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

by Daniel Lenihan

  I spoke to them as I laid mapping lines, pulled tape measures around the ship. I told them they hadn’t missed much; music’s gone to hell, the Dodgers and Giants have left New York, overpopulation, etc. They welcomed me like a familiar custodian, made me feel comfortable, like I was really doing something when I worked to honor them. Yes, the crew of Arizona and I are on good terms; we really do have an understanding.

  Postscript: The Navy became increasingly intrigued with the methods SCRU had developed to map things underwater. The techniques we employed were homespun, simple, and very effective. Jerry Livingston, our illustrator, assembled the line drawings we had generated in our early work into a five-part rendering of the ship from different perspectives that won a national award for historic display. The video footage we obtained helped finalize the drawings and provided the teaser that inspired an excellent documentary on our work by the BBC in 1986.

  The Navy’s interest in our approach to surveying things underwater and the fact that we generally worked well together provided the basis for a long cooperative relationship in a program called Project Seamark. For the ten years after our first dives with them, the Navy increasingly joined us on projects throughout the Pacific and through much of the lower forty-eight and Alaska.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CONTEMPLATION VS. ACTION

  [On exploring the tide pools near La Paz for scientific specimens:]

  “What did you lose?” they ask.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then what do you search for?” And this is an embarrassing question. We search for something that will seem like truth to us; we search for that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life; we search for the relations of things, one to another, as this young man searches for a warm light in his wife’s eyes and that one for the hot warmth of fighting.

  The Log from the Sea of Cortez

  John Steinbeck

  The Submerged Cultural Resources Unit, as seen from the outside and written about in the popular press, is usually portrayed as the sum of its actions—its projects. There was also an intellectual growth process that reflected the constant stimuli we received from dealing with so many diverse forces in our diving and research world. Some of these considerations were on the theoretical level, some on the methodological. It would be an incomplete story not to pause in our recount of adventures and reflect for a moment on the Yin that, in the early 1980s, accompanied the SCRU Yang.

  SCRU was in operation for only a year before Larry, Toni, and I felt that we were operating in a theoretical vacuum. In the NRIS, we addressed the issue by creating a comprehensive research design to face the unique problems of reservoir research. But SCRU’s issues were different, in that there were several competent organizations, academic and otherwise, working on shipwrecks, but they operated completely disassociated from the broader, anthropologically oriented discipline of American archeology. We felt a compulsion to address what we felt to be total lack of convergence of shipwreck archeology with the fundamental body of anthropological theory.

  In its most extreme form, leading archeologists had asserted that “archeology is anthropology or it is nothing.” Although we by no means felt that to be the case, we did feel that anthropological issues had been disregarded by the largely classical and historically oriented groups that were engaged in serious shipwreck studies.

  As we sifted through data from Biscayne and Tortugas and Leonora and considered the wrecks of Isle Royale with which we had only brief acquaintance at this point, we sensed something missing in our approach—a theoretical underpinning. We were finding, describing, and waxing prosaic about shipwrecks, but there seemed to be no precedent for logical linkage with our mother field of anthropology. The more we attended conferences, the more this became apparent; even excavations conducted by first-rate underwater archeologists were isolated scientific events without the unifying connection to the social sciences offered by anthropology. Information gleaned from the sites fed little back into the comparative study of man and human cultures.

  The fact that a pewter cup was found on a shipwreck site engraved with a name, and the name could be traced through the archives to identify a particular sailor was indeed interesting. It helped history come alive and demonstrated the link between the material record and the written. But this sort of link seemed to be the ultimate triumph of historians doing underwater archeology. What was lacking was demonstrated relevance to broad patterns of human behavior. What commonalities existed between shipboard life on a seventeenth century French man-o’-war, a World War II German cruiser, and a Phoenician trading vessel from 600 B.C.? How did humans cope with the act of shipwrecking as evidenced in items they selected when abandoning ship? Were they practical, religious, or strangely unpredictable in making those choices under stress? There were hundreds of existing areas of behavioral inquiry that anthropologically oriented archeologists were addressing on land sites. But there seemed to be no attempt by underwater archeologists to feed into those social scientific issues. As a result, the traditional archeological community tended to take underwater endeavors less seriously.

  Other maritime archeologists noted this problem, but most were overseas, including a fellow named Keith Muckelroy, who was writing some very compelling articles and books on maritime archeology, trying to provide the very theoretical grounding we were missing.

  Shortly after returning from Kosrae in 1981, I walked into the office of Doug Schwartz, the president of the School of American Research in Santa Fe and asked him if he could help. He had been running highly respected seminars in different areas of archeological theory for many years and tackling widely disparate theoretical issues in all areas of anthropology and archeology.

  I laid out our concern, telling him the Park Service would help fund a seminar to address the problem but it must be a joint venture. I asked Doug to absorb some of the costs at the school and lend his expertise in running highly effective seminars. We’d provide the names of a few practitioners we wanted to see involved, including ourselves. But I made it clear we were not interested in hearing a lot of underwater people fumble about trying to be theoreticians; we wanted the best minds that the discipline of archeology had to offer, the people most conversant in theory, to dominate the session. And . . . we wanted hard results in the form of a publication in his seminar series.

  Doug said nothing during my presentation, just sat there with his hands behind his head, listening. When I finished, he broke into a smile. “You’ve really surprised me, I didn’t at all think that was what you were going to suggest.”

  “Yeah, I expect you thought I was going to ask you to set up some seminar on underwater techniques where we could all impress each other with how technically competent we were and go home.”

  “I expect you thought right.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Who comes to mind?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who do we get to chair the seminar?” Doug pulled his chair around and started in as if we already had a signed contract. Who should be invited, when should it be held, who would lead it? By the time I left his office I not only had a commitment to joint-venture the seminar but we had settled on most of the participants and decided on a tentative date. No wonder Doug was so successful at running the school; he didn’t let grass grow under his feet once he had made a decision.

  Before I left that morning, Doug had also left a message with Dick Gould, who was leaving as chair of anthropology at the University of Hawaii to teach at Brown. Doug convinced me that he would be a good person to run the seminar. He was a highly regarded theoretician and had an interest in underwater archeology. We were soon to find he personally knew and respected Keith Muckelroy, one of the key people we had identified from abroad.

  The seminar ran later that year. Shipwreck Anthropology, the book that resulted from the session, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1982. Written by eleven participants, including six
top people in archeological theory (Dick Gould, Pat Watson, Peter Schmidt, Stephen Mrowzowski, Mark Leone, and Cheryl Classen) and five practitioners (Murphy, myself, Cockrell, George Bass, and Gary Stickel), the combined papers comprised an articulate statement of the potential and the limitations of applying anthropological paradigms to underwater archeology. Most comprehensive works in maritime archeology cite this work, either agreeing or taking issue with the authors on points of theory, both about the nature of shipwrecks and about their studies in an anthropological framework.

  In addition to taking an important step toward gaining a firm footing in theory, this distinguished group of primarily land archeologists all signed a “Statement by Seminar Participants on the Present Looting of Shipwrecks in Florida and Texas.” This statement, prominent in the front material of Shipwreck Anthropology, was a powerful endorsement of shipwrecks as “an irreplaceable resource for archaeology and anthropology,” and it also included a pointed indictment of any archeologists working in collusion with treasure hunters. Any areas of gray that had shaded the subdiscipline of underwater archeology as the domain of treasure hunters, or suggested that less stringent standards be applied underwater than on land, were firmly laid to rest: “Scientific, legal and ethical standards that apply to archaeology on land should also apply to archaeology under water. Archaeology for gain, by selling gold and other materials taken from wrecks for personal or corporate profit, is not acceptable. Nor is any indirect involvement by archaeologists in activities that foster a market in such antiquities.”

  Satisfied that we had set the stage in theory for what we would do in practice, we were ready to return to the field with renewed energy. The only aspect of the seminar that dampened our spirits was the absence of Keith Muckelroy from the list of participants. He was instead listed in the dedication—he had drowned in a freak diving accident before being able to take part in the seminar. I never met him but one only had to read his work or speak to his many friends to know that maritime archeology was diminished through his passing.

  About the time that Shipwreck Anthropology hit the streets in 1983, another issue arose that deserved serious contemplation. This was more a methodological concern and should serve as an example of many that came up in the history of SCRU, an organization that blended cutting-edge diving with underwater science and exploration. It was brought to my attention in the inimitable style of Jim Stewart, dive officer from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

  Jim Stewart, longtime dive officer at Scripps, was a great supporter and mentor of the NPS diving program from well before I was in the Service. Jim is opinionated, irascible, and often dogmatic regarding diving protocols. Naturally, I immediately liked him and took to arguing with him every chance that presented itself. The following is my best recollection of a phone call I received from Jim after our 1983 field session.

  “Well, Lenihan, have you killed anyone at Isle Royale yet?”

  “No, not yet. Nice to hear from you, anyway, Jim.”

  “Well, it’s just a matter of time.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “You’re diving them too hard for too long.”

  “Ya think?” I didn’t even bother pointing out that Jim had never been within miles of our Isle Royale operations. The Service diving community is small and intense, and everybody pretty much knows what everybody else is doing several minutes after it’s done. Jim was the one external diving expert privy to the NPS internal grapevine. I knew his information about our procedures was probably accurate enough—I was really curious what was on his mind.

  “Stays light up there, so you dive all day long into the night.”

  “We’re real conservative with the tables, Jim.”

  “Doesn’t matter, your divers are too tired and cold.”

  “Hell, we’re substituting oxygen for air on the decompression stops but using air tables, that’s a huge safety factor.” Jim could have blown the whistle on us using oxygen for in-water decompression of scuba divers because it was frowned on by most institutions at the time. But Jim was a diver’s diver, he wasn’t hung up on what books said or laws decreed about doling out oxygen. He knew that it was a good thing and had defended my using it during policy meetings.

  “Right, my friend. And that’s why you haven’t bent anybody up there yet. The only reason.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I know. Dan, you’re not paying enough attention to the ‘Safari Syndrome.’”

  “The who?”

  “The decompression tables weren’t meant to be used in those damn twenty-one-day diving marathons of yours up there. You’ve got to let them clean out their systems every few days. . . . Bet a lot of your folks are going home sick or going to bed overly tired every day.”

  “Nope, can’t say that I’ve noticed any trend like that.” I lied. As a point of honor (or dishonor), I couldn’t let Jim know that he’d nailed me. For the remainder of the conversation, I basically implied that he was overreacting and shouldn’t read any more books about syndromes and the like.

  After the call, I immediately pulled out the dive logs from Isle Royale and, while I went over them, considered carefully everything Jim had said. In the past, we had disagreements on many little things and a few big ones but I had a great deal of respect for his diving savvy. Most diving physiologists and medical doctors were a mixed bag of help to people in the business of running serious research diving operations. Jim was in constant contact with all of these specialists, and, unlike most dive officers, he could separate the kernels of really useful information from the chaff. Whether or not I agreed with Jim I always took his opinions very seriously and never rejected them out of hand.

  I mulled over the conversation for weeks. The reason we were pushing so hard is that every day of the boat charter snapped about $750 out of our meager budget, and the work ethic of the group of individuals was extreme. The team took great pride in its accomplishments, and its members were dedicated to the point of fanaticism. Our people were often exiting the water and climbing into sleeping bags to regenerate core temperature for their next dive. We made jokes about pouring peanut butter and jelly and hardtack into one end of the sleeping bag until the divers re-emerged from the other to use the facilities or suit up for another plunge. They were often unnaturally tired (which is a subtle symptom of borderline decompression sickness), and they indeed were being sent home on a frequent basis for injuries and respiratory infections.

  Beneath any surface bravado, all of us in SCRU took diving safety very seriously. We spent much time debriefing minor incidents and discussing ways to avoid problems before we had to deal with them. Larry was particularly important in this regard. He had run many hundreds of exceptional exposure dives on air (over 190 feet deep) at Warm Mineral Springs with no accidents. He had great instincts for rooting out problems before they occurred. But one weakness that Jim had pointed out before was that our team was tremendously goal-oriented and had a blind spot regarding fatigue—a weakness Larry and I shared in gauging its effect on ourselves and others.

  Jim had me. Of course, the tables, even with our safety factors added, just weren’t made for such use. Also, the fact that people are willing to work themselves to death isn’t sufficient reason for a good supervisor to let them.

  As a direct result of Jim’s call, I changed our procedure. We instituted a twenty-four-hour “flush” period for decompression purposes on every fourth day if we were involved in deep diving or moderate-depth repetitive diving. I also cut the sessions at Isle Royale to two weeks unless we could get someone physically off the boat and into a house or hotel facility for two days’ rest. This was not easy to do there or in many of the remote places we worked without planning. In many parks the running time of our vessels from the wreck sites to enclaves of civilization was measured in days depending on weather conditions.

  Being a good sport, a fellow who could admit he was wrong, and secure in my leadership skills, I thought it only fair to tell Jim how much his cr
iticism had affected our dive protocols, not only at Isle Royale but in general. It was sixteen years later, but I did eventually tell him.

  This conversation with Jim was one of many. I was fortunate to meet and befriend people in my career who contributed immensely to the success and safety of our operations by just being willing to share their knowledge. People such as Al Behnke, George Bond, Art Bachrach and Dud Crosson, and Paul Cianci in the diving sciences, and Tom Mount, Jim Corry, Jeff Bozanic, Paul DeLoach, Scott McWilliam, and many others in the technical diving community.

  Any significant, successful action is surrounded by periods of intense contemplation and discussion. Neither in our science nor our diving activity were there many models or recipes already in existence. SCRU was as much a cerebral as a physical endeavor, and without the active contribution of these people it would have failed in one of the critical aspects—either the science or the safety.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ISLE ROYALE: THE FINAL CHALLENGE

  We had overcome some of our greatest challenges at Isle Royale from 1980 to 1984. We learned to map and systematically photo-document very large ships. For perspective, the wreckage fields of some of the sites at Isle Royale involved areas hundreds of times larger than our colleagues tackled on ancient wrecks in the Mediterranean. It’s the difference between mapping a tennis racquet and a tennis court. We had set a standard for mapping large shipwrecks that others tried hard to match or surpass; in essence we’d raised the bar in a friendly competition among professionals. This experience also came in very handy on the USS Arizona, and indeed probably made it feasible for us to take on that project. Our work in the waters off the rugged island also taught us invaluable lessons about dealing with the combination of extreme cold and depth, which would serve us well on future projects in Alaska, Yellowstone, and Glacier.