(Cultural Research Divers)
HOW BOAT THAT! Shipwreck seeker Gene Ritter reveals sonar images (above) he says are WWII-era boats in murky Coney Island Creek. (
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A Brooklyn commercial diver believes he has uncovered a virtual armada of historic vessels sitting beneath the murky waters of Coney Island Creek.
Gene Ritter showed The Post a series of long-distance sonar images he recently captured exploring the heavily polluted, garbage-strewn waterway. They show what he believes are military vessels and other ships dating back to at least World War II.
Ritter said that in coming weeks he plans to explore the vessels up close, and he believes they could include torpedo-armed Navy PT boats and Whaleback cargo ships.
The vessels were found not far from a former shipbuilding yard that operated nearby off the edge of Cropsey Avenue before shuttering in 1948. The Wheeler Yacht Company built sub chasers for the Navy and patrol boats for the Army and Coast Guard.
“We are hoping that these discoveries can help change the image of the creek, from negative to positive, and attract more attention to it,” said Ritter, who believes some of the ships he found were built at Wheeler.
For his part, Ritter is also helping organize a city-sponsored, underwater cleanup of the creek Oct. 20 that will boldly go where no cleanup has gone before.
Officials expect plenty of Trekkies to show since Rod Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, will be participating in the event off Kaiser Park with his dive team.
The creek is already known as the home of a famously marooned yellow submarine. The Quester tipped over in 1970 while trying to launch a blundered mission to raise the Andrea Doria, the ocean liner that tragically went down in the Atlantic Ocean in 1956 after crashing into another vessel.
The Quester is still partially submerged in the creek, and Ritter said he plans to salvage its propeller and inner hatch for display at the Coney Island History Project.
The local museum is already home to earlier Ritter finds, including a historic brass bell from Coney Island’s old Dreamland Park that sank to the bottom of the ocean during a 1911 fire.
Ritter also found 1,500 munitions lost in a 1954 military accident off the former Fort Lafayette — an island destroyed in 1960 to pave way for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.