A Mariner’s Life
Art Cohn has launched
a successful nautical career
at the Lake Champlain
Maritime Museum.
M
pat ron s , m i d dl e ag e d o r
better, gathered on a summer’s evening on the lawn
of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Ferrisburgh. They were there to mark the launch of the
replica 1862 schooner Lois McClure on her three-month voyage along
New York’s 524-mile Canal System, this summer arriving at towns such
as Amsterdam outside of Albany all the way to Tonawanda on the Empire
State’s western end. Museum Director Art Cohn thanked sponsors and volunteers who helped make the Grand Canal schooner project a reality, and
introduced the canal boat’s crew. Ever the educator, Cohn couldn’t resist a
teaching moment, reading from a captain’s diary about the hardships of plying Lake Champlain in the early 20th Century when cargo-carrying canal
boats had all been supplanted by the railroads.
Part polished politician, part professor, the casually clad Cohn in Carhartt work pants and a museum polo shirt needed no cue cards, no lectern,
and no microphone. His deep voice commanded attention; his self-effacing humor garnered laughs. In the waning sunlight of that warm afternoon,
John Callaghan of the New York State Canal Corp., sweating in a gray polo
shirt with a pink sunburn beaming from beneath his buzz cut, thanked
Cohn. The Lois McClure would have important symbolism for the towns
where she was scheduled to stop, he said. The 88-foot long historic replica
will be celebrated and embraced, he predicted, adding: “The canal is the
last thing open in many of these towns. You may not think you are carrying
cargo, but your cargo is hope for these canal communities.”
36
u s e u m
september / october 200 7
By Leslie Wright
opening Photograph
by Paul O. Boisvert
As seen in Vermont Magazine. Copyright 2007
www.vermontmagazine.com
As seen in Vermont Magazine. Copyright 2007
www.vermontmagazine.com
V e r m o n t M a g a z i n e 3 7
ing baritone with a roughness at the edges
that hints at his urban upbringing. Cohn’s
close-cropped beard is sprinkled with gray.
A silver Bermudian coin hangs from his
neck—the coin’s edges have been cut away
to leave just the image of a fish.
photo: courte s y of L a ke Champlain M aritime Museum
A
When he’s not at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Ferrisburgh, Art Cohn
may be out diving the lake or at the helm of the Lois McClure.
Callaghan’s comments spoke to the
museum’s mission and captured the essence
of Art Cohn, the 57-year-old underwater
explorer, educator, and researcher who has
been on a three-decade-long odyssey to protect Lake Champlain’s submerged cultural
resources. Cohn has made it his life’s work
to share his boundless enthusiasm for an
underwater world most of us will never see
and historic events in Champlain’s past—all
the while leading a loyal crew of followers.
A cargo of hope, indeed.
The Lois McClure project is just one
example. “The mission hasn’t changed from
day one,” Cohn told his audience at the canal
boat launch this past June. “It’s to share the
rich archeological history of the lake and
share it with the public.”
Cohn founded the Lake Champlain
Maritime Museum 22 years ago, in Ferrisburgh. Bob Beach, owner of neighboring Basin Harbor Club, was instrumental
in starting the museum, as well. Cohn is
surrounded by a tight group of long-time
38
september / october 200 7
supporters and employees, but more than
anyone else he has been the captain of
underwater historic preservation on Lake
Champlain.
Without Cohn we’d know a lot less
about the lake and its rich history, long-time
lake historian Peter Barranco says. “Art’s
been a driving force in his field. His dedication to it. His understanding of it,” Barranco says. “He’s been able to convey very
well the importance of the lake and its history to the public.”
Had Cohn been born in another time,
he might have been a scrappy and resourceful Revolutionary War general on the
American side capitalizing on his charisma
to motivate tired, hungry, and ill-prepared
troops to stay the course against tall odds.
Or perhaps he would have been a swashbuckling pirate leading a dedicated but
disheveled outlaw crew on the high seas. In
any case, Cohn is a leader. It’s not hard to
imagine a past life for him as a mariner. Tall
and broad shouldered, he speaks in a boom-
rt
cohn
grew
up
in
the
New York City borough of Queens.
His father was a pharmaceutical salesman
and his grandfather owned a drug store,
where Cohn worked as a kid. His introduction to diving came in his teens in the murky
waters of greater New York Harbor.
Fresh out of law school in the early
1970s, Cohn started his career as a public
defender in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
He soon shelved the law and found work as
a diver and dive instructor in Vermont and
the Caribbean.
In Vermont, he was employed by a dive
shop in downtown Burlington. That was
where the hand of fate interceded. A ferryboat captain stopped in the dive shop one
day and queried Cohn about some of the
wrecks at the bottom of the lake. Cohn
didn’t know about the wrecks. Few people
did back in the 1970s.
The man was Capt. Merritt Carpenter. On his runs across the widest part of the
lake from Burlington to Port Kent, N.Y., he
had plenty of time to ponder the lake and
its history. The captain knew of several
wrecks. The General Butler was a canal
boat that sank off the Burlington breakwater in 1876. The Phoenix, a steamer, burned
in 1819. But the captain didn’t dive. He had
no proof the wrecks were there, though he
had done enough research to make fairly
educated guesses. Cohn was intrigued.
Sadly, the earlier history of Champlain shipwrecks was marred by tales of
boats being raised only to face destruction because their salvagers either lacked
finances or an understanding of how to preserve the wrecks. Cohn was mindful of that
unfortunate history and points out that
misconceptions persist even today.
“Submerged cultural resources are so
new as a class of resource that usually people don’t have the slightest idea of what you
are talking about when you start talking
about a shipwreck as underwater cultural
heritage,” Cohn says. “‘What is that? They
are just shipwrecks, right? You just rip them
out of the bottom and sell them at auction
and put the pieces around your neck.’”
Cohn helped shed light on the value of
these hidden treasures. In the 1980s, he
As seen in Vermont Magazine. Copyright 2007
www.vermontmagazine.com
photo: paul o. boisvert
played a key role in the creation of the Lake
Champlain Underwater Historic Preserve,
a collection of nine wrecks open for viewing by divers.
More recently, Cohn advocated on an
international stage as a U.S. delegate to the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organization’s convention for the
protection of underwater cultural heritage.
His voice balanced that of the salvage operators who raise underwater artifacts for
profit.
Meanwhile, the Maritime Museum’s
own preservationist role has been put to the
test right here in Lake Champlain. A decade
ago, while mapping the lake bottom using
side-scan sonar, the museum’s research
team made a monumental find—a missing
gunboat that was part of Benedict Arnold’s
fleet in the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776.
The gunboat’s location has remained
a secret while a number of players with a
potential stake in the discovery—including Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont
and Hillary Clinton of New York, the U.S.
Navy, and the Department of Defense—
determine the best course of action.
Cohn’s not frustrated that it’s tak-
ing longer than a decade to decide what to
do with the gunboat. It’s been there a long
time—when he dove on the site, he was the
first person to see the boat, named the Spitfire, since it sank in October 1776.
“There are a lot of very good examples
about bad recovery and part of what we’re
trying to do is learn from that,” Cohn says.
“The biggest single mistake that these various bad case studies have made is hasty judgment governed by politics or economics as
opposed to what’s best for the shipwreck.”
In a sense, Cohn’s entire career prepared him for the complex and weighty matter of deciding the fate of one of the lake’s
most significant cultural finds in recent
history. He’s been doing what’s best for
the lake’s shipwrecks since Capt. Carpenter
sensed something about Cohn and entrusted
him with information about the location
of certain shipwrecks in Lake Champlain.
Cohn continues to take that responsibility to heart. Callaghan, the official who thanked Cohn for bringing the
Lois McClure down the Erie Canal, felt it
when he spoke of bringing hope to disenfranchised communities. Len Ruth felt it
when Cohn gave him a job 18 years ago.
As seen in Vermont Magazine. Copyright 2007
www.vermontmagazine.com
Ruth was a troubled kid from Ticonderoga,
N.Y. when a judge sent him to job training
in Vergennes. The museum has had a longstanding relationship with the Job Corps
and Ruth was introduced to the museum
through a boat-building program.
“I could have continued to be a delinquent. Art gave me a chance and an opportunity and I’m extremely grateful for that,”
says Ruth who, as bosun, keeps the Lois
McClure in order.
Erick Tichonuk, who is an underwater archaeologist and coordinator of the
museum’s replica fleet, has been with the
museum since its inception. He calls Cohn
a mentor, summing up what drives Cohn.
“Art has a real care for society and culture as a whole,” Tichonuk says. “He wants
to make the world or his corner of it a better place.”
That is Art Cohn’s cargo of hope.
Leslie Wright is a freelance writer who lives in Ferrisburgh. For more information on Art Cohn’s work
and the Lake Champlain Maritime Musuem, go to
www.lcmm.org or call (802) 475-2022. The Lois
McClure will return to Basin Harbor in Vermont
from September 24 to October 14.
V e r m o n t M a g a z i n e 3 9