Comerant - Lake Ontario

3D Model

The Comerant tug boat

This tug boat was built in 1941 and in 1949 it was renamed the Russell 4 and was sold to the Newton Creek Towing Company of New York. The tug was repurchased by Merrit, Chapman & Scott who renamed the tug Cormorant. The Cormorant was returning from work on the St. Lawerence River when just 3 miles NE of Oswego she was swamped by a large wave. The crew survived by hanging onto a tractor tire that they retrieved when crossing the lake.

On May of 1997 Tim Shippee, Doug Low, Peter Tombollio and Robert Kutzleb were surveying the area and found the Cormorant with sonar. They later put two divers down, Peter Tombollio & Walt Chesla, who identified and photographed the tug boat. The Cormorant site is 135’ below the sursace.

We returned to the site of the Cormorant on June 21, 2022 to do some photogrammetry work with it. We used 3,413 photographs to do this 3-D image of the Cormorant. For more shipwreck discoveries go to https://sonarguy.com