Freeport scuba shop owners produce documentary on Cedarville freighter shipwreck

The Freeport couple who own Scott’s Scuba Service are behind a just-released documentary, “The Cedarville Expedition,” exploring the famous shipwreck of a freighter in Michigan in 1965.

Jennifer and Josh Dillaman, the local diving experts who bought the Freeport scuba shop in 2019, assembled a team of scuba divers from the region for the project.

They shot rare footage inside the wreck of the Cedarville freighter, which went down in the Straits of Mackinac straddling Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

It’s considered one of the worst Great Lakes maritime tragedies.

“The Cedarville Expedition” premiered to a sold-out house Jan. 21 at the AMC Classic South Pike Theater in Buffalo Township. The 50-minute film is free to view on YouTube.

Jennifer Dillaman led the dive team and produced the documentary through the Cambrian Foundation, where she serves as president. The foundation is a recently resurrected international nonprofit promoting education, preservation and exploration of the aquatic world.

The Dillamans’ Scott’s Scuba Service offers classes, sales, travel and services, and works with area water rescue teams, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, researchers and others.

Pittsburgh connections with the Cedarville run deep. It was built in 1927 for the Pittsburgh Steamship Co., a division of U.S. Steel. On its fateful 1965 journey, it was loaded with limestone and bound for U.S. Steel mills in Gary, Ind. Navigating through heavy fog, the Cedarville collided with a Norwegian freighter and, severely damaged, sank before it could beach.

Ten crew members died, according to Mackinac State Historic Parks.

Just like other divers who have visited the underwater Cedarville site, the Dillamans were impressed by the size of the wreck — 600 feet of freighter — that’s still intact.

“It looks like it did the day it went down,” said Jennifer Dillaman, 29. “It’s like a time capsule.”

The couple researched the wreck, secured the ship’s blueprints and spent months planning the four-day dive last August.

Only the most skilled divers from the region were on the team.

Diving inside a shipwreck is always dangerous business, Dillaman said. Divers have died exploring the downed freighter before, she noted.

“There are entanglement hazards and the silt — if I kick up silt, I can’t see where I’m going,” she said.

In a wreck as large as the Cedarville, a diver could get lost inside the ship.

Additionally, the cold water is a danger. They dove in 40-degree waters and had to wear dry suits.

“The dry suit keeps you warm where you are safe, but you still feel cold,” she said.

One of the team’s first tasks was to lay down lines so divers could find their way through the ship and out of it, she said.

Inside a hidden world

The ship’s interior is surreal.

The freighter broke in half as it sunk. The two pieces of the ship are still tethered together by mangled steel. The Cedarville came to rest on its starboard side and is nearly upside down.

“The beds and desks are fastened to the floor. So when you go through the wreck, they look like they’re on the ceiling,” Dillaman said.

She saw the personal belongings of the crew members, furniture, telephones, bathroom fixtures, a writing desk with drawers and a coffee cup, plates and bowls, a container of cottage cheese and other artifacts.

“We found the crew quarters,” Dillaman said, “and the mood was more somber. When we found the crew’s personal effects, you knew that it was a tragedy when the ship went down.”

Exploring the interior of the Cedarville was challenging — let alone filming it.

“If you breathe in a room, your bubbles will cause silt to fall down,” she said.

Dillaman had to plan how to navigate safely to reach certain rooms in the ship while positioning her camera to capture rooms without silt clouding the view.

“I had to time my breathing,” she said. “And I had to control my breathing to get my shots before the bubbles disturbed the silt.”

The deeper Dillaman traveled into the ship, the less silt she encountered.

The Cedarville is among an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, according to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Mich.

After the film’s premiere, the Dillamans decided to release the documentary free to the public to promote the excitement and diving opportunities in the Great Lakes.

Although Freeport might not seem to be the epicenter of scuba diving, the Dillamans consider regional quarries, other waterways and the Great Lakes as great diving adventures.

They both grew up in the Slippery Rock area.

“There is a thriving diving community in Pennsylvania,” Dillaman said.