Underwater Wakulla

Diving on the Black Bart

By RUSTY MILLER

Hello Wakulla
Spring has mostly been here for the last few weeks as the temperatures get into the 80s and lows in the 60s and the ocean temperature is quickly climbing to the low to mid-70s, as of this morning it is 72 degrees.
Hopefully it will be at least 78-80 degrees by mid- to end of April. I can feel the excitement starting to grow in the area of scuba diving. I have had several folks sign up for scuba classes at the shop and a lot of phone calls inquiring about our dive classes. I have been telling everyone who asks about classes and where the open water portion of the class will be and my answer is it looks like we might be able to do one of the open water sessions in the ocean at the end of April. Last year we didn’t go to the ocean until mid-May.
This brings me to another item and that is  where we go to for the ocean part of our class? That’s a good question. I generally take my students to Panama City Beach and we go a little offshore to one of the many dive sites they have there.
The particular dive site I’m going to talk about today is the Black Bart. Let’s look at a little history behind the ship and the man it was named after. The ship Black Bart was originally named the “Volcano del Gulfo” and it was used as a supply vessel in the oil fields.
The ship was decommissioned and sunk in the Gulf of Mexico just off PCB on July 27, 1993 and was given the name of the Black Bart, after Capt. Charles Bartholomew. The Black Bart is 185 feet long and is in 78 feet of water. The cargo deck is 71-feet deep while the foredeck is 65 feet, the pilot house deck is 57 feet deep but the pilot house itself was taken off by a bad storm and now lies upside down on the ocean floor next to the Bart.
Believe me that when it was intact it was a great open water swim through. I have dived that wreck since it was sunk and it’s still a fun dive especially at night.
Let’s look a little about the man it was named after – Capt. Charles Bartholomew, This information was written from his obituary in the Washington Post on November 27, 1990.
Capt. Charles A. Bartholomew was age 50, and the director of ocean engineering for the U.S. Navy and supervisor of its salvage and diving operations. He died Nov. 15th, during a diving recertification exercise in the Gulf of Mexico 40 miles southwest of Panama City. He was a Navy diver for 22 years, and disappeared from sight in 200 feet of water. His body was recovered on Nov. 17th.
He was assigned to Washington since 1985. Capt. Bartholomew, known as Black Bart, headed the recovery efforts after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on the boat “Volcano del Gulfo” known as the Black Bart.
Capt. Bartholomew also headed the clean up in Alaska of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. During that time the Navy recovered more than half of the oil spilled.
Capt. Bartholomew had a very long career in the Navy and helped recover 18 more ships and several aircraft.
He truly was all-Navy and deserves our respect and admiration for a Navy man.
We will be taking several trips to dive the Black Bart in PCB this diving season so come aboard and dive history in the Gulf of Mexico.
Keep making bubbles.

Russell Miller is the manager at Wakulla Diving Center in Medart. NAUI Instructor #59999