port side still has some wood. The engine is now lying fully exposed. I was impressed by the amount of fish around the wreck. There were big schools of a few kinds of perch. There were also lots of brown, copper, black and juvenile yellowtail rockfish. I saw lots of buffalo sculpins, small great sculpins and painted greenlings. Much of the wreck is now a jumbled pile of all the metal, plastic and fabric things that were in the vessel.
