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By Bill Bleyer
bill.bleyer@newsday.com
Patrick Rooney, left, realizes his dream of salvaging a
3-ton anchor from an 1886 shipwreck. He hauled it up off
Moriches Inlet with help from Robert Hart, center, and
Charles Hart.
In three decades of scuba diving off the South Shore,
Patrick Rooney of Copiague has visited one of his favorite
wrecks, the Cunard liner Oregon, more than a thousand times.
He has filled a room with portholes, watches, dishes, rings,
gold coins and other artifacts from the vessel that sank in
1886, 15 miles south of Moriches Inlet after colliding with
a schooner. But on Saturday he came home with by far the
biggest relic yet - a 13-foot-high anchor weighing 3 tons.
It took two boats, a winch and crane and five divers to
bring the anchor to the surface and to a West Sayville
marina. Rooney, 45, a tile-setter who spends his weekends
working as a mate on the diveboat Lockness out of Freeport,
first spotted the anchor about 10 years ago. "It was just
lying there next to the wreck," he said. It’s a rare Trotman
anchor that the Oregon used as an auxiliary or backup anchor
stored on deck. The idea of raising it had been bouncing
around inside Rooney's head for about five years. On
Saturday, he chartered the Lockness and invited 16 diving
buddies along. He arranged with Charles and Robert Hart,
owners of Shellfish Marine in West. Sayville to bring their
62-foot surf clam fishing boat, Susan H., out to do the
lifting. After the Lockness arrived over the wreck around 9
a.m., Rooney and other divers attached ropes and a chain
bridle, which was attached to a winch cable on the Susan H.
The winch pulled the anchor up to just below the surface in
under 20 minutes, Rooney said.
"It felt like an eternity," he added. A crane took over for
the final lift up to the side of a fishing boat, Robert Hart
said. Rooney said he's making arrangements with a local
company to sand off marine growth and rust and coat the
anchor with a preservative. Then he plans to exhibit his
find at Long Island Scuba, a Lindenhurst dive shop, on his
front lawn before donating it, probably to the Long Island
Maritime Museum in West Sayville.
"Wow," museum director JoAnne Brintrup said when told of the
recovery. "I'm sure our board would be very happy to accept
it." In the meantime, Rooney's wife, Susan, is resigned to
having a large lawn ornament. "The house is already
decorated with a nautical theme so it will fit right in,"
she said.
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