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

by Daniel Lenihan

  Teddy dreamed of a day that his fellow islanders would truly be able to take over the reins of protection for their own heritage and recognized, since we first met in 1981, how important the underwater part of that equation would be. He accompanied us through all of our 1992 expedition in Micronesia and personally dived on every site he could. His vision of a bright future for historic preservation in these islands was a living thing that spurred us on each day. This chapter is, in fact, dedicated to Teddy and the hope that his vision survives because Teddy has not. Teddy John died at 44 of a heart attack a few months after our return to Santa Fe.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SUNKEN LEGACY OF THE CONFEDERACY

  A s the sea closed over the battered remnants of the Confederate raider CSS Alabama on June 19, 1864, the victorious federal warship USS Kearsarge and several civilian craft began to pick up survivors. The rescuers in some of the small boats spoke halting English but excellent French—not surprising since the battle took place within several miles of Cherbourg, France.

  The not so “civil” war between the North and the South left a well-known trail of carnage across the Southern and border states and lesser-known skirmishes in the American West. Few except period historians are aware, however, of the saga of the Confederate commerce raiders that wreaked havoc on Union shipping from the Americas to Africa, Europe, and the western Pacific—the Florida, the Shenandoah (which kept on raiding even after war’s end), and, the most successful of all, the Alabama.

  Like many naval engagements, the dramatic episode off Cherbourg left a rich archeological record of an important period in American maritime history—in this case two-hundred feet under the treacherous waters of what the French refer to as La Manche and we call the English Channel. During the summer of 1993, three members of SCRU (Larry Murphy , John Brooks, and I) broke away from field projects at Dry Tortugas and Biscayne National Parks to spend several weeks diving with a French team on the Alabama site.

  This followed three years after SCRU’s involvement in another site in foreign waters that was high on the list of historic shipwrecks targeted by American preservationists: the U.S. Brig Somers sunk in 1846 during the Mexican-American War off Vera Cruz. In 1842, the Somers achieved special notoriety when, on a training cruise, the son of the incumbent Secretary of War was hanged for mutiny. Herman Melville’s short novel Billy Budd was largely modeled on this incident. In command of the Somers at the time of its sinking was one Raphael Semmes. Eighteen years later, in an ironic twist of fate, he commanded another warship when it sank in foreign waters . . . the CSS Alabama off Cherbourg.

  This special aspect of SCRU’s mission, the recovery of U.S. heritage in foreign waters, had been greatly enhanced through a cooperative association we developed with the Naval Historical Center (NHC) in Washington, D.C. The center, under the leadership of Dean Allard and later Bill Dudley, had a specific mandate from the Navy and State Department to establish protocols with foreign nations aimed at reciprocal protection of sovereign vessels.

  The U.S. Navy rarely relinquishes title to its own ships or those of the former Confederate States of America, regardless of where they may lie. The NHC has worked hard to locate and seek protection for the U.S. Naval heritage in foreign waters and offer the same protection to sovereign vessels of other nations in U.S. waters. SCRU, as the lead underwater archeological team in the federal government, was a natural ally to the NHC. The outreach we had already been pursuing to reclaim U.S. maritime heritage in the South Seas and remote territories had been kicked further into the international realm.

  On the personal level, I had been chosen the year earlier as the U.S. representative to the International Committee of the Underwater Cultural Heritage of ICOMOS. This was and is a UNESCO-AFFILIATED committee composed of professionals from around the world that developed standards of practice for underwater archeology. For SCRU it meant we had an excellent network to air NPS preservation philosophy in an international venue and to discuss ideas and strategies with a very impressive group of people committed to the same principles.

  What a maritime spectacle the battle between the Alabama and Kearsarge had been. All of Cherbourg had turned out for the show. The bluffs above the shore were lined with carriages, women with umbrellas, gentlemen, gentlewomen, and spectators of all classes and walks of life. A gauntlet had figuratively been thrown down by Semmes: You stay three miles out there, beyond French territorial waters, let me reprovision, and, in a few days, I’ll come out and do battle. Captain Winslow of the USS Kearsarge just silently waited.

  The French were impressed with the romance and gallantry of the whole episode, evident even now in the streets of Cherbourg, where some taverns still commemorate the battle. A painter by the name of Edouard Manet showed up and rested his easel, waiting to immortalize the confrontation. The Kearsarge had relentlessly tracked the Confederate raider so that, when it came time for the engagement, Winslow had a few surprises of his own for the wily Semmes. The disciplined Federals had prepared carefully for battle, with guns serviced and powder dry. Winslow even had them drape chain over the hull at midships and conceal this primitive armor coat with a wooden frame. The idea, and it proved to be a good one, was to absorb the impact of the Alabama’s iron shot. With the makeshift armor concealed behind wood, this was the equivalent of showing up for a sword fight while failing to mention you wore chain mail under your blouse.

  The battle itself was worth the price of admission. Finally, with the Confederate ship experiencing some problems with the state of its ordnance, the fight went to the Union vessel. The raider sunk stern-first beneath the waves, and survivors were picked up by the Kearsarge and some privately owned French and English vessels.

  Semmes and a number of others were snatched by a fellow named Lancaster, an Englishman, and not turned over to Winslow, the victor in the battle. This act became the basis of a major legal controversy that would rage for years.

  The saga of Confederate commerce raiders was not entirely new to us because during our operations in Micronesia in 1992, we had located at least one of four Yankee whaling ships that the Shenandoah had reportedly captured and burned while terrorizing American shipping in the area. We knew of Semmes because of our work on the Somers, and we were interested in commerce raiding because of its historical and anthropological significance. Many naval historians maintain that the U.S. shipping industry never fully recovered the prominence it once held internationally after the years of devastating raids on its commerce by the handful of raiders commissioned by the Confederacy.

  We were interested also in commerce raiding because it was the core naval strategy opted for by the Germans in World War II, using submarines and pocket battleships and cruisers. When working at Bikini Atoll, we had stopped off each year at Kwajalein to conduct documentation dives on the Prinz Eugen, which had been the consort of the Bismarck and took part in sinking the revered HMS Hood.

  So, beyond helping the Naval Historical Center assess the archeology being conducted on the Alabama site, we felt privileged to see firsthand a vessel that exemplified the whole concept of commerce raiding, a cultural behavior that we felt had been understudied. And the Alabama was perhaps the most successful raider in history; she took sixty-two prizes before she was sent to her own grave by the Kearsarge.

  The French divers working on the site were from a well-established dive club, ASAM, that engaged in serious wreck diving. The archeologist in charge was Max Guerout, whose work we were there to assess for the Naval Historical Center in Washington. This was part of an arrangement the State Department and Navy had worked out with the French to protect American warships in foreign waters. Confederate ships had reverted to the U.S. Navy after the war.

  This was an important test of cooperation on such sites. The French agreed that even though sunk in their territorial waters, this vessel was essentially a little piece of the United States. They recognized our claim to ownership, and we recognized their control of access. They could work on the site
and remove materials for display in France as long as the materials never technically left U.S. ownership, and the U.S. Navy approved the soundness of their archeological approach.

  Other U.S. archeologists had been there in this observer role but we were the first who had the deep diving expertise to actually accompany the French team underwater. I was happy that so far we could honestly say the French were doing a good job—we might have done some things differently but Guerout seemed responsible in his handling of the archeology, conservation, and recording requirements.

  The French divers may have been “amateurs,” but as in the United States, the avocational diving community had some of the best divers for this sort of operation. SCRU had used avocational divers at Isle Royale and in certain cave-diving missions where depth and under-ceiling environments required a high level of skill, with only modest needs for expensive surface support facilities.

  The ASAM divers were good, and they were very gracious to us as professionals from a federal agency who could have given them a hard time for not doing it the way a big commercial diving firm might have. They were confident in their abilities and easy to work with.

  Auxiliary boats, rubber inflatables moored to the wreck site two-hundred feet below, bobbed wildly on the surging waves. They held support personnel and a large green gas cylinder that deployed oxygen through long hoses to an in-water decompression stage. The technique was almost identical to one we had used at Isle Royale, Bikini, and many other deep sites since 1975. It was June 1993, almost 129 years to the day of the Alabama’s sinking.

  On the main dive boat, we sat with a tender holding us steady. Fully suited, two dive teams braced themselves clumsily along the port and starboard gunnels at the stern. With more than a hundred pounds of tanks on our backs, fins strapped to our feet, and wielding a variety of lights and cameras, we would not have lasted two seconds in a standing position without crashing into the gunnel or sprawling across the deck.

  The plunge had to be executed with split-second timing. Even in water 48 degrees Fahrenheit, some of the divers chose not to wear gloves, given the need for dexterity to accomplish their particular tasks. I could tell by their white-knuckle grip on the recording slates and cameras that the adrenaline had begun doing its thing.

  My forty-eight years in this vale of tears weighed heavily this day. Heaving about in three to four-foot seas, the two 100-cubic-foot air cylinders on my back lightened briefly as a wave crested beneath us. The steel tanks bore down mercilessly a second later as the boat pitched into a trough.

  I began my usual reflection on the ineptitude and callousness of the boat operator, the support crew, my fellow divers, and God. From prior experience, I knew their faults would somehow transform into virtues once I got off the damn boat and started heading down. Deep diving gear is definitely not designed to provide comfort or a sense of well-being, when employed as yachting wear.

  A blare from the boat horn signaled us to lunge off the back deck and to drift the few meters to the surface buoys. The current was so strong here, I knew if John Brooks or I missed the lines attached to the buoys, we would be unable to swim back to them. Because there are four other divers also in the water heading down to the wreck, a support boat would not dare motor in to help us. They would be putting the others in the dive zone at risk.

  This was a very tense business because, given current windows that permitted only one dive a day, as close to slack tide as possible, and limited facilities to safely decompress, missing a dive meant we lost one of a very limited number of opportunities to be on site. The window for descent closed quickly, and we or anyone else missing it would have to bob about in a two-or-three-foot-wind chop until a boat could be spared to leave the dive zone and pick us up.

  We take any variable in diving seriously. Although all of us in SCRU have dived many combinations of depth, currents, cold, and under-ceilings, none of us were familiar with the specific combination of high currents and deep, cold water here. John had been diving the past week with Larry and had grown accustomed to it. I was taking Larry’s place as archeological observer, and this was my first dive in such an environment. I was uneasy, particularly with the water entry-and-exit protocols.

  Locomotion to the wreck site was by pulling oneself hand over hand down a descent line that runs from the buoys to a heavy clump of weights nestled in the wreckage field. The current was strongest in the shallowest water, decreasing to reasonable on the bottom during slack tide. I grabbed the descent line, looped my arm around it for extra purchase, and began pulling and kicking for the bottom. I felt my ears clear and glanced up to make sure John Brooks was progressing behind me. Burdened with the bulky video camera, he had more problems to overcome than I, but there was no practical way to assist him.

  About 140 feet down, I started to make out something on the bottom. By 170 feet, the water was dim from lack of penetration of sunlight but reasonably clear. Our artificial lights would be effective as long as the water wasn’t turbid. Except for some plankton-like particulate matter floating by, the filming conditions were pretty good. Coarse bottom sediments, which dispersed quickly in the current, created a forgiving environment for visibility. We could momentarily be sloppy with our fin kicks without having to spend the rest of the dive in a cloud of fine murk.

  As we settled to the bottom, my breathing rate perceptibly decreased. We were away from that frantic surface activity and, although deep, bottom conditions were favorable. The water was crisp and fresh against my face but not frigid. My bulky dry suit was a pain to don and to swim in through the current but now I began to reap its benefits. It kept me warm enough to relax so I could start to enjoy the narcotic glow provided by seven atmospheres of nitrogen when nothing is going wrong. That same high could quickly become a disconnected, anxiety-laden low if an emergency were to develop, but at this point it was simply a mild euphoria.

  Oddly enough, I felt quite comfortable at the bottom of the English Channel; it was the top thirty feet or so that I dreaded. The fourteen to seventeen minutes maximum bottom-time that the French allowed themselves because of the depth would rush by too quickly before we had to deal with the difficulties of ascent and decompression.

  The wreck was an extraordinary piece of the past. Returning to the current-laden surface waters and the mandatory thirty minutes in-water stop, followed by reboarding the heaving dive boat, were simply not fun. Twenty years earlier, I kind of liked being slammed around and showing my mettle; I realized I had become surprisingly low on mettle over the years.

  As the dive progressed, I was swept up in the excitement of seeing the old warrior’s bones. I gradually started orienting myself to objects I had seen on the site map the French had prepared for our pre-dive briefing. There was the Blakely gun lying next to its carriage. Various pieces of rigging and the outline of some hull structure started taking form in the gloom. There was nothing resembling the shape of a ship. Sand and shell hash were mounded against what had to be disarticulated structure, though much of the wood had been processed through the bodies of teredo worms.

  I glanced at a current meter the French had placed on the bottom. We were supposedly at slack tide, and its wheel was still spinning; in that respect, it reminded me of the Columbia Bar during our exploration of the Isabella. Maximum velocity readings taken from the meter on other days indicated the water where we were swimming would, in a matter of an hour or so, be ripping along the bottom at four knots. A diver couldn’t make his way against a one-knot current without becoming exhausted; four knots would rip the mask off his face if he turned his head sideways. La Manche, eh? A serious place to go underwater swimming.

  The heavier metal components of the Alabama seem to have fared reasonably well and much of the wood was preserved where it was covered over with sediment. In a sense, the ship acted as a foil in the current and caused heavy deposition of particulates suspended in the water. Max told me he was actually thinking of using the violent current to excavate the ship by placing large def
lectors on the bottom during slack tide. He admitted in response to our critique that control might suffer from such an approach but he had a point—using the current had some definite advantages over fighting it.

  The Alabama was a spectacular piece of naval architecture standing upright as if on display in God’s own museum. We came across a huge boiler and, toward the stern, the propulsion system and the unique mechanical device that allowed this steam/sailing vessel to retract its propeller. It was also a particularly interesting feature in a commerce raider: It could be lowered to maneuver quickly when pursuing prey or to engage in battle and to be withdrawn for hydrodynamic streamlining when crossing great reaches of ocean. Both features were particularly important in a ship that was expected to roam by itself for great distances and then sprint, to hunt down fast merchant ships.

  It occurred to me, running my light over the rifled Blakely, sitting just off its carriage, that the armament was well chosen. The Alabama could hold its own in a running battle against a decent-sized warship; indeed it had sunk the USS Hatteras earlier in its career, but it wasn’t overburdened with too many gun tubes that took up room and were useful only in standing slugfests. The ship was a lone wolf, and the captain had a personality to match. Older and wiser than when he went down years earlier with the Somers, in some ways, Semmes reminded me of a German U-boat captain. It must have taken a similar head set.

  As the dive progressed, however, I found myself coming face to face with my own aging process. At depth, I usually enjoyed the advantage that experience grants older divers. I could feel smug as I watched younger and stronger men make those myriad little judgment mistakes to which I am not as prone—having already made most of them myself during a quarter century of mucking about in deep water. Depth was, in a sense, the great equalizer. Then, without breaking our pace over the bottom, I reflexively reached for my gauge console and brought it to my face for a routine check of elapsed time and remaining air pressure. I couldn’t read it.