My second trip to the Dominator was made alongside my then-girlfriend Meghan on August 18th, 2010. We took a slightly different path than the one I'd made before with my father. The trip was made by way of a small foot path down the side of the hill more to the North of the wreck site. From this area on the beach, there was more wreckage, curiously just over a mile from the 'main pile' of the wreck. It wasn't exactly light stuff either... here on this area of the beach was a hatch cover, a steam pipe, and a huge piece of outer hull plating complete with internal ribs and iron brackets for the outer skin of the ship. Likewise, a short walk away was an enormous pipe big enough to crawl through... this must have been part of the funnel uptake which once vented steam from her boiler to her smokestack.
Walking further along up the coastline we began to encounter more debris... At first, there were only shards of Iron and the occasional pipe, but the closer we approached from the North we got into heavier debris that I'd missed on my previous trip some years before. Here must have been the remnants of the stern section as evident from the masses of plating and piping which was strewn around the area.
I spotted a large round opening made of steel embedded in the hillside, and I can only deduce It must have been the frame of a porthole or ventilator that had its brass removed leaving only the bare Iron plate to be discarded. It was around this point that we encountered the larger sections of the wreck I recalled from my visit in 2003. It was, however, a strange sight that met my eyes as i noticed the bow of the ship... It had moved, and curiously, had broken in half since my last visit....
It had not broken quite in the way one would expect either... it had been split from front to back, and the lower half was laying perfectly upside down with the 'keel' facing straight up at the sky. A peer inside revealed a hazardous cavern of twisted steel and rusty iron. I didn't dare venture or crawl inside. Not far from the crane there lay a huge set of hooks which no doubt was once attached to the old crane boom. The crane itself was exactly as I'd left it and temptation to pose for a picture was too great. It is perhaps the one feature of the site which will likely never change as long as I live due to its size and construction.
Here there was an odd assortment of pieces that were easy to recognize but seemed so out of place here... A set of mooring bitts, crane hooks, a rusted bilge pump, fairleads, a coil of steel cable, an iron wheel from a crane, and so much more all awash in the surf and coated in a thick layer of rust. Apart from the bow splitting apart, however, the site remained little changed from my previous visit.
One of my all-time favorite photos. Standing beside the Dominator for the second time in 7 years. It was a memorable day and one that I constantly reflect on... as of this time I was beginning to branch out, research other shipwrecks and even take up Gold Prospecting in the nearby mountains. It was indeed a good time, and a wonderful start to an adventurous life.
I could hardly fathom at this time, as I stood beside the bow of Dominator, that it would take me so long to return, or that this photo-op would not be possible again...
((Images in this blog courtesy of Miss Meghan Shea McGillicuddy who both accompanied me, and lended the camera used))
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