Contacts:  

Teresa Mitchell, 315-646-1000

Sackets Harbor, NY, May 26, 2009 - Noted shipwreck explorer Jim Kennard will present an all-day program on the “Shipwrecks of Lake Ontario” on Saturday, June 13 as part of the 2009 Great Lakes Seaway Trail Experience Series. Kennard’s discoveries have received worldwide attention and have been featured in National Geographic Magazine.

The program at the “Red Barn” at the Sackets Harbor Battlefield State Historic Site on Hill Street in Sackets Harbor benefits the nonprofit Great Lakes Seaway Trail Foundation that promotes tourism-based learning experiences along the 518-mile-long freshwater shoreline of New York and Pennsylvania.

The waters of the Great Lakes Seaway Trail hold many of the more than 200 wrecks Kennard has discovered in more than 35 years of diving. Each of his four presentations on May 21st will focus on a different wreck that Kennard and exploration partner Dan Scoville have discovered over the past six years in Lake Ontario. 

The program begins at 10 am and will include presentations on:

• “Discovery of the Steamer Homer Warren,”
  
• “The Last Voyage of the Schooner Etta Belle,”
  
• “Discovery of an Early 19th Century Lake Ontario Schooner,” and
  
• “The Deep Water Shipwrecks of Lake Ontario.”

During each program Kennard will present a brief update & short video on HMS Ontario, a British sloop-of-war that sank in Lake Ontario on October 31, 1780, during the Revolutionary War.  Kennard also be signing copies of the recently-published book “Legend of the Lake,” the story of the HMS Ontario.

Since 1970, Kennard has discovered shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, NY Finger Lakes, and Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Using his background as an electrical engineer, Kennard built the side scan sonar system that located the shipwrecks.

The 2009 Great Lakes Seaway Trail Experience Series is sponsored by National Grid, Key Bank Foundation, Town of Hounsfield, New York State Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Seaway Trail Foundation, volunteers, and the Dive the Seaway Trail Project. The program fee for the day-long shipwrecks program on June 13th is $15 or $5/program payable at the door.

The Dive the Seaway Trail project of the Great Lakes Seaway Trail in partnership with New York Sea Grant and local communities features world-class freshwater dive sites for exploring shipwrecks and underwater landscapes accessed from the byway that is one of America’s Byways and a National Recreation Trail.

For more information on the Great Lake Seaway Trail and the Dive the Seaway Trail Project, click here or call 315-646-1000.