Dive! Dive! Dive!

George Morely was a threehundred foot long wooden freighter resting just off of Evanston beach  The story is that she was steaming south from Milwaukee to Chicago empty.  Someone aboard truned over a lamp and started a fire.  The fire quickly got out of control.  The crew quickly discovered that their fire fighting pumps were not up to the task of putting out the fire.  They put in to a pier which, at the time, was located at the end of Greenwood Street in Evanston.  The crew all got off and the fire department was called out.  When it was discovered that the fire department did not have hoses long enough to reach the burning vessel, it was pushed away from the pier to keep the fire from spreading to that structure.  It burned to the waterline and sank.  Now, during the summer months it is usually marked with a buoy.  It is about a fifteen to twenty minute swim straight out from the beach in about fifteen feet of water.  I have not dived this wreck in a number of years but when I was a relatively new diver, living on Chicago's North shore I dived it all the time.  At that time, the lifeguards collected a small fee for diving off the beach but if you arrived early, before the guards came on duty, you could dive free.