Treasure Hunting Hobby

Imagine yourself out in the sea with your best friend. Now imagine looking at a computer monitor for 10 – 12 hours looking for something out of the ordinary. That’s just what Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville do for their hobby. They basically cruise the water, looking for shipwrecks.

It turns out they are quite good at hunting shipwrecks. Over the past 35 years, Kennard has managed to find over 200 shipwrecks. The past 6 years, he and Scoville have been partnered up and have invested tens of thousands of dollars in their hobby. Kennard says, “It’s a hobby and hobbies can be expensive.”

The team was on the hunt of their lives. They were in search of a 22-gun warship called the HMS Ontario. They knew the ship was only a few hours into a voyage from Niagara to Rochester when it got caught in a violent storm. Legend has it that the HMS Ontario was carrying a small fortune of gold as a year’s pay for the British soldiers.

Over the course of nearly 3 years, the team covered 500,000 square kilometres in search of the shipwrecks. One day when their sonar scanner showed something, the team dropped their sub into the sea. What they found was incredible. The Ontario was there! The 22 guns were still in their original locations on the deck and the anchor was still in place.

The team is hoping to take a documentary team to the site to capture the shipwreck. However, “We’re not saying exactly where it is,” Kennard says. “It’s a British war grave and we want to make sure it remains undisturbed. But it’s nowhere near Oswego.” So with that, the team moves on to their next hunt, hoping and praying it will be as big a discovery as the Ontario.