Submerged: Adventures of America's Most Elite Underwater Archeology Team

by Daniel Lenihan

  Our stress level rose when we squeezed into the last chamber that could accommodate a diver and found it empty. What in the hell? We passed the man’s partner and a pile of gear over a hundred feet back—there was absolutely no place else to go. I knew I had roughly ten seconds before my air bubbles dislodged enough silt from the ceiling that the crystal-clear water would become opaque, even to the most powerful dive light. Then, I spied feet, bare feet, extruding from a narrow crevice. This poor kid had removed even his wet-suit boots. I felt that shiver that was becoming all too familiar pass through me—what level of panic, what unfathomable psychological process—what would make a person remove the last of his gear, including tanks half full of air, and in total darkness squeeze himself into a jagged rock tomb?

  I had plenty of time to contemplate an answer to that question—the twenty minutes in absolute darkness it took to swim out of one of the siltiest tunnels I had ever entered. Dave, with the deceased under his arm, was feeling his way back along the line with his other hand, removing the line from where it embedded in the clay, with me following.

  I had the simpler of the two jobs; I just wound up the line behind Dave as he blindly forged ahead. This was perfect work for Dave—we used to kid him about his lousy silt control but then he seemed totally unfazed by silt. As long as you weren’t trying for a record penetration in clear water, he was an ideal partner for a body recovery. He worked in a hospital hyperbaric unit, was familiar with death, and had probably performed more body recoveries than anyone on record.

  There had been many deaths in the popular Ginnie before, even an infamous accident involving four victims, but this one did it—enough was enough. Three of our associates from Miami, Tom Mount, Paul DeLoach, and Jim Nangle, installed a grate in the spring, where the inviting open chamber narrowed to a conduit. This cavern was inviting to novices in the light-bathed mouth and lethal just a little way down its throat.

  I was usually against grating caves but supported this decision. In 1973, eighteen divers died in the state’s underwater caves, and a shocked public began a hue and cry to ban diving in the “killer caves of Florida.” While public meetings were being held in different parts of Florida to legislate us out of existence, we kept exploring. Our position wasn’t helped when twenty-six died in 1974, by no means all novices either.

  But something was going on in inside me. The lure hadn’t diminished, but the mathematics of survival were starting to become a bit unnerving. I visited four cave-diving associates who lived together in Gainesville in 1972, and I reflected in 1974 that only one was left alive; the others had gone in three separate accidents.

  Another, diving solo, finding he was hopelessly lost, took the time to write his wife and son a brief, but loving farewell note on his plastic slate. He breathed the rest of his air, even that which remained in his buoyancy vest, and then accepted death. The business of consequences being accepted was starting to wear thin on me. Although I felt privileged to be at the center of a whirlwind of adventure and exploration, I was starting to believe it might be reasonable to drift over toward the slow lane for a while.

  I had no intention of leaving cave diving, but I thought perhaps it was time to cool the obsession; maybe use what I had learned from dancing on the razor’s edge to pursue goals in my chosen profession of underwater archeology. In truth, I came to realize that I was addicted, not just to adrenaline but “to going where no man had gone before.” I didn’t intend to go cold turkey but to slow down enough that I might consider accepting a different consequence—that of longevity.

  So the world of cave diving provided a back door for me to a profession that was also a passion. I pursued my studies at Florida State in anthropology during the day, and learned by night from the water-filled limestone, that diving was not a simple tool to be applied to an academic problem—it was the key to experiencing a whole dimension of the planet.

  When the National Park Service (NPS) came to town in the form of the Southeast Archeological Center, George Fischer hired me as a “Park Ranger/Archeologist” to help further the agency’s early efforts in underwater archeology. George was about to undertake a shipwreck survey at Gulf Islands National Seashore. He gave me free rein to whip his assorted group of sixteen project participants into a disciplined team. The professional capabilities of the archeologists, historians, and technicians was respectable and consistent. But their diving abilities varied from pretty-darn-good to hopeless.

  George made a decision, however, that neutralized any of the weaknesses in the divers’ abilities. He backed up his new GS-4 ranger/archeologist in decisions about diving, regardless of whom it affected. As it turned out, George and his assistant project director, Calvin Cummings, were both unable to pass my stringent water test for buddy rescue. His reaction was to disqualify himself and Cal from taking part in diving operations until they did finally pass the test near project’s end. When the project was spot-checked for compliance to NPS diving standards by then Southeast Region diving officer, Don Weir, it passed with flying colors. Whatever the Gulf Islands project lacked in funding and equipment, its diving operations had broken the glass ceiling of acceptance among the old-line hard-core ranger ranks.

  Cal Cummings, who happened to be in charge of NPS archeology in the Southwest Region and who would eventually become the chief promoter of SCRU, took careful note of these happenings. Within a year he had hired me. I had worried about how seriously diving would be taken in the Service, and I now had my answer.

  The Service provided me the opportunity to transform myself from an underwater adventurer to an underwater archeologist. In turn, I brought to NPS underwater archeology an intensity of purpose and devotion to diving discipline that were rare, found only among Florida cave divers and a few other widely dispersed communities around the world.

  On New Year’s eve of 1974, I had already decided I would soon be leaving Florida to accept a promotion with the NPS in Santa Fe. That night I met Larry Murphy. A former commercial diver, weightlifter, and archeological field agent for the state of Florida, Larry was forced to witness the state-sanctioned destruction of the better part of the Spanish maritime heritage in the United States.

  Larry represented the “state’s interest” while monitoring private salvage boats blasting dump-truck-size holes in the seabed with propwash deflectors to find Spanish doubloons and pieces-of-eight. In one of the more short-sighted decisions in bureaucratic history, the state of Florida allowed itself to be snookered into partnership with treasure salvage companies, which, in a quest for riches, ran most of the state’s maritime heritage through an underwater blender.

  This experience is seminal to understanding Larry. Lacking only a dissertation for a Ph.D. in anthropology from Brown University, Larry can change temperament as quickly as the Great Lakes—from animated, intellectual discussions of maritime archeology and social history to tight-jawed, brow-lowered, red-faced diatribes on “treasure pukes,” whose very existence on his planet he finds offensive. His love for the underwater world, ships, and history under the sea is boundless.

  We had an inauspicious first meeting at a New Year’s Eve party at the home of his boss, the mercurial Sonny Cockrell, Florida’s state underwater archeologist. Sonny had a recent brush with death at the cave in Warm Mineral Springs. Though advised to consult with me several times in the past, Sonny had been slow to talk to a graduate-student, cave-diving monk about his problems. Hell, he was a professional diver and should be able to handle it—How different could it be?

  Treating the caves like just another serious diving environment was a common mistake, one that had almost killed Sonny’s predecessor, Carl Clausen. Carl, a big, brash fellow, had once interviewed me for a job with the state. I heard from his own lips of his attempt to pound a core sleeve into the silty bottom of Little Salt Spring in water more than two hundred feet deep. In short, he almost didn’t return, and cave divers I knew from Miami had retrieved the core from the spring some days later. It wasn’t in the bottom
. Carl, in his nitrogen-mind-altered state, had pounded it into the side of the spring. Whatever else the qualifications for being State Underwater Archeologist of Florida in the early 1970s, it took strong personalities with strong egos.

  On this night, Sonny, aided by copious amounts of wine and mescal, was able to swallow his pride and vent his anxiety over the close call he had just experienced. I didn’t need the assistance of the alcohol coursing through my own veins to appreciate the intensity or verity of his story—Sonny really had been close enough to see the Grim Reaper’s smile. He had strayed into the cave opening at the bottom of Warm Mineral Springs at 230 feet deep. Following a poorly laid line in, he lost it in a silt-out. He swallowed his rising panic long enough that he happened to find the line again . . . and follow it the wrong way. Luckily, it was a short line. Realizing his error in time, he had sufficient air to make it back out.

  “Dan. Man, I’m back from the dead. I was fucking dead! I mean I stumbled out of there through blind luck, I’m asking your help, man.”

  This was an important development. Fischer, Clausen, and now Cockrell, directors of underwater archeological projects in Florida, were coming to a realization that research diving was not some variant of sport diving, and cave diving was a world to itself. Cockrell was particularly important in this regard because he would be running some major diving research programs in the near future in Warm Mineral Springs. This Larry Murphy fellow was to be his field director and dive officer. I was delighted Sonny had given me the opportunity to influence his approach to that project.

  I thought the best way to make believers of people in the intricate nature of the special techniques needed to dive caves safely was to show them, not tell them. Watching a well-equipped cave diver lumber about on land with an impossible assortment of tanks and lights and reels brought home the first revelation—this must be serious stuff. Next, underwater, the real transformation occurred as the hodge-podge of wires and lights and tanks magically fell into place when the diver assumed a swimming position. Finally, the smooth, fluid motions as a good team began progressing through a cave—no silt, no wasted movements, lines handled with confidence and care—a true thing of beauty that makes all other diving pale in comparison. Once you see people move expertly through underwater caverns, it’s hard to settle for less.

  For Sonny and Larry’s experience I chose a place called Peacock Slough near Mayo, Florida. There was a short (300 feet) transit that one could make to another sink, dubbed a “pothole” by cave divers, after which the cave meandered on to other “Karst windows” or water-filled sinks, for several kilometers. With the right equipment and techniques, the underground swim to the pothole was a comparatively benign dive. Because two novices were involved (novices that is, to cave diving—both were experienced divers, Murphy having already logged more than one thousand hours), I had a friend and fellow cave diving instructor, Barry Kerley, accompany us.

  The dive itself was uneventful, but the effect on our wards extraordinary. Sonny executed a competent dive and carefully observed the special techniques and procedures Barry and I employed during the penetration. He later insisted that these techniques be applied to his project at Warm Mineral Springs.

  Larry, however, had a religious experience. I thought he might have been stressed at the decompression stop, where I had arranged for us to turn off our lights and sit under the crystal-clear water ten feet deep until our eyes adjusted. It’s a soulful experience on a moonless night, to see the stars through a water column. What I took for a bit of restlessness or unease was in fact Larry bursting out of his skin with enthusiasm.

  The quiet, introspective person I had met at Sonny’s party had transformed into a raving lunatic. “Goddamn, man,” he bellowed on hitting the surface. “What the hell? Are you kidding me?” Barry and I just blinked, not sure if we had done something wrong.

  Larry then turned to me, pointed a big blunt fingertip in my face, and said, “You are going to teach me how to cave dive if it’s the last thing you ever do.”

  “Guess you liked it, huh?”

  During the next four months as I closed out my affairs in Tallahassee and made ready to take the position with the National Park Service in Santa Fe, I taught Larry the art of cave diving. It was like teaching an orca to swim in the ocean. This was a fairly disrupted, impoverished period in my own personal life (divorce and postgraduate school destitution making their marks), so I took some bucking-up from Larry as well. When I felt too soul-whipped to bother with the next dive, he showed up at my hovel with pumped tanks and charged lights. We spent many weekends and nights driving to backwoods sinkholes, diving, and then debriefing on the dives.

  We also debriefed about our past: Both of us had been campus radicals of one sort or another in the 1960s, and received our undergraduate degrees in philosophy. Larry had graduated from a commercial diving school after college, trained in hard-hat diving, underwater cutting and welding, and demolitions. His plans for the future were just forming, but he knew they would involve diving and underwater archeology. They would not involve condoning what he perceived as the disgusting giveaway of his nation’s submerged historical resources to commercial treasure salvors, a practice against which his boss, Sonny, was fighting a losing battle.

  In a far cry from the drunken debauch of New Year’s Eve, 1974, Larry would find himself one year later at midnight, Dec. 31st, 1975, pulling his way through an underwater labyrinth in a ritual greeting of 1976. He would again be high as a kite, but not this time, from alcohol: It would be from adrenaline and the sense of mastery of an environment as potentially hostile as it was alluring. He would be following the skillful lead of a fellow named Sheck Exley, and be glancing back at regular intervals to check on me bringing up the rear, proud to note that the passage between us was totally clear. Larry had learned the art of swimming lightly beneath the earth.

  We became fast friends by the time I departed for the wilds of New Mexico. The synergy of that relationship was a major ingredient in the recipe for the development of the National Park Service SCRU Team.

  What I couldn’t have guessed is that the major project that would bring all the formative elements of the unit together—the people, the specialized approach to diving, the philosophy—would be hundreds of miles from oceans or caves. It would take place behind dams in man-made lakes and be called the National Reservoir Inundation Study.

  Before we embark on that journey, however, it may serve to reflect on the effect that working in parks, and for the Park Service, was having on my developing vision of underwater archeology and maritime preservation. It is true to the chronology and spirit of this story to discuss my assignment later in 1974, to appraise the contract work being carried out by the state of Florida in what was known then as Fort Jefferson National Monument. Today it is called Dry Tortugas National Park, and as coincidence would have it, the field director of the study was a fellow named Larry Murphy.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DRY TORTUGAS

  His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were; about hangings, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the Dry Tortugas.

  -from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Frigate Birds soar majestically on the thermals that rise over Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park. They seem mesmerized by the panorama of blue-green reefs and maritime history spread beneath them. Since I first hitched a ride in a Park Service seaplane out to what was known as Fort Jefferson National Monument on May 15, 1974, this park has played a major role in the development of SCRU and my personal sense of what being an underwater archeologist is all about.

  “Do you mind holding this screwdriver across the terminals till we get her goin’?” The pilot was indicating a battery partially emerging from beneath my seat. A friendly sort, he had agreed to give me a lift from the Key West airport out to the fort but was having problems with the recalcitrant starting system on the plane.

  I know very little ab
out planes, or engines in general for that matter, but I was uneasy with this proposal. The aircraft was a two-seater seaplane, with the engine facing toward the tail. Common sense told me that if there was something wrong with that design, the pilot would have noticed by now—I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that, but hold a screwdriver . . .

  “Uh, no, I mean yes. I rather would mind. Don’t mean to be difficult here, appreciate the ride you know, but . . .”

  “Hah!” accompanied by a hearty slap to my back. “No problem, sport, we’ll just go into town and find us [whatever one finds to avoid needing to hold a screwdriver across terminals] and we’ll be off.” So began my first visit to the Dry Tortugas.

  Whether flying or sailing from Key West, the bright white slash of sands that identify East Key are the first harbinger of the Tortugas. Then, low on the horizon to the right, the dull reddish-brown form of the fort starts to take shape. “Las Tortugas,” as they were first recorded and named by Ponce de Leon in 1513, lie in the Gulf of Mexico at its juncture with the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

  The Florida Current wraps around these islands before it joins the Gulf Stream and heads through the straits of Florida and north toward the Carolinas. The stream carries with it a rich diversity of life and lore that saturates everything it touches. Ernest Hemingway, who resided for a decade in Key West, was so intrigued with Cuba, Bimini, and other “islands in the stream,” that they were the focus of his last major work. He often took his friends on fishing trips to the Tortugas.

  After buzzing the fort to let the staff know of our imminent landing, we banked around for a final approach. I noticed there was activity on the dock, a patrol boat warming up, another ranger standing alert with his hands on the mooring line. I pointed down. “Coming to greet us?”