I've only been diving here a few times several years ago. I wasn't impressed enough to come back at the time, but I wanted to see if there were any remains from the old Giant Powder Company's dock here underwater. The Giant Powder Company was an American explosives company that had an explosives plant at Telegraph Bay in the late 1800's. There was a long dock with a trolley on it that was used to load explosives on the steamers. Judging by an old photo of the bay, the end of this dock seemed to be built on a shallow reef at the entrance to the bay. Years ago, I dove on this reef and I remember seeing some kind of small concrete foundation maybe for a dock piling. At the time I didn't know there used to be a dock here so I didn't pay much attention to it. I dove here today (Dec. 18, 2016) to look for historic remnants. I swam out from the beach towards the shallow reef.
British Colonist Dec. 17 1884:
The visibility was pretty bad. It was 6-8' near the beach and became worse the farther out I swam. There was a swell at the entrance to the bay that was stirring up the silt on the bottom. As I swam along the base of the rubble slope on the right side of the bay, I could see lots of metal scraps in some areas. I assume this was where the explosives plant dock was located. I didn't see any sign of the dock itself in the bay (no pilings or stumps of pilings).
When I reached the area near the right-hand point, I followed my compass to the rocky reef that pops up near the entrance to the bay. Eventually I saw the silty rock and I started swimming over it. It wasn't as steep as I remembered from years ago. There wasn't much on it except for stalked kelp. Some areas were covered with small white barnacles.
The far side of the main rocky reef was 45' deep. Years ago, I swam out along some more reefs here and reached 70' deep, but today the bad visibility discouraged me from swimming out blind into the murky gloom. The surge also made it difficult to swim. It's surprising that the energy from a small 3' swell can have such an effect 45' deep.
I swam back over the rocky area towards the bay. The top of this reef was about 15' deep at high tide. I didn't see anything man-made out here, not even a bottle. The visibility was so bad though, that I wasn't able to have a proper look at the whole area. I didn't even see the concrete foundation I saw last time.
I followed my compass back again along the silty bottom of the bay towards the rubble slope on the right side of the bay. There was one area with especially bad visibility. It turned out to be caused by an old log rolling back and forth in the surge.
I reached the area with metal debris that I saw during my swim out. There was one strange, large object that looked like a shaft with a disk on it. It was about 15' long, but I couldn't see it all at once in the bad visibility. Normally when I see heavy iron objects like this I assume that they were sunk as boat moorings. This one had so many other iron beams, etc. scattered around it, that I thought they all might be something left over from the explosives dock structure. There were also two solid-looking iron wheels with thick, curved spokes.
Before the 1860's Telegraph Cove (Bay) used to be called Whiskey Bay. I don't think this had to do with rum running since this was well before prohibition in the US. Maybe there was a distillery here. Anyway, it was re-named Telegraph Bay since this was the spot where the first telegraph connection between Vancouver Island and the mainland came ashore in 1866. Today, as I was swimming back to the beach I came across an old cable on the bottom. It was made out of copper strands and the fabric-type insulation was mostly worn away, leaving the cable frayed and broken in places. I want to believe that this was the original telegraph cable. I followed it along the side of the bay. It eventually disappeared under the sand and then reappeared briefly near the beach.
