War of 1812 documentary puts Sackets Harbor, Kingston in the spotlight

Filming is scheduled to begin this spring on a television documentary exploring the key role Sackets Harbor, Kingston, Ontario, and surrounding areas played in the War of 1812.

Kenn M. Feigelman, director of operations for Kingston-based Deep/Quest 2 Expeditions, visited this area the second week of March to sign contracts and to scout filming sites.

Deep/Quest 2 Expeditions is the main producer, but Mr. Feigelman also plans to work with Watertown-based WPBS.

Mr. Feigelman expects the documentary will be shown nationally. It will focus on the eastern end of Lake Ontario.

"Depending on Mother Nature and all other glitches, filming will take the better part of a year-and-a-half," Mr. Feigelman said at the Times offices.

The film will be a slight departure for Deep/Quest 2, which Mr. Feigelman founded in 1973 in Montreal and relocated to Kingston in 1979. His company is an internationally acclaimed underwater and film documentation organization. His Deep/Quest 2 projects have ranged from coral reef studies off the island of Barbados in the eastern Caribbean to documenting the plight of the endangered and highly toxic St. Lawrence River beluga whales off Tadoussac, Quebec.

The one-hour War of 1812 documentary will be the first time Deep/Quest 2 has been involved with a production not aimed 100 percent underwater.

"The bulk of this will be shot above water," Mr. Feigelman said. "Our mandate and our license is not to be looking for anything. It's simply to document and put together a production on the naval history of this region using re-enactments, re-enactors, topside filming of battlefields and underwater filming."

Mr. Feigelman, who has been diving for 51 years, said underwater shots of shipwrecks from the War of 1812 on the bottom of Lake Ontario aren't visually appealing.

"There's only so much underwater you can film and look at," he said. "And it's not very pretty. It's pretty spooky, green and grotesque. After a few minutes, they all look the same and scuzzy looking. It's not the coral reeves and shipwrecks like in the Caribbean."

But the few underwater shots in the documentary will feature at least one of the ships Deep/Quest 2 "rediscovered" in 2008 near Kingston.

Mr. Feigelman, 63, prefers to use the term "rediscovered" and not "discovered."

"We have no evidence that we're the first ones to discover these vessels," he said. "We stumbled literally upon four of them while testing out a new sidescan sonar unit."

The discovery of the vessels started the War of 1812 documentary plan in motion.

"Deep/Quest had been talking about producing a documentary on the local shipwrecks of the War of 1812," Mr. Feigelman said. "A highly regarded fellow in Kingston said, 'I want you to meet my friend Tom Hanley.'"

Thomas F. Hanley is president and general manager of WPBS. Mr. Feigelman intends to co-produce the documentary with the Watertown station.

Mr. Feigelman is waiting for a marine archaeological permit from the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture to film the 1812 wrecks off Kingston. He has a permit from New York state to film on land and below the waters near Sackets Harbor.

"To film shipwrecks (in Canada), if you are a professional, you have to have an underwater archaeological permit, which is kind of weird because we're not doing any of the type of work," he said. "An amateur diver can go down with no problem."

Mr. Feigelman said Deep/Quest will be just filming and documenting some of the vessels that were rediscovered a couple of years ago.

"These are the laws in Ontario," he said. "They are very anal about the way things are done."

Mr. Feigelman said he has a verbal OK with Canadian authorities about the underwater permit, but not the written OK. He said the project will start regardless of the written approval, which he expected within days.

Mr. Hanley declined to comment for this story about the station's involvement on the documentary until Deep/Quest received the written archaeological permit from Canadian authorities.

Mr. Feigelman said he thinks it's important to document a war that many people know little about.

"We're documenting this forgotten war; a very stupid war, actually," he said. "This was neighbor versus neighbor, brother versus brother across the border. It was a war of opportunity and never really should have occurred."

The war's causes included American resentment over British harassment of its shipping.

"We'll touch on what precipitated the war, the naval action and shipbuilding," Mr. Feigelman said.

As the war progressed, it became a shipbuilding race between the U.S. and Britain, with Sackets Harbor and Kingston playing a key role.

"Whoever controlled Eastern Lake Ontario, which starts at Kingston, basically controlled what was going to happen on the Great Lakes west of here," Mr. Feigelman said. "The gateway to a good chunk of North America is right here in this region where the St. Lawrence becomes Lake Ontario or vice versa."

Mr. Feigelman believes the four ships Deep/Quest 2 rediscovered off Kingston in 2008 are ships that were scuttled by the British after the war.

Deep/Quest 2 will be working with the Sackets Harbor Battlefield Alliance for the documentary. Producers also hope to film aboard the USS Niagara based at the Erie Maritime Museum in Pennsylvania. The Niagara, built in 1990, is a reconstruction of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's victorious warship.

"They'll see this beautiful ship, totally intact, and identical to the vessel as it existed 200 years ago," Mr. Feigelman said. "And then we'll cut to show how some of the shipwrecks look pretty sad under Lake Ontario today."

Mr. Feigelman said Deep/Quest 2 will work with an American marine archaeologist and crew this summer, filming them looking for remnants of the War of 1812.

"But unlike off Kingston, where we have rediscovered intact vessels, such hasn't happened off Sackets Harbor," he said.

Greg Hancock, who serves as Deep/Quest 2's director of documentary film production, will help Mr. Feigelman produce the documentary.

"He'll be the main thrust for this project," Mr. Feigelman said.

Mr. Hancock is founder of Figments of Imagination studios in Huntsville, Ontario. His diverse credits include directing and writing the television documentary "Daring to Die: The Story of the Black Devils", produced for History Television that concerns a Canadian/American commando unit in World War II; directing, writing and producing "Safe Deliverance," about non-invasive birthing options, and directing and writing "Waiting at the Edge, " a look at a seal hunt from an Inuit point of view.

"We could have been dealing with commercial companies in Canada, which was tempting," Mr. Feigelman said. "We were wooed by some companies when they first heard about these warships."

But he said such commercial partners would seek more control in the production.

"Whereas WPBS, being a nonprofit organization, they don't think and work that way," Mr. Feigelman said. "They are more open-minded, and personally I just like the PBS network. I'm a major viewer and supporter."

Mr. Feigelman said Deep/Quest 2 is looking for "local participation" for the War of 1812 documentary.

"We looking for local people who are cognizant of relevant areas that could be used as film sites, above and below water," he said.

Deep/Quest 2 also is looking for American airplane pilots to assist in aerial filming.

Those with information or with interest in flying for the documentary can contact Mr. Feigelman at 1 (613) 331-1044 or email him at kenn@deepquest2expeditions.com.