Steamboat find at the bottom of Canandaigua Lake

Canandaigua, New York — A steamboat sank to the bottom of Canandaigua Lake and was quickly forgotten, more than 120 years ago.

That is until a Canandaigua man spotted it on his computer and then found it in the water. Now, he’s sharing all he’s learned about The Seneca Chief.

As a kid, Scott Hill developed a fascination for the water.

“I often wondered what it would be like to pull the plug on the lake and see what it looked like without the water,” he said. “And it’s that that’s always kind of driven my quest.”

Hill is the former commander of the Rochester Police Dive Team who later went to work for aerial imaging company Pictometry.

He says the journey began one day in April 2014 as he was checking some imagery.

“The water was crystal clear, gin clear,” he said, “but the other unique thing, it was dead calm. It was like glass. And so, as I started looking around, I was looking in the north end of Canandaigua.”

“I saw this object,” he continued. “I said, ‘That’s a shipwreck.’”

The coordinates on his phone led him to The Seneca Chief. He says when the water is clear, it’s easy to see.

Or, you can do what he did: dive down about 15 feet.

“What I found was interesting,” he said. “It’s been out here over 100 years, just sitting there, and nobody’s ever stumbled across it until Pictometry took a picture of it.”

According to Hill, the next step was to learn more about its story. Built-in Buffalo, the ship was brought by rail to Canandaigua in 1888. It was made of steel, which was not common for the time.

“It had limited use on the lake. But it was probably too small, only 50 feet long, to be a passenger boat,” said Hill. “It was heavy, didn’t move that fast and, finally, it kind of outlived its usefulness.”

Hill says The Seneca Chief sank in 1898, likely sent to the bottom of the lake on purpose, only to have its story revived more than a century later.

Beside the Seneca Chief, Hill and local shipwreck hunter Jim Kennard have found or explored hundreds in lakes across the northeast.