The Sea Hunters Part 18

Whenever we found a wreck, Ralph Wilbanks would entertain Sweet Sue's crew by dancing a country jig. Solidly built and no lightweight, Ralph made the whole boat shudder when he began stomping. There is nothing like brisk and boisterous free-wheeling humor and frivolity to lighten up monotony.

Probably the luckiest find I ever made was a Confederate blockade runner. One day, when the sea was too rough to run the grid lanes, I thought we could use the lost time to look for the blockade runner Stonewall Jackson, lost during an attempt to run into Charleston in the spring of 1863. She was shot up by blockading wars.h.i.+ps of the Union fleet, ran aground on the Isle of Palms, and was destroyed along with her cargo of artillery pieces and forty thousand shoes. Over the years, she became deeply buried under the sand by wave action.

An 1864 chart of the waters outside Charleston Harbor showed the general location where she had come ash.o.r.e and burned. When laying a transparency of the '64 chart over a modern one, I could see that the beach now stretched a good quarter of a mile farther out to sea than it did during the Civil War. Allowing for the four-hundred-yard difference in longitude, I laid out a rectangular search grid for the team to walk that encompa.s.sed one mile parallel to the beach by a quarter of a mile either side of the surf line. This was possible because the water was shallow for a considerable distance.

An area this size is easy to cover while sitting in a moving boat, but walking up and down a hot, sandy beach with a metal detector is a tiring and time-consuming process. On land, your forward movement is about one-half mph while swinging the detector from side to side as you work a swath, but from a boat you can cruise along at eight knots.

Several members of the NUMA team and I a.s.sembled on the beach and marked out the lanes we intended to walk with our magnetometers.

I carried the Schonstedt gradiometer and set its recorder down on the sand. Then I hooked up the batteries and tried to calibrate the settings while studying the readings on the dial and listening to the squawk of the speaker. If set correctly, the gradiometer emits a low buzzing sound that increases to a screech when its sensor comes near the presence of iron. Strangely, the readings kept flying off scale and the speaker screamed. I became irritated when I couldn't get the instrument to settle down. What was wrong with this thing? I wondered. Rechecking the battery connections and fiddling with the adjustment k.n.o.bs failed to remedy the situation.

And then it hit me. Not only had I walked out onto the beach and laid the gradiometer squarely on top of the wreck of the Stonewall Jackson, I was reading the metal ma.s.s of its buried engine and boilers.

Discoveries like this only happen with the regularity of being struck on the head with a meteor. And yet no other recorded s.h.i.+pwreck lay within a good half mile.

While waiting for a maintenance man from the Isle of Palms street department, a congenial guy whose name was call, to appear with a backhoe, Bob Browning, Wilson West, and Dirk Cussler eased stainlesssteel probes through the sand and struck a large piece of metal. Interestingly, the impact of the probes set up a vibration under our bare feet.

Everyone became excited at the prospect that they were rapping on the s.h.i.+p's boilers. As soon as word spread along the beach, a large crowd gathered to watch the excavation.

The backhoe dug an eight-foot trench but struck only salt water.

Then call suggested that he run to the city maintenance shop and bring back a portable water pump and a length of plastic pipe. The idea was to shoot water through the pipe and sink it in the sand, much as kids do when tunneling in the dirt with a nozzle on the end of a garden hose.

call quickly returned and ten minutes later we began to strike the past. At ten feet, coal and beautiful pieces of mahogany came bubbling up. Since the probes indicated the presence of a boiler, the coal seemed to confirm it. We dredged up no shoes but we felt reasonably a.s.sured that we were standing on the remains of Stonewall Jackson. The wood served to add credence to the discovery. Someday, I hope they excavate and see how much of her is preserved beneath the sand. In light of the cost and a growing lack of interest in our history by the young people of our nation, it's a pity that such an event may never happen. Our NUMA team, all history buffs, felt they had had a productive day at the beach and went home happy. Hence the motto of NUMA: "Do it big, do it right, give it cla.s.s, and make 'em laugh."

One episode occurred during the expedition that still haunts a few of us.

Late one afternoon, we accidentally ran over a large metallic anomaly while returning to the dock in Sweet Sue. The magnetometer's recorder had been left on, and one of the dive team happened to glance at it when the stylus zigzagged across the graph in the blink of an eye.

An anomaly with a large iron ma.s.s from the look of it. We immediately turned back to the site and ran a grid pattern until we picked it up again.

Then we threw in a buoy and anch.o.r.ed.

The student archaeologists, Bob Browning and Wilson West, along with Coast Guardsman Tim Firmey, dove in and began probing the site.

Within-minutes, West came to the surface and announced, "We've got an object over thirty feet long by about four feet wide. Don't quote me, but the ends appear to be tapered."

Antic.i.p.ation set eight hearts pounding. The time was nearly six o'clock, but we had a good two hours of daylight left. So we raced to the dock, lifted a suction dredge onto the boat and hightailed it back to our buoy. We pa.s.sed Steak Boat, which had knocked off and was returning for the day. Schob and Shea stared at us as we waved, at a loss as to why we were heading out so late in the evening.

With Ralph Wilbanks and Rodney Warren in the water operating the dredge, the rest of us sat and waited expectantly. Sharks often appear during a dredging operation, attracted by the sea life caught up in the induction hose. One did come snooping while the divers were down, and we threw cans of Pepsi and shouted at it till it swam off in search of easier pickings. It was nearly dark when the divers surfaced and we called it quits. Ralph drew a sketch of what he and Rodney found after digging a two-foot hole.

It appeared to be a quarter-inch piece of iron standing at an angle and attached to a metal plate that disappeared in the silt.

Since they saw no rivets holding the object in place, it looked as if the object were welded to the plate. Knowing that metal welding was as yet unknown in the 1860s, we a.s.sumed that what we found was a sunken Coast Guard buoy, approximately the same size and ma.s.s as Hunley.

Time had run out. We had covered a great deal of territory and discovered over seven s.h.i.+pwrecks, but the search for Hunley came up as empty as a hermit's address book. She still refused to be found. Or had the sub played a cruel trick on us?

iv If at First You Don't Succeed July 1994 I can't really explain why it took me thirteen years to give the sub another go. Perhaps I'd developed a mental block or just wasn't in the mood. For various reasons some s.h.i.+pwrecks can never be located. I did not believe this to be the case with Hunley. Many were those who said it wasn't there simply because it had been salvaged by someone who left no record. I could not accept that. It had to be Out there off Charleston somewhere, and this time I was not going to cry quits.

It was deja vu all over again. Walt came early and arranged for boats and lodging. Bill Shea came in with his television camera and shot video of the expedition. We enjoyed watching the results, especially the scenes where Bill ran on camera, repositioned his subjects, and then dashed off again without turning off the Record b.u.t.ton.

Conversations were held with new people at the South Carolina Inst.i.tute of Archaeology. Instead of giving a permit, they asked if we could make it a joint venture. Old softie that I am, I agreed. Not a wise move on my part as it turned out.

Because Hurricane Hugo had flattened our old motel and the big house on the beach (not so much as a stick of wood remained of either one), Walt Schob set us up in the local Holiday Inn. We were moving up in the world. The fact that my book royalties had increased significantly over the ensuing years didn't hurt either.

I've frequently complained about returning to certain towns or cities for another attempt at finding a s.h.i.+pwreck, but I was always happy to come back to Charleston. There are few cities finer in Caroliner and most other states. The people are cordial and as affable as old friends, the city is picturesque, and what is especially appealing to someone like me with sensitive taste buds and a warehouse for a stomach, they have great restaurants. Despite its being the middle of summer, we were greeted with mild and balmy weather.

I was indeed fortunate that Walt had hired the services of Ralph Wilbanks, who had left the university and now headed his own underwater survey company, Diversified Wilbanks. Ralph is as steady and enduring as the faces on Mount Rushmore. Humorous, with a sly smile fixed beneath a Pancho Villa mustache, he worked tirelessly day after day, fighting choppy water to keep the search boat on track, with never a discouraging word.

His favorite comment when he was staring at the magnetometer recording graph while high swells tossed the boat like a cork in a blender was "Boy, we're maggin' now!"

His partner, who watched over the detection gear, was Wes Hall, archaeologist and owner of Mid-Atlantic Technology. He and Ralph often worked together on underwater survey jobs. He is as handsome as they come, and women believe he could double for Mel Gibson.

Wes is quiet and unyielding, the kind of guy who could walk through a hurricane, a forest fire, and an earthquake while maintaining his set little grin, then step up to a bar, order a beer, and ask the bartender where the action is.

Their endurance was little short of incredible. The hours spent running search lanes seemed a lifetime, but they never wavered. At 8 A.M Ralph and Wes were waiting at the dock. Their day did not end until they returned to the dock, refueled the boat, and pulled it up the ramp onto its trailer. They seldom saw home before eight o'clock in the evening. No matter how rotten the weather or how rough the sea, they hung tough hour after hour.

The name of Ralph's boat was Diversity, and the only times he looked a bit irritated was when everyone insisted on calling it Perversity, especially over the radio for all to hear. Naughty minds are difficult to control.

Visitors who came on board thinking they would find the search filled with thrills inevitably asked to be taken back to the dock after two or three hours. If they didn't become seasick, they were dying from tedium. Shattering novice visions of excitement and adventure became a daily routine. The hunt for s.h.i.+pwrecks takes dedication and perseverance. Leisure time comes only when you step onto a nice steady dock.

On this expedition the South Carolina Inst.i.tute of Archaeology and Anthropology supplied the dive boat, using sport divers who paid for the privilege of hopefully finding and diving on Hunley. This part of the operation became very reminiscent of the follies on board Coastal Explorer fourteen years earlier. They lost the buoys our boat dropped over their dive sites for them, once claiming they were carried off by dolphins. Finding and probing the targets was also a hit or Miss proposition. The university's chief project investigator, as he was called, was fond of announcing that every anomaly they dove on and probed had the same dimensions and configuration as Hunley. He was particularly enamored of one such target that turned out to be an old steam engine.

On one occasion, a sport diver had a problem on the bottom and came within an inch of drowning. He might have if not for Harry Pecorelli III, a fine diver and archaeologist, who made the rescue.

Craig Dirgo and Dirk Cussler, however, did their best to provide entertainment during the long days on the water. Craig is a big man both in size and weight, who ran the NUMA office for several years.

When standing next to each other, with Dirk standing six feet four and thin as a garden hose, they could have presented a reasonable facsimile of Laurel and Hardy. One played off the other. I couldn't help wondering if Heckle and Jeckle had been reincarnated.

They were given a small fifteen-foot outboard boat and sent out with a gradiometer to run lanes in shallow areas. The boat looked as if it was used in the invasion of Normandy: tired, worn, and rundown.

Starting the motor was a major event. At least three times their call for help came over the radio of Diversity. Then we'd have to break off our search lane and perform a rescue operation. We'd always find them with a dead motor, drifting out into the ocean toward Portugal.

Finally giving up on their lemon, Dirk and Craig came on board Diversity, where they entertained the crew by performing their rendition of Treasure Island, with Craig taking the role of the pirate, Long John Silver. There were laughs, but the reviews were mixed.

Craig's contribution to our communication network came when we were contacted by Walt Schob on the dive boat. Walt radioed that Craig's voice was breaking up over his receiver. So Craig picked up a bullhorn, set the speaker against the transmitter, turned up the volume, and hailed the dive boat. All of us laughed till it hurt when Walt's voice came back: "Hear you loud and clear now. Atmospheric conditions must have improved."

There wasn't much I could contribute on board during the long hours, except making an occasional decision concerning where to search next.

I spent the time dozing, listening to big-band music over my Walkman, and flying kites. I'Ve often thought of trolling for fish since we only travel at about six to eight knots, but could never muster enough interest.

One evening while we were cruising up to the fuel dock after a day's search, a fellow shouted across the water, "Are you Clive Cussler?"

Egotistically flattered at being recognized by my striking features, I asked, "How did you know?"

"By the orange dial on your dive watch," he replied. "Like the one Dirk Pitt wears in your books."

I looked down at my big twenty-seven-year-old Dora dive watch and sagged in disillusionment. He had guessed it was me by my wrist.w.a.tch, not by my devilish good looks. There is nothing like a dose of reality to bring one down off his pedestal. Actually, my biggest disappointment was yet to come, and it had nothing to do with ego.

After eliminating another ten square miles and identifying several buried anomalies as old sunken trash, our third attempt at finding Hunley slowly wound down and was written off as another failure. To me, this was a hard setback. Certainly there was no regret in making the effort, but the futility of knowing we were looking in the wrong place hurt.

What piece of evidence had I overlooked? What signs pointing to the final resting place of the sub was I ignoring? Had I misinterpreted the research?

Earlier, I had relied on Colonel Dantzler's report and concentrated the search between Breech Inlet and Housatonic. But Hunley was not there. The only straw left to grasp was in expanding the borders of the search grids.

Determined to find Hunley and her crew before my final deathbed gasp, I made a decision that a.s.sured success. I contracted with Ralph Wilbanks and Wes Hall to keep the search alive during their free time.

They agreed, and I returned home to Colorado to write another book and pay for all the madness.

Ralph and Wes went out rain or s.h.i.+ne and searched the grids I fared them through the fall and winter of '94 and into the spring of '95.

Then on May 4, I received a phone call from Ralph at six in the morning.

Still half asleep, I heard him say, "Well, I guess I'm going to send you my final bill."

"Are you giving up?" I asked in a sudden wave of disappointment.

"No," Ralph said calmly, "we found it."

I can't remember my immediate reply, but I think it was something stupid like "Are you sure?"

"It's a done deal," said Ralph. "Wes and I and Harry Pecorelli dug through the silt and in contact with the forward hatch tower.

Then we uncovered the snorkel box and the port dive fin."

"Before we unveil the discovery," I said, "we must have absolute proof. People have been claiming they found Hunley since 1867, but none of them ever produced a shred of proof. We've got to have photos."

"We can do better than that. Wes, Harry, and I will go back and shoot video."

I held my breath and asked, "Where did you find her?"

"About a thousand yards east and slightly south of the Housatonic.

"Then it survived the explosion, but had yet to begin its return voyage to Breech Inlet."

"Looks that way," said Ralph.

"Isn't that about where we dove in '81? On that object we thought was a Coast Guard buoy?"

"I've had nightmares over that for fourteen years," Ralph sighed.

"But I'm not going to let myself believe we misidentified it."

"My fault for not insisting you uncover more of it."

The answer had been lurking in the dust of time. I had previously ignored Seaman Fleming's sighting of the blue light while awaiting rescue in the rigging, because I saw no reason for Hunley to hang around the area for nearly an hour, risking capture before the Union wars.h.i.+p Canandaigua arrived to rescue Housatonic's survivors.

The problem lay in my miscalculation of the time high tide turned to ebb and the water began sweeping toward the sh.o.r.e. I put it too early.

For some inexplicable reason I a.s.sumed the tide reversed soon after the sinking, not two hours later.

Too tired to crank their propeller against the adverse current, Hunley's crew must have moved away from Housatonic and waited until the tide worked to their advantage and carried them home.

But that didn't answer why she sank and disappeared. Again, Fleming produced the key when he stated that he saw the blue light just ahead of Canandaigua. That suggests that Hunley's crew had perhaps thrown open the hatch covers to soak in the fresh night air while waiting for the tide to Turn. As Canandaigua steamed past toward Housatonic, her wash rolled into the exposed openings and swamped the submarine. Or, perhaps, as the closed hatch covers indicate, the Union wars.h.i.+p unknowingly rammed Hunley, and sent her to the bottom.

Someday soon, when the submarine is raised, we'll have the final solution.

The team's historic discovery had taken place on the afternoon of May 3, 1995. Ralph had tried to call me that evening, but I wasn't home.

After hearing the wonderful news, I wandered around in a daze for three days before the significance of our achievement truly sank in.

Mi The find came one afternoon when Ralph had a hunch. After eli n 0 noting one of my g 'ds, he decided to return to the Housat nic site and work farther east. After an hour, the magnetometer recorded a target that was appropriate for Hunley's metallic ma.s.s. Harry Pecorelli had accompanied Wes and Ralph that day, and he went down first to probe the target. Harry moved the silt until he touched a large iron object. He came up and notified Ralph and Wes that what little he saw didn't appear to be a sub, but he recommended further investigation.

Wes Hall dove and enlarged the hole in the silt until it was about twenty-five inches wide by twenty-four inches deep. He identified what proved to be the knuckle on the hinge of a hatch cover. Returning to the surface, he announced, "It's the Hunley. We've come down on one of the hatch covers."

Ralph immediately swam down and enlarged the hole until the hatch tower was eighty percent uncovered. He noticed that one of the little quartz viewing ports was missing, so he eased his hand inside and discovered that the interior of the submarine was filled with silt, a factor that may well have preserved the remains of the crew.

Satisfied that they had indeed found Hunley, they returned to port, drove to the museum in Charleston, and stood gazing at the sub's replica. "Do you realize," said Ralph, "that we're the only three people in the world that know what parts of the replica are incorrect."

Then they bought a bottle of champagne, went out to Magnolia Cemetery, and celebrated with the ghost of Horace Hunley.

Shortly after the Diversity team returned from videotaping the buried submarine, my son, Dirk; Craig Dirgo; Walt Schob; and I flew in to make the formal announcement at a news conference. First we all gathered on Ralph's boat the day before to go out and see Hunley for ourselves.

But Mother Nature must have been suffering premenstrual syndrome. What she giveth she taketh away. We were beaten out by heavy weather and high seas. There was no diving that day.

I'll just have to wait until the day Hunley is raised before I can see the results from years-of effort and $130,000, the approximate cost of all the research and four surveys. My only memento is Ralph's buoy that marked the wreck during the video shooting.

We held a press conference to announce the discovery on May 11 beside the replica of the Hunley in front of the museum in Charleston.

Videotapes were provided for television stations, and photos were given out to the press.

Then the excretion struck the oscillator.

A great fight erupted over owners.h.i.+p. The State of Alabama, where Hunley was built, wanted it. South Carolina claimed it belonged to them for future display in Charleston. Even descendants of the original salvor of Housatonic filed a claim. The Federal Government said no way, since all abandoned Confederate property fell under the jurisdiction of the General Services Administration.

The vultures came to roost like gargoyles brooding over a derelict cathedral. Wilbanks, Hall, and I all caught h.e.l.l because we held back on giving out coordinates to the location until we were reasonably a.s.sured the submarine would be recovered and preserved in a proper and scientific manner.

The state inst.i.tute of archaeology demanded we Turn the site over to them for verification. What was there to verify? I was actually sitting on the fence until the director of the inst.i.tute said a buoy should be placed over the wreck as a warning to vandals. My feeling was that a buoy was no different from a neon sign that proclaimed, THIEVES, COME ONE, COME ALL. Not a bad call as it turned out after rumors floated around reporting that collectors of Civil War artifacts had offered $50,000 for a hatch cover and $100,000 for the sub's propeller.

NUMA made no claim. I only wished to go home and begin research on the next wreck I hoped to find. Yet I was accused of desecrating the grave of Confederate war heroes, raping the wreck, ransoming the sovereign state of South Carolina, and scheming to carry off Hunley and set it in my front yard in Colorado. The Sons of the Confederate Veterans wanted to burn my books. I was called a glory-hunting charlatan, a con man, a scavenger, and a Benedict Arnold for betraying the n.o.ble profession of marine archaeology. Rodney Dangerfield gets more respect than me.

For a while I was afraid they were going to take away my bicycle.

Fortunately, saner minds prevailed, who were fully aware of what the NUMA team had truly accomplished. My combined expeditions had spent a total of 105 days running 1,196 Miles of survey lines over rolling seas in search of the submarine with no thought of financial gain or veneration by the ma.s.ses. We looked upon the project as a challenge, and our only profit was the satisfaction of achieving a long-sought goal and preserving our maritime heritage.

The good people at the General Services Administration eventually turned t.i.tle of the submarine over to the U.S. Navy and their Historical and Archaeological Department, led by Dr. William Dudley and Dr.

Robert Neyland, who are dedicated to seeing Hunley raised and conserved by the most skilled and experienced professionals in the business, using the latest technology to do the job right.