Glossary
Home Page

Glossary
Homepage

The Comité d'Histoire et d'Archéologie
Subaquatique du Québec
(CHASQ)

At the beginning of the 1970s two divers, André Lépine and Donald Théberge, decided to create the CHASQ. Their first project was an excavation of some of the wrecks from the fleet of the Admiral Walker. These wrecks dated from a severe in late August 1711, when eight ships met their fate on the rocks of Ile-aux-Oeufs not far from present day city of Sept-Iles.

In 1976, the team started a new project with an exploration of the Richelieu River, in the area around Ile-aux-Noix. From 1978 to 1980, the CHASQ conducted an inventory of underwater sites in the Richelieu River for the Québec government. In 1981 the team studied the wreck of a flat bottom boat loaded with bricks which rests at the bottom of Lake Memphremagog. The following years the CHASQ moved its crew to Gaspésie to excavate the wreck of an armed fishing boat from the end of seventeenth century.

CHASQ More recently, between 1983 and 1993, the CHASQ, now under direction of Jean Bélisle and André Lépine, undertook its most ambitious project, the excavation of the P.S. Lady Sherbrooke. This project included nine seasons of diving and continual discoveries of archival materials that form the current state of research presented on this website.

At the end of 1993, the CHASQ once again travelled to the Northshore to help a group of prehistorian archaeologists with a study of the now famous rock painting site of Nisula.