The Lost Fleet

by Barry Clifford

  A year or two later, when I needed an archaeologist for a project I was doing in Africa, I gave him a call. We have worked together on several expeditions now, and have become friends. John is from the old school, a Vietnam vet, and has the work ethic of a badger.

  The planning, organization, and logistics of an expedition like this are complicated and difficult. We worked hard at our end getting the people and equipment together for the dive. Max and his friends were planning to be there for part of it. But I knew that the second trip was not going to be a clambake and Max knew it. He was going to have his hands full keeping his group in one piece. This would not be a vacation.

  12

  Logistics

  SUMMER 1998

  PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS

  Nearly all of the Las Aves team members were veterans of Expedition Whydah.

  Even if Todd Murphy and I hadn’t been friends for as long as we have, he would still be a man to have on an expedition like this. Todd is a U.S. Army Special Forces master sergeant (MSG) with twenty-three years of active duty and reserve time. He is currently in a National Guard Special Forces unit. Todd is trained as a combat diver, diving supervisor, and diving medical technician. He is also an instructor at the Special Forces scuba school in Key West, Florida.

  Todd and I began diving together long before the Whydah project. We met on Martha’s Vineyard in the mid-seventies. I had built a little Cape, with a great central fireplace, where, on long winter nights, I’d sit by the fire with my kids, reading the history of lost ships and sunken treasure. Todd would take my kids swimming and hiking and spend evenings with us.

  I ran a small salvage/diving company at the time and was engaged mostly in doing emergency dive work for the Coast Guard, disentangling nets and cables from the wheels of fishing boats, and, on occasion, landing lucrative salvage contracts.

  John Kennedy Jr. worked for me then as a diver. Subsequently, he and Todd became friends. The two of them were always looking for any excuse to go diving with me for shipwrecks around the Vineyard and Elizabeth Islands or to investigate various Island legends, such as the story of the two bronze cannons spotted by Alfred Vanderhoop lying off Gay Head, or the ancient Spanish helmets found in Quista Pond, or the lost cargo of lignum vitae logs resting somewhere on the bottom of Vineyard Sound. One trip that we made over and over again was to No Man’s Land to find Viking Rock, a large boulder, reportedly with runic carvings, which was toppled into the ocean during the 1938 hurricane. Another of our hunts was for the wreck of the John Dwight—a ghost ship from the rum-running years, and the scene of the Vineyard’s greatest murder mystery.

  I think we explored every inch of every sandbar and reef, amassing an impressive collection of old bottles and china.

  Todd and John were eager to go on these adventures and to pick up a few dollars on salvage jobs when they could. Todd was paying his way through college, and John was always happy to get forty dollars for a hard day’s work. It meant a lot to him to earn his own money—that’s one of the things I liked about him.

  We considered each job as a dangerous rival that had to be carefully assessed before going forward. These were wonderful days, and I remember them as some of the best times of my life.

  That was about the time I became fixated on the Whydah. Not surprisingly, so did Todd and John. John made the first dive for the Whydah at Marconi Beach on a cold, blustery day in November 1982. The magnetometer put us over the wreck, but what we hadn’t factored into the equation was that there was twenty feet of sand that had to be dug through to get at it.

  We came back in the spring of 1983 for a full-scale search. Todd and John were members of that first exploratory team. It was not as glamorous as they imagined. Their first job was to head up to Maine to work on our newly purchased salvage boat, the Vast Explorer II.

  Todd was somewhat inexperienced when we began diving in the summer of 1983. However, after a few years of experience, he earned the job of diving supervisor/director of operations. He has been working with me ever since.

  John went off to New York, though he often stopped by the Whydah HQ and museum at the end of Macmillan Wharf. The last time I saw John was in the spring of 1999. He had come to Provincetown to spend the day with Captain Stretch Gray and myself aboard the Vast Explorer.

  Later that day, I found him wandering alone through the Whydah museum. The museum was closed for the season, and the cold Atlantic chilled the old building through its timbers. A smell familiar to those who have worked ancient shipwrecks permeates the air. It is the smell of pine tar and hemp, concreted cannon and flintlocks, and the belongings of long-dead pirates. It is more than a smell; it is an awareness that seems to drift about the place like a lost spirit. Perhaps it is.

  Nonetheless, John chuckled out loud, remembering faces from old photographs of project crewmen that hang on the wall. Faces from when the thrill of finding pirate treasure was merely a dream—until it came true.

  Todd Murphy keeps a cold-weather bag and another for the tropics ready at all times so he can grab the appropriate one and go if a project comes up. For example, it was less than two weeks from the moment I received a frantic call from a particularly mad Scotsman asking me to search for the wreck of The Blessing of Burntisland of King Charles I to the time we launched our first dive with full surface support.

  By an odd coincidence, Todd was in Haiti with Special Forces about the time I was having troubles with the competing group at Las Aves. He happened to meet Dr. John de Bry, the former archaeologist for that group, who was then doing archaeological work at Cap Haitien. They started discussing their mutual interests, and we ended up hiring John for a project in Africa.

  For the Las Aves expedition, Todd would be the director of operations, responsible for the thousand-and-one details involved in completing a successful mission. He would be assisted by Chris Macort.

  Cathrine Harker is an archaeologist who had also worked on the Whydah project. She is Scottish, with a degree in geology from Edinburgh University and a master’s degree in archaeology from Liverpool University. After graduating from Liverpool, she moved back to Edinburgh and became an exhibit interpreter for a traveling display of Whydah artifacts we had in Scotland at the time. That was where I first met her.

  Since I needed staff for the permanent museum we were then building in Provincetown, I asked her to join our team. Now, she would come to Las Aves to help explore and map the wrecks on that lovely reef.

  Cathrine is very capable, and she is, without a doubt, one of the toughest and most loyal people on the team. More than once, I’ve seen her stand as solid as a samson post aboard the Vast Explorer, with breakers coming over the rail.

  If Cathrine is feeling chatty, we might speak ten words to each other over the course of a summer. I think the English army understood it best: there are only two living creatures that will go face first into a badger hole—a Jack Russell terrier and a Scotsman.

  Eric Scharmer was another diver who had worked on the Whydah project. An exceptional athlete, Eric is a former member of the Pro Mogul Ski Tour. He had taken up film and video-camera work as a profession. I persuaded the BBC to hire him to be the underwater cameraman at Las Aves because he knew our dive system. He ended up being the perfect man for the job. Indeed, if you’ve ever wondered “how on earth did they get that on film?” it’s men like Eric who do it.

  My future fiancée, Margot Hathaway, would also be coming with us. Margot is a strong swimmer and diver and also an accomplished fine arts and still photographer who has worked with me on the Whydah site as well as three trips to Africa.

  Carl Tiska was the only team member who had not worked on the Whydah, but his credentials were nonetheless impressive. He is a lieutenant commander in the Navy SEALs. As with Todd, Carl’s military training was a great asset to the project. Even though our expeditions are more relaxed than a military operation, there is still a chain of command and an organization not unlike the military’s.

  Though I had y
et to meet them, I knew there would also be the production team from the BBC, and Max’s group. I had no doubt that Charles would be bringing some of his own people. It was shaping up to be a large crew, and, as far as the people I could vouch for were concerned, a good one.

  About a month prior to the start of the expedition, I had a meeting in my home above the Whydah museum with executives from the Discovery Channel and the BBC to nail down some of the details about the documentary, plan logistics, and outline what we all hoped to accomplish.

  The fact is that the Discovery Channel and BBC were taking a big risk with this production. All we had found so far were a couple of cannons and some pottery. There was no guarantee that we would find more, though what we had learned through researching the wreck of the French fleet suggested we would. Still, the Discovery Channel and BBC had only my word to go on. They were familiar with the Whydah project and what we were accomplishing, and so the consensus was that it was a risk worth taking.

  It was at that meeting that I first met Mike Rossiter, the BBC producer who would actually be making the film. He had flown in from London for the meeting.

  Mike already had a proven track record when he was asked to participate in our project. At the time he had been with the BBC for only a few years, but he had many years of experience as an independent producer and had produced a number of documentaries for the Learning Channel, Nova, and the BBC.

  Mike’s accent is working-class London, and his working style is absolutely no-nonsense. At first glance, his demeanor seemed testy, bordering on arrogant, until I got to know him a little better and realized that was just his way. He is all business, no bull. He was not going to choreograph a successful expedition; he was going to document whatever happened. If I fell on my face, that would be the show.

  Mike knows what he wants and makes it happen. The BBC is very demanding as far as the planning that it needs to see on paper is concerned. We prepared risk-assessment reports, documented safety procedures, and outlined for Mike exactly how we would be going about our job.

  From our discussions, we were able to determine that an expedition of a couple of weeks would be enough for us to finish our work and for Mike to get the footage he needed to make a documentary about the wrecks. Besides, it was all the money that was available.

  Unfortunately, as we were working out our plans, Charles Brewer was making his own plans. His plans apparently included spending significant amounts of other people’s money. He e-mailed Mike Rossiter and me to outline what he thought was necessary to secure the permits. Mike was not happy when he read it. At the heart of the problem was the fact that Charles was angling to get the BBC to sponsor the expedition under his direction—and on his financial terms. Mike e-mailed me that Charles’s demands were “causing alarm and despondency among my executive producers.”

  For someone who had mysteriously appeared on the first trip, Charles had come a long way. He had managed to get in a position where his interference was threatening the production, which would have been disastrous for the project. At Mike’s urging, I contacted Charles and explained the situation, telling him what the production company would—and would not—do. He was not pleased to have his plans thwarted, and I imagine he saw all manner of plots forming against him, but, in the end, he relented. After all, he was not going to get on television otherwise.

  It was not a good start. And it cemented an enmity between Charles and Mike that would hang over the entire expedition.

  Mike has enough experience working in foreign countries to know where the pitfalls lie. Though Charles had managed to usurp the permitting process—to make himself indispensable—Mike understandably wanted his own person on the job as well, to insure that all things went smoothly. He hired a Venezuelan named Antonio Casado to help us out with arrangements in Caracas. Antonio is a television producer in his own right, having worked for years with Venezuelan TV. That experience was crucial, because it meant that Antonio knew what we would need for television production and understood the specific problems we might encounter. People like Antonio are known as “fixers.” Antonio went to work right away, and he was a godsend.

  Antonio went to the Ministry of Defense and the various other ministries to see what we would need. After much legwork, he called Mike and told him that, in his view, all the BBC needed was filming permits. Then he added, “Of course, you should also have some expedition permits.”

  “What are they?” Mike asked. Expedition permits seemed to be in Charles Brewer’s domain, and he had told us he was handling them. I was very concerned, given our competitors’ insistence that they alone had the rights to explore Las Aves. But Charles insisted that there was no problem, that the permits were in order.

  Charles was well connected; his brother knew this person, his mother knew that person, he talked to the right government officials. Charles sent us copies of permits. Pedro Mezquita, who works in a major law firm in Caracas, said everything looked fine.

  Charles and Antonio were in contact with one another, coordinating their efforts, and Mike assumed that they were handling affairs in Caracas. Charles sent an e-mail stating that he “had obtained the permits from the Minister of Defense,” and the filming permits were finalized three days before we were due to fly out to Venezuela. From his home in London, Mike called Charles and asked if any other paperwork might be required. “No, no, no. Don’t worry about it, we’ll sort it all out,” Charles told him.

  We had spent the summer working the wreck of the Whydah. It was a great season for us. Not only did we bring up an impressive collection of artifacts, but we also located a sixty-foot section of hull, the only wooden section thus far. The National Geographic Society was there to capture the event for both television and their magazine.

  The working season is short off Cape Cod, however, and by early fall it was over for the year. On October 21, 1998, we were ready to go south.

  I woke up at seven in the morning, roused by what sounded like a grizzly bear trying to knock my building down. It took me a moment to realize it was Stretch Gray, the six foot ten, three-hundred-pound captain of the Vast Explorer, pounding on the side of my home at the end of Macmillan Wharf. He was our driver to the airport. I climbed out of bed.

  We made it to the airport forty-five minutes before our scheduled departure. We had a small mountain of gear and personal luggage—fourteen bags of it.

  By some miracle, our gear and our team all made it onto the airplane. Before we left, I gave everyone a quick primer on what to expect in South America. I have spent a lot of time in the Third World, but Caracas has a particularly sharp edge to it. I was determined that none of my team would get cut. We boarded the plane. Next stop, Venezuela.

  13

  A Pleasant Accident

  OCTOBER 1998

  LAS AVES

  We were certainly not the first to come poking around the wrecks at Las Aves. Someone else, perhaps the Florida treasure hunters, had been there since our first trip to the island. Near one of the larger wreck sites we could see where something had been salvaged from the reef. Anything that has sat on a reef for three hundred years becomes embedded in the coral, and when it is wrenched out, it leaves a big, fresh hole.

  At this site someone had done just that. From the size and shape of the hole and the artifacts around it, it looked as if it was a cannon that had been taken, perhaps one of the valuable bronze cannons. I was sorry to see the site vandalized in that way. And looking at the damage to the reef caused by the removal of one gun, I began to wonder if any excavation would be worth the environmental cost.

  Neither of us was first on those wrecks. The first salvagers showed up while they were still fresh. One of them was Captain Thomas Paine.

  Not to be confused with the Tom Paine of Common Sense fame, Thomas Paine the pirate holds a special place for me. Paine is one of the living links between the early era of the golden age of piracy, the middle to later seventeenth century, and the later period that ended around 1720. By the be
ginning of the eighteenth century, however, he was a respectable citizen. He was also a pirate kingpin who had numerous criminal connections among those pirates and smugglers who made my native Cape Cod home.

  SUMMER 1678

  LAS AVES

  THE FIRST SALVAGER

  Captain Thomas Paine was in some ways the polar opposite of the Chevalier de Grammont. Rather than starting life in the upper strata of society, Paine began as a simple seafarer, a most common profession, particularly in New England, where he grew up.

  Thomas Paine is believed to have been the same Thomas Paine who was born on Martha’s Vineyard in 1632. His father died young and his stepfather was Thomas Mayhew, the famous governor of that island. He became a sailor and left the island no earlier than 1647. The exact circumstance of his having turned pirate are unknown, but he is believed to have served with L’Ollonais or Morgan, or possibly with both.

  While we do not know how he first arrived in the West Indies, it was definitely not as a commissioned officer in anyone’s navy. I know what Martha’s Vineyard was like in the old days and for Paine it took determination and hard work, not to mention a good deal of luck and money, to rise above his humble beginnings. Only after a long and successful career as a privateer and pirate would he become a pillar of society.

  Paine was already established as a filibuster captain by the spring of 1678. Since the proposed attack on Curaçao involved so many of the buccaneers, it is probable that Paine was a part of it, and like the others found himself on Las Aves. Paine’s ship, which sported six guns, would have had a shallow enough draft to avoid wrecking on the reefs as the larger ships did.