Beekmantown resident recalls raising the Confiance anchor

Sep. 9—BEEKMANTOWN — Eighty-five-year old William "Bill" Van Stockum very, very easily remembers the day his son, Kenneth, and he found the main anchor of the H.M.S. Confiance.

"It seems kind of fortunate that I'm still alive," the Beekmantown resident said.

"It was in about 53 feet of water. This was the main anchor that was on the Confiance. It was shot off during the first shot of the battle. So when that occurred, we knew exactly where the Confiance was at that time which was straight up above it."

DIVING IN THE DARK

It was August of 1996. Very close to Labor Day weekend.

Bill and Ken had received information from one of Capt. Frank Pabst's tugboat captains that he had seen an object on the bottom of the lake in a certain position.

"He gave us the coordinates of that position, and we went out looking and we couldn't find anything in that area," Bill said.

"At least, I couldn't find anything on my receiver. So I parked right at the coordinates. I sent my son down on a long line, about 300 feet, to start a big sweep around the bottom."

Kenneth started swimming around, and Bill saw him heading back toward the boat.

"He said his line had snagged something," he said.

"When he came up, I sent him back down the line and said find out what's the snag. He comes back and he says, 'I saw this big piece of wood sticking out of the bottom with a big iron pipe going through it with a ring on top of it.' I said, 'Oh my. That's got to be some kind of anchor.' That's the only thing I could figure. So, I donned by stuff. We went over to where it was, and I dove down with him and I identified, yes it was an anchor."

A BUOY ON IT

It was late afternoon. The father-and-son sports divers put a buoy on the mark and motored back into Plattsburgh Harbor.

"I contacted Frank Pabst to see about getting a barge out there with a winch on it to see if we could pull this thing up up to see what it was. Frank came out there with his tugboat and his winch. We went down and fastened it to the anchor."

Pabst started cranking the winch. The Van Stockums were on top of the barge.

"The thing that was happening, the nose of the barge was going underwater," Bill said.

"He stopped and started swinging the barge around with his tugboat, and finally the barge leveled out again. So, he started the winch up again, and he started it again and again, and the nose of the barge went down underwater about three or four feet."

Pabst tacked again and swung around until the barge came up.

"Then this time when he started, he brought the anchor up," Bill said.

"We brought it in. I let him in, so he could take the deepest part as he was coming in so he wouldn't drag it on the ground too badly. He got one of his cranes to hoist it out of where we were parked. When it came up, I said yes, it's definitely a complete anchor."

BATTLE CONTRABAND

The divers and sailor hosed it off and saw the script on the anchor of the Royal Navy's flagship, commanded by Capt. George Downie during the Battle of Plattsburgh, Sept. 11, 1814.

"We knew it exactly what it was then," Bill said.

"We said, 'Oh, oh, we're all going to go to jail.' The anchor was too big to steal. We couldn't smuggle it out of town on a pickup truck or something. So, we said we better find out what is going on here."

Bill contacted Shirley Koester, director at the Clinton County Historical Association.

"She came over to see it," he said.

"She said, 'Man, this is yours. You own it. We don't want it.' Then we contacted Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. In the meantime, we had put the anchor on display by Frank's place. The Maritime Museum sent an archaeologist over Labor Day Weekend to document this thing."

Kenneth and the archaeologist documented the anchor's measurements, script, etc. The anchor remained on display for awhile.

Bill thought the anchor should return to the lake, until conservation plans could be executed.

"Frank didn't want to do that," he said.

"He just wanted to leave it on display for everybody in the world to see. We said, no it has to go back to the lake because it's got to be preserved. He said, 'Well, I'm not going to do it, but I will loan you my barge.'"

Capt. Pabst's barge was 34 feet long and 18 feet wide.

"And heavy," Bill said.

"We had the anchor suspended from the back of the barge, and I'm towing it with my 26-foot inboard on the lake. When you wanted to turn, you had to give it a lot of room to turn because that barge didn't want to turn too well."

The Van Stockums finally got close to where they wanted to drop the anchor.

"The lake came up and started getting big waves and everything was bouncing around.

"So I said, okay, let's set the anchor down," Bill said.

"We sit it down. We buoyed it. We knew where it was. It was in a gravelly place, no mud or anything. We went out a couple of days later and went down and took a film of the anchor underwater."

The Van Stockums came back, picked the anchor up again, and returned it within a mile of where they originally found it.

"With the same kind of mud on the bottom," Bill said.

"Only three people knew the exact coordinates where that anchor was while we were working with the Maritime Museum to set up their plan."

When the plans were set, the Van Stockums went back out to the anchor and discovered drag marks all over the area of the anchor's original location.

"But none over where we had set it," Bill said.

"So, somebody was looking for the thing. We don't know who it was. They were dragging the bottom looking for that anchor. We brought the anchor up on Sept. 11 of 1998."

By day, Bill was the Beekmantown Town accountant and ran his own private income tax business.

"John Lambrinos owned Gus's Red Hots at the time," he said.

"He was my dive partner. When we went out to get the anchor, he went with us. He helped us bring the thing up. He was instrumental in helping us get the thing in and getting it set up to go."

INTERNATIONAL SNAFU

On that first Battle of Plattsburgh Commemoration in 1998, many dignitaries from Canada and across the nation came to watch the anchor raising.

"We had politicians out there like you couldn't believe," Bill said.

"All of a sudden, we got word that we couldn't raise the anchor. We said why? Well, the anchor still belongs to England because it was shot off before the ship was captured. We get on the phone, and we got a hold of of someone at the State Department that got a hold of England. About an hour before we were due to pull the thing up, they came back and said, 'Yeah, we don't want it. Go ahead and pull it up.'"

BIG SPLASH

The archaeologist wanted the anchor raised by the stem.

"Kind of a flat balance, when it would come up out of the water flat," Bill said.

"Frank said, 'That's not going to look right. Tie it to the ring on the top, so it comes up looking like an anchor is supposed to look.' When that thing broke the surface, the archaeologist started having a hemorrhage. He was afraid the ring was going to break. It didn't."

The 14-foot anchor that weighs nearly a ton was placed on a barge, and towed by Capt. Pabst to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vt.

"They had a special facility constructed just to handle the anchor," Bill said.

"Now, it's in the City Hall Rotunda. It's the only anchor of its type where you can still read the writing on the anchor. You will still see the stamp symbols on the anchor. It's the only one that still has its original stock with it. It's a one-of-a-kind item worldwide."

Email: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

Twitter@RobinCaudell