blobbottlebob
Well-Known Member
Hey folks. My next story. Several of you divers will recognize some of the features of the river I mention in the story. Let me know what you think! I will post a picture of the bottle later.
My First Clay
By Bob Libbey
There’s something about an antique clay bottle that says ‘primitive’ or 'pre-historic’. You can imagine cro-magnan man packing some mud into a functional vessel. Then he would set it into the fire to bake and harden. Okay. Maybe the bottles we find aren’t that old, but they sure look like it sometimes.
My brother Steve and I began collecting bottles by finding them while scuba diving. We had never found a clay bottle back then. We wanted to locate an old town where we could dive and with some luck, find antique bottles. We picked Watertown, Wisconsin on the Rock River. Nowadays, it is not a big town. (The 2000 census has the population under 22,000). In the late 1800s, though, it was booming. With that boom came people. With enough people, bottlers appeared. Watertown has many known varieties of beautiful and unique old bottles.
At this time in our diving careers, neither my brother nor I had any river diving experience. You could probably assume that there would be more current to deal with. (And there was). We weren’t fully prepared for the color of the water, though. On a winter day, when the flow is reluctant and the particulate has frozen off, there is a small amount of visibility. In summer, after a rain, forget it. The water has a brownish hue (maybe from tannic acid?). When you sink down, the measure of your depth can be calibrated by the amount of light shining into the water. As your mask enters, it’s like looking through coffee. The deeper you go, the darker it gets. If you can find an area ten feet deep on the riverbed, it’s like being in a closet, at night, with the lights out. Blacker than black. When you surface, sunshine feels like standing directly in front of a blazing search light. If you are shallower, sometimes you can make out light / dark contrasts; sometimes not.
The next thing to get ready for is the debris and detritus. There are poles, and bicycles, and fences, and branches. Mix in the lowered visibility with the current and you have a recipe for increased danger. With that danger, you need to heighten your level of diligence to keep untangled and unfettered from the surface. One day, I looked upstream and heard a “CLUNKâ€. I knew that I had hit something and that I was impeded, but I didn’t know what it was. Upon careful inspection, I could barely make out a metal pole that hit my mask RIGHT BETWEEN MY EYES. How’s that for visibility?
So, my brother and I began some winter dives in the Rock River. (It was February). We searched up and down trying different areas; around bridges, dams, and parks. We found bowling balls, ice skates, and a few old bottles but really nothing good. We had spent three day-trips out there and at least 5 tanks apiece. We were approaching the point where we were either going to find something great or we were going to stop coming here. People told us that there had been a dam repair a few years earlier. When the water level was down, collectors came and looked for bottles. This was discouraging news.
We planned one last tank. We parked along the side of the river. We both agreed that we would search that area right in front of us for a little while and then come right back if nothing turned up. Then we would pack it up and head home. We should know within 5 to 10 minutes if there was anything to find. We suited up and jumped in. It wasn’t going to take five or ten minutes to rule out this spot. It was a mud hole. You could spend a long time digging through several feet of soft squishy mud only to return with your earlobes packed full of the grime. (I know, I’ve done it).
Then something strange happened. I swam out and away from the shoreline. Steve swam out and away from the shoreline. Neither of us knew the other was doing it. Neither of us followed our pre-dive plan. When we reached the other side, things immediately seemed better. There were old crown bottles with badgers pictured on them. There was broken glass all over.
Steve, as usual, finished his tank before me. I was a bit downstream of him. He came over and showed me an 1870s soda that he’d found missing the bottom. It retained the Putnam stopper. He also had a hutch with a badger on it! He then told me to move upstream a bit. I thought that I was in a reasonably good area, but I hadn’t gotten any whiff of the 1870s. So, I tried it.
As I sank back down, I thought I saw something. It was light colored. Lighter than the bottom, anyway. I pictured a milk bottle. Maybe a milk glass colored milk bottle. That’s got to be rare, you’d think. I picked it up and began to surface. As the darkness lightened, I saw a banner. It was a banner that was stamped in (or debossed into) a clay bottle. In fact, it was a beer bottle made out of pottery. This thing was early! Probably cro-magnan!
I showed it to Steve who was awed. Once again, Steve helped me to be in the right spot. Thanks again, Steve. The bottle is impressed “F SCHWARZ / MILWAUKEE†The company operated between the years of 1859 and 1864 in Milwaukee. That means that this bottle first was used during the time of the Civil War!
It’s curious how this example wound up in the Watertown area. Did someone take it with them on a stagecoach ride and chuck it in the river? From experience now, I can say that it does seem that bottles often turn up in a different town from where they were made. Most of these were returnable and would have been returned had they not ventured too far from their hometown.
That is not what happened to F. Schwarz, though. There is mounting evidence that suggests that Mr. Schwarz took his bottling business from Milwaukee to Watertown. Wayne Kroll, legendary author of Badger Breweries Past and Present (1979) notes,
“It appears that Fred Schwarz moved to Watertown from Milwaukee. He had operated a brewery in Milwaukee with Louis Liebscher from 1859-1864. A Schwarz pottery beer (No. 563) was recently found in Watertown.†(page 133). “Hi Wayne†if you see this!
Then we have my clay find. Another friend named Gary found one there. And in March of 2008, over a dozen of them were reportedly found in an old Watertown schoolhouse. I think the evidence is “inâ€. F. Schwarz was basically a Watertown bottler in the 1860s who continued to use his Milwaukee bottle stock. I am glad that he did. It gave me the opportunity to find my first clay.
My First Clay
By Bob Libbey
There’s something about an antique clay bottle that says ‘primitive’ or 'pre-historic’. You can imagine cro-magnan man packing some mud into a functional vessel. Then he would set it into the fire to bake and harden. Okay. Maybe the bottles we find aren’t that old, but they sure look like it sometimes.
My brother Steve and I began collecting bottles by finding them while scuba diving. We had never found a clay bottle back then. We wanted to locate an old town where we could dive and with some luck, find antique bottles. We picked Watertown, Wisconsin on the Rock River. Nowadays, it is not a big town. (The 2000 census has the population under 22,000). In the late 1800s, though, it was booming. With that boom came people. With enough people, bottlers appeared. Watertown has many known varieties of beautiful and unique old bottles.
At this time in our diving careers, neither my brother nor I had any river diving experience. You could probably assume that there would be more current to deal with. (And there was). We weren’t fully prepared for the color of the water, though. On a winter day, when the flow is reluctant and the particulate has frozen off, there is a small amount of visibility. In summer, after a rain, forget it. The water has a brownish hue (maybe from tannic acid?). When you sink down, the measure of your depth can be calibrated by the amount of light shining into the water. As your mask enters, it’s like looking through coffee. The deeper you go, the darker it gets. If you can find an area ten feet deep on the riverbed, it’s like being in a closet, at night, with the lights out. Blacker than black. When you surface, sunshine feels like standing directly in front of a blazing search light. If you are shallower, sometimes you can make out light / dark contrasts; sometimes not.
The next thing to get ready for is the debris and detritus. There are poles, and bicycles, and fences, and branches. Mix in the lowered visibility with the current and you have a recipe for increased danger. With that danger, you need to heighten your level of diligence to keep untangled and unfettered from the surface. One day, I looked upstream and heard a “CLUNKâ€. I knew that I had hit something and that I was impeded, but I didn’t know what it was. Upon careful inspection, I could barely make out a metal pole that hit my mask RIGHT BETWEEN MY EYES. How’s that for visibility?
So, my brother and I began some winter dives in the Rock River. (It was February). We searched up and down trying different areas; around bridges, dams, and parks. We found bowling balls, ice skates, and a few old bottles but really nothing good. We had spent three day-trips out there and at least 5 tanks apiece. We were approaching the point where we were either going to find something great or we were going to stop coming here. People told us that there had been a dam repair a few years earlier. When the water level was down, collectors came and looked for bottles. This was discouraging news.
We planned one last tank. We parked along the side of the river. We both agreed that we would search that area right in front of us for a little while and then come right back if nothing turned up. Then we would pack it up and head home. We should know within 5 to 10 minutes if there was anything to find. We suited up and jumped in. It wasn’t going to take five or ten minutes to rule out this spot. It was a mud hole. You could spend a long time digging through several feet of soft squishy mud only to return with your earlobes packed full of the grime. (I know, I’ve done it).
Then something strange happened. I swam out and away from the shoreline. Steve swam out and away from the shoreline. Neither of us knew the other was doing it. Neither of us followed our pre-dive plan. When we reached the other side, things immediately seemed better. There were old crown bottles with badgers pictured on them. There was broken glass all over.
Steve, as usual, finished his tank before me. I was a bit downstream of him. He came over and showed me an 1870s soda that he’d found missing the bottom. It retained the Putnam stopper. He also had a hutch with a badger on it! He then told me to move upstream a bit. I thought that I was in a reasonably good area, but I hadn’t gotten any whiff of the 1870s. So, I tried it.
As I sank back down, I thought I saw something. It was light colored. Lighter than the bottom, anyway. I pictured a milk bottle. Maybe a milk glass colored milk bottle. That’s got to be rare, you’d think. I picked it up and began to surface. As the darkness lightened, I saw a banner. It was a banner that was stamped in (or debossed into) a clay bottle. In fact, it was a beer bottle made out of pottery. This thing was early! Probably cro-magnan!
I showed it to Steve who was awed. Once again, Steve helped me to be in the right spot. Thanks again, Steve. The bottle is impressed “F SCHWARZ / MILWAUKEE†The company operated between the years of 1859 and 1864 in Milwaukee. That means that this bottle first was used during the time of the Civil War!
It’s curious how this example wound up in the Watertown area. Did someone take it with them on a stagecoach ride and chuck it in the river? From experience now, I can say that it does seem that bottles often turn up in a different town from where they were made. Most of these were returnable and would have been returned had they not ventured too far from their hometown.
That is not what happened to F. Schwarz, though. There is mounting evidence that suggests that Mr. Schwarz took his bottling business from Milwaukee to Watertown. Wayne Kroll, legendary author of Badger Breweries Past and Present (1979) notes,
“It appears that Fred Schwarz moved to Watertown from Milwaukee. He had operated a brewery in Milwaukee with Louis Liebscher from 1859-1864. A Schwarz pottery beer (No. 563) was recently found in Watertown.†(page 133). “Hi Wayne†if you see this!
Then we have my clay find. Another friend named Gary found one there. And in March of 2008, over a dozen of them were reportedly found in an old Watertown schoolhouse. I think the evidence is “inâ€. F. Schwarz was basically a Watertown bottler in the 1860s who continued to use his Milwaukee bottle stock. I am glad that he did. It gave me the opportunity to find my first clay.
