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

by Daniel Lenihan

  Wooden vessels from the sixteenth or twentieth centuries—or any time in between—seem to share certain similarities in the way they break up. They tend to disarticulate along the turn of the bilge, that curved area where the ship’s sides seem as if they are taking a sharp curve toward the keel. The end product of that process is that they all get flattened out into about five or more pieces representing sides, bottom, stern, and bow. The light superstructure is often broken off and separated by ocean dynamics from the rest.

  I knew there was structure under me, beneath the sand, because of the way the coral, grass, and marl had dispersed; but I had no idea what part of the ship it was. The first clues I looked for were usually features such as ports or scuppers which would tell you the structure was from a part of the ship above the water line. Then, I check for frames or ceiling planks which means you were looking at the inboard rather than outside planking of the hull. But no such evidence yet.

  The most visible feature beyond the pile of shot was the line of ballast rock. If the wood ran under it, we could reasonably assume we were looking at ship bottom rather than side, but still nothing solid enough to start putting the puzzle together. I tried not to guess and to wait to see something definitive. Once a half-baked interpretation of a site is begun, I find it tends to build on itself—the mind starts arranging the evidence to fit the preconception.

  I followed along the bottom, seeing now the first of the cannon Jack had noted, then another and then . . . then the signs of the vandals that had preceded us. Rebar, the modern gnarly steel rods used to reinforce concrete, were driven into the bottom at set intervals every few yards. Not far from each rod was a “doggyhole,” as we called those places where divers had kneeled forward on the bottom and paddled sand back between their legs like a mutt trying to dig for a T-bone. Usually, I had mixed feelings on finding these: part of me wanting to slap the cuffs on the greedy dullards; then that part that was kind of curious about what might be just a little deeper in the hole. But this time, I had no such conflicting emotions. It was rapidly becoming clear that this was a serious archeological site and these folks had begun systematic plundering. The holes reminded me of prehistoric Mimbres sites in the Southwest worked by pot hunters, except the physics of working in air made the latter more likely to use shovels and rakes than to dig dog-style.

  To my left was another cannon, this one wound multiple times with nylon rope. There were chunks of black, with the look and texture of badly burnt bread, laying about in the white sand. It was apparent that the salvors didn’t like where the cannon was and had moved it, paying little heed to what it bounced against on the bottom. The black “junk” that had chipped off the gun tube could easily have concreted artifacts which were now separated from their provenience and probably destroyed. Obviously the treasure hunters knew the concretions had potential—some of the larger ones were smashed open. Any chance of x-raying the globs and retrieving delicate artifacts, or even using the concretions as forms to make wax molds of what they once held, was lost.

  I glanced at the trunnion of the gun facing me. It was shiny where black concretion had broken off. I felt what was becoming an all too familiar sense of sadness in the pit of my stomach—the one that comes over me when I see mindless destruction like this. That trunnion could have had an intact maker’s stamp or have left an imprint of a trademark in one of the pieces of black scattered hopelessly about the site.

  Swimming further, I noticed green-stained wood and slivers of green and black concretion again in pieces. Cuprous. Anything visible they thought was copper or brass had been ripped from the site. Murphy passed by me absorbing the signs of pillage—he raised his arms in a frustrated gesture—why? I shrugged.

  He motioned to me to look at something, and I swam to where he pointed at a pile of ingots that had been chipped at. I looked closer and felt slightly bemused—it was iron, pig iron. Bet that was a disappointment when they finally muscled one to the surface and found it wasn’t silver. But this find had additional significance. The reason the stone ballast pile was comparatively small was this ship also had pig-iron ballast, something we associated with British—not Spanish—vessels.

  Then we both came on another cannon, this one with the cascabel or iron bulb at the back extruding from the sand. We looked closer. The gun wasn’t buried so far that we couldn’t see the outline of what appeared to be a Tudor rose engraved on the top. This Spanish galleon had English faience pottery, pig-iron ballast, and a goddamn Tudor rose on its guns. Any one of those things is not enough in itself to judge nationality because people captured other people’s ships and traded for goods. In fact, there was some Spanish olive jar pottery on this site, but given the range of material culture we had observed on this dive, it already was becoming apparent to both Larry and me that this ship was no more Spanish than Queen Elizabeth. Before we ever laid eyes on the site, George Fischer had been suspicious of its supposed origins just from what he knew of the reports from the treasure hunters and the local record of ship disasters. Indeed, Spanish ships were known to be down in the area, but so were vessels of other nationalities of the same period.

  We climbed back on board. The good news was that the damage to the archeology, though significant, was not severe. With the documentation we would be able to present the court, it was doubtful that the pillage would be allowed to continue. Jack Morehead came back up at that moment and we helped him over the transom.

  Knowing full well our frequency was being monitored and it would be like making an announcement to the entire Florida Keys, I picked up the radio, switched from “direct” to the long-distance repeater channel, and sent a terse message back to headquarters.

  “NPS dispatch, this is park patrol boat Survey Two, 10-20 Legare Anchorage . . . eagle has landed.” It might have been silly, maybe a little melodramatic, but damn, it felt good. Larry smiled. Jack shook his head chuckling.

  “Eagle has . . . indeed.” Then, more serious, “You know they’re never again going to find it quite so funny that people in Smokey-bear hats are protecting historic shipwrecks in the Keys.”

  Within a half hour, most of the park patrol boats in south Florida were rafted off or anchored in the area. We had obtained a tight electronic coordinate with the transponders. But the boat rangers, having little trust for gizmos they had seen malfunction and short-out for the better part of a week, took a host of ranges and bearings and even backtracked through the reefs holding out their hands, two or three fingers extended, “taking visuals.” With their ubiquitous brown briefcases open, handles of 357 magnum pistols exposed, notepads flapping in the breeze, they wrote things like: “48 degree bearing from Caesar Creek, wait til Turkey Point stacks equidistant, then hard right until patch coral breaks up and three fingers separates Rhodes Key light from E. shoreline.” I knew better than to take lightly what they were doing. It never ceased to amaze me how they could return precisely to a spot on the reef flats miles from shore using those arcane methods.

  Still dripping from our dive, we let our boat drift a ways from the throng, Larry and I conversing with Jack. Suddenly, Jack glanced around conspiratorially and reached into the little cooler bag he had been bringing aboard each time he visited the operation during the last week. I had been curious what was in it; now I knew as I heard the pop-tops spritz open and smelled the odor of beer mix with the salt breeze.

  “Been carrying this damn thing for a week, never had a doubt it would get opened.”

  Postscript

  Along with Florida State students George had shipped in from Tallahassee over the next few days, we documented the extensive remains of what we were becoming convinced was an English vessel, probably naval. It had been heavily vandalized by treasure hunters but was luckily large enough a site and hard enough to locate that most of it was still intact. It holds a wealth of information on early eighteenth century naval and shipboard life, and we had gotten it a reprieve from destruction, so that it could be properly excavated and displayed. After sev
eral more preliminary studies, the HMS Fowey is, at this writing, being prepared for major excavation by the Park Service.

  The courts, owing largely to our passing the judge’s curious find-the-wreck test, deemed the remains property of the American people. Florida State University archeologists, working for George, continued archival research and analysis of artifacts in the lab. On some of the latter, they soon noted English “broad arrow” markings. They determined that the wreck was that of a British man-o’-war, probably the HMS Fowey, recorded lost in the vicinity in 1748.

  In frustration, the head of the local group of salvors passed out place mats at his restaurant identifying the coordinates of the wreck to attract looters and spite the Park Service. His claim to the site died in court and in a final twist of dramatic irony he too died—gunned down in his own restaurant for reasons unknown.

  As to searching in parks for antiquities: Several years later SCRU had the opportunity to help in the rewrite of CFR 36, the Code of Federal Regulations that applies to managing national parks. There is now a stipulation in that code that anybody carrying a magnetometer or side-scan sonar into the waters under the jurisdiction of a national park must have the instruments broken down, crated, and stowed while in park boundaries.

  Rather than accompany us to Biscayne, Toni Carrell had been putting the final touches on the Inundation Study Report and readying us for our departure for Lake Superior. She was helped in those preparations by scientific illustrator Jerry Livingston, who would help us face the difficult challenges we anticipated to the north.

  One event did occur during this rushed period that, minor in importance for SCRU, would have long-range implications for me personally. Larry and I were busy for a while filling out the accident forms that God and the bureaucracy demanded be filled out in full when mishaps happened. Having burnt and trashed more than our usual quota of boats and people, there was a lot to fill out. The lady who reviewed such forms in the regional office at the time was intrigued by the creative irreverence we employed in such paperwork and asked to meet us. A pleasant, attractive woman, just moved to Santa Fe from being a fisherwoman in Alaska, she was shown around our facility and promised to keep in touch. She and I did stay in touch—her name is now Barbara Lenihan.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BULLY HAYES AND OTHER SHARKS

  Talk in the South Seas is all upon one pattern; it is a wide ocean, indeed, but a narrow world: you shall never talk long and not hear the name of Bully Hayes, a naval hero whose exploits and deserved extinction left Europe cold . . .

  —The Wrecker by Robert Louis Stevenson

  Not long after SCRU became a going concern, the Pacific Isles seemed to become inextricably involved in our destiny. Within a year of becoming a permanent team, we received the first request for assistance in promoting underwater preservation in the South Pacific. After dealing with the problems of Biscayne and a brief reconnaissance trip to Isle Royale earlier that year, the thought of moving on to the Pacific Isles in the Santa Fe winter seemed pretty enticing. As January 1981 rolled around, we were ready for a South Seas adventure. The hostages had been freed in Iran but too late for Carter—we had already elected Reagan. And some fool had shot John Lennon to death . . . after first making sure he had obtained his autograph.

  The request for our services came from the former Trust Territory of Kosrae. Although we had plenty to keep us busy in the National Parks, the Department of the Interior (including NPS) has special obligations to provide assistance to present and former trust territories. From that came our mandate. From the Pacific itself, came the crying need and the romantic attraction.

  Over the years, I never had trouble recruiting divers from other NPS divisions to help SCRU on projects in that part of the world; and they were always ready to return, apparently suffering mass amnesia regarding how burnt-out and exhausted they were from their last assignment to paradise. As a point of accuracy, all but one of the projects that SCRU tackled in the far Pacific (far west of Hawaii, that is) took place in Micronesia, which is actually north of the equator. I refer to the area herein as “the south seas” in conformance with popular American parlance that dates from Robert Louis Stevenson and continues through Victory at Sea and South Pacific.

  Actually , the word Micronesia says it all. It is a place of tiny land and great water. It takes several hours to cross Micronesia in a commercial airliner but you could fit its entire land mass into Vermont.

  I eventually developed a love/hate relationship with projects in this part of the world. The logistical challenges of working in the far Pacific were staggering, but so, too, were the rewards. Micronesian people have all the same variability between individuals as anywhere else but the people of Oceania seem to share a oneness with the sea surpassing anything I have witnessed, even among island folk in the rest of world.

  The natural diversity in the marine environment in the western Pacific is stunning. Single harbors contain a greater range of life forms in the coral mazes fringing boat channels than can be found in the entire Caribbean Basin. The only downside for a small research team like ours, is that “Micro”nesia (the place of tiny lands) is so damn big.

  When Larry, Toni, and I first arrived in Kosrae in 1981, the only way to fly there was to take the Air Micronesia “milk run” from Honolulu to Guam. It made five stops over a thirteen-hour period. Ponape was about two thirds of the way to Guam. One disembarked there, then secured a charter flight via propeller plane three hundred miles to Kosrae.

  Our introduction to a more relaxed style of life began minutes after arriving in Ponape. There was no airport except for a small wooden kiosk bordering a gravel pullout adjacent to the landing strip. We stood in a milling crowd of people who were coming/going, on-looking, whatever, it was incomprehensible to us. We watched our signature, large, orange, fiberglass boxes taken from the plane and loaded on the back of a pickup by three fellows, who then joined the luggage in the truck bed. They held on for life as the vehicle made a sharp racing curve and headed for the kiosk. One of our boxes did a complete back flip off the back of the truck and slammed down on the hard runway with a sickening crack. Naturally, it was the one containing our video system. The driver sheepishly got out and helped the others load it back on, very gently.

  I heard Larry mutter to Toni, standing next to him as they surveyed the scene, “glad the buggers are being careful now.” Uniformed, briefcases in hands, we stood out from the crowd anyway; all of a sudden, we stand out more because, well, we’re the only ones standing. On some signal we didn’t catch the entire crowd hit the deck, crowding around the kiosk, faces covered with hands, hats, whatever was available.

  Larry just managed to get a “what the . . . ?” out of his mouth before the jet blast hit us. With no push-back vehicles, the standard procedure for the “Air Mike” pilots was to goose it on one engine and burn out in a cloud of gravel and hot air. As we extracted ourselves from where we had joined the rest of the crowd in a heap behind the kiosk I heard Toni remark half to herself that “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  From Ponape we boarded our chartered prop plane for Kosrae, as we mulled over the observation made by bystanders at the kiosk that the latter didn’t have the developed amenities of their island. The whole distance, we passed over every shade of blue and green imaginable, the water surface hinting changes in depth and nature of the coral and sands below.

  The exotic, roughshod beauty of Kosrae is not confined to below the water’s surface. The island is dominated by a volcano that looks from a distance like a sleeping lady. Unlike Pacific atolls, Kosrae has only a fringing reef rather than a lagoon surrounded by a strip of land. We found ourselves quickly caught up in the pace of life of the islanders, who shared their customs and lifestyle easily and graciously with outsiders.

  It seemed the exclusive domain of Japanese pickup trucks. In the humid, tropical air filled with salt spray, rust is a blight that takes an incredibly quick toll on even comparatively modern
steel alloys. People traveled standing up in the pickup beds, feet splayed, to ensure they rested on cross-struts that wouldn’t collapse beneath their weight. We soon found ourselves in the same feet-splayed stance, hanging on for dear life as we and our equipment were hauled from the airstrip to the village of Utwa.

  Our mission in Kosrae was to evaluate some ship remains reported to reside in a cove where a river entered the ocean near Utwa. The Historic Preservation Officer of the Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) had requested the Department of the Interior to send its underwater archeology team to ascertain if the wreckage might be that of the Leonora, a ship owned and mastered by the notorious Bully Hayes.

  Hayes had made quite an impression in these parts. Many islanders bear the Anglo-Irish family names of the rogue’s men. He also made an impression on American folklore of the sea. “Blow the man down—blow that Bully man down,” this is the Bully referred to in that popular sea chanty. James Michener immortalized this seaman’s outrageous, often violent antics in his book Rascals in Paradise. He was a notorious blackbirder, thief, woman-abductor, swindler, brawler, and all-around badass.

  Not long after losing the Leonora during a storm while anchored in Utwa Harbor, he liberated another vessel from its rightful owner. It is not clear, in some instances, whether the women he abducted were also liberated, as their level of resistance to being taken often seemed arguable. He simply removed them and their husbands’ ships from their husbands’ oversight. Historical accounts indicate that some of the ladies actually got into the spirit of it all and showed some reluctance at being ransomed. Considering the oppressive elements of traditional European and American society toward their gender in the 1870s, perhaps there was a certain attraction to a gentle abduction for a life of exotic travel. There is no indication Hayes abused the women. As various hearings and court cases showed, kidnapping and piracy were hard charges to make stick with old Bully.