Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo

by The Sea Hunters II

  We had studied the oldest accurate chart of the reef dating to 1910 and laid it over a modem chart. The reef had not changed. According to both charts, there was a pinnacle labeled “Vandalia Rock” on the southern end of the reef, but the natives assured us that no such rock existed. This would cause extra time in research later, exploring the possibility that a ship named Vandalia had also grounded on the reef.

  The wind picked up, and Allan took the boat into a small bay on Gonâve Island, where we settled in for the night. With an early start the next morning, Allan dropped his cesium marine magnetometer over the side and began circling the reef for any magnetic anomalies. From fifty yards offshore, only one ten-gamma reading showed on his computer monitor. It came from the dead center of Rochelais Reef, where Mary Celeste was reported to have crushed her hull on the coral. The site also perfectly matched the direction a ship sailing from the southwest would have met the reef.

  My demon must have taken a break.

  Mike Fletcher suited up and dropped over the side, followed by Robert Guertin with his underwater video camera. The rest of us sat on the stem of the boat, soaking up the tropical breeze, wondering if Mike had found anything. Half an hour later, he returned to the boat and threw some copper sheathing, ballast rocks, and old wood with brass spikes driven through them onto the deck.

  We had a shipwreck right where Mary Celeste was supposed to lie. But without finding the bell, which was no doubt salvaged, with the ship’s name in raised letters in bronze or inscribed ceramics, or some other artifact to identify her, we could only speculate. Everyone dove and retrieved what pitifully few artifacts we could find. The coral was some of the most beautiful I’ve seen in fifty years of diving, but I wished I weren’t there. What remained of the ship’s timbers was deeply buried in the calcareous growth that had rapidly buried the ship. After 116 years, the ship was entombed in an impenetrable burial shroud.

  We found part of the anchor chain and an anchor. I tried to remove a bar from the coral, but it was stuck fast. Jean Claude and Mike brought up enough wood to fill a fair-sized bucket. And we removed some loose artifacts that were embedded in the sand. Every item was videotaped in position, tagged, and catalogued. Once the team returned home, the wood would be sent to laboratories to determine a date and source. It’s incredible how science and technology can tell you how old the wood is within years, as well as what part of the world it originally came from.

  The ballast stones would also show characteristic mineralogy and texture that can identify the location from which they were extracted. They had to come from either the Palisades above the Hudson River, where Mary Celeste was rebuilt during the summer of 1872 in New York, or the mountains or shores of Nova Scotia, where she was originally constructed and then launched under the name Amazon. The brass spikes might give only an approximate age, but a clue might come from the copper sheathing. Whatever the case, it would take time to find the answers we sought.

  Satisfied we could do no more, the anchor was pulled, and we bid a fond farewell to Rochelais Reef, now affectionately known as Conch Island, then set a course back to the Cormier Plage Hotel. We had a few rough hours battling choppy seas, but it actually became relaxing after a while. I was transfixed, staring at the color of the water in this part of the Caribbean. It was not the blue-green turquoise of shallow water around the reefs and islands. This was deep water, the fathometer showing three thousand feet to the bottom, and the color was a deep violet, almost purple.

  Two days later, we docked near the hotel, amused at having the land seeming to sway around us after seven days without stepping foot off the boat. Everyone relaxed on the beach and in the hotel bar and talked long into the night about what we had found. The following morning, the whole team departed for Fort Lauderdale by boat while I made arrangements to fly out later that afternoon. We said our good-byes and I took a shower, packed my bags, and breathed a sigh of relief that I was escaping Haiti without being bitten by a ring-necked fuzz-wort or infected with Haitian jungle fever.

  I sallied forth, expecting a car to carry me to the airport, but the local police thought Jean Claude had failed to pay his license fee and confiscated his Land Rover. I was pointed to a battered, dust-laden little Nissan pickup.

  Any port in a storm.

  One of the workers at Jean Claude’s hotel drove me over the obstacle course road to Cape Haitian, picking up hitchhikers along the way and then throwing them all around the bed of the truck before they would pound on the roof to be let out. Once we reached the city, I noticed it was the same filthy mess, with nonexistent pavement, traffic surging nowhere, and pollution that would have sent an environmentalist into cardiac arrest. My only apprehension now was whether my fax passport would get me passed through immigration.

  We arrived at the Lynx Airlines boarding shack. If I’ve ever made a wise move in my life, it was when I told the driver to wait just in case the flight was canceled. I entered the shack, counting the minutes until I would be in the wild blue yonder to the U.S. of A.

  “You’re too late,” said the attendant behind a counter I didn’t dare lean on or touch with my bare hands.

  “What do you mean I’m late?” I replied indignantly, naively thinking she was kidding me. I pointed at the time printed on my ticket. “This says departure time is twelve-thirty. It is now only eleven-twenty. I have an hour and ten minutes.”

  She glanced at the ticket and shrugged. “That’s Miami time.”

  “You don’t print your tickets with local arrival or departure time?” I was beginning to panic.

  “No, you should have been here an hour ago. Now it’s too late. The plane is taking off in five minutes.”

  “Let me talk to the pilots,” I pleaded in desperation.

  She nodded and accompanied me out through a weed-covered field to the airplane, where the pilots were standing with hands in their pockets. I pleaded my case to no avail.

  The chief pilot shrugged. “You’ll never get through immigration in time.”

  “Let me try?” I begged.

  Then the pilot and copilot grinned like the Artful Dodger and Oliver, after having adroitly picked a pocket. “Not a chance. We’re about to take off.”

  There I stood, like a kid who’d had his bicycle stolen. My only salvation came from the airline attendant, who promised me a seat on the next day’s flight. “You get here two hours early” she admonished me. “You hear?”

  I heard.

  Never in my life have I felt so miserable. Thank God I had the foresight to ask the driver to wait for me. If he had driven off and left me stranded in the mob at the airport, I’d probably have been torn limb from limb for my Nike sneakers.

  Now it was time for another ride through the wretchedness and over the road to hell. I felt like Roy Scheider transporting nitroglycerin through the jungles in the movie Wages of Fear. Distress turned into rage at having been abandoned in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. If I had known that while I was in Haiti an American businessman had been shot and killed and two others taken hostage, I would have really been depressed.

  Back to my room, where I lay in bed that afternoon, staring at the whirling blades of the overhead fans. A lonely meal, and then I headed for the bar, where I was lucky enough to join the company of some young Americans who worked for Carnival Cruise Lines over in the cove where the big ships docked. I enjoyed the conversation and several beers before retiring for the night with visions of my own bed dancing in my head.

  No fooling around this time. I hauled the driver, who spoke almost no English, to the truck and gestured at the steering wheel. He got the drift from the devil expression on my face. By now you know the routine to reach the airport. This time, however, there was no stopping and picking up hitchhikers. If the driver even thought about stopping, I stomped my foot on his foot and mashed the gas pedal to the floor. We jolted over the road like a race car in an endurance rally.

  By now, with lots of practice, I was immune to the misery and pov
erty. Watching people taking home garbage no longer offended me. That was simply their life and the way they had to live it. Perhaps someday, when their internal struggles are over, the country will return to the lovely paradise it once was.

  I burst into the Lynx shack two hours early. The attendant smiled and gave me a boarding pass. One hurdle down, immigration to go. There I sat in an unventilated shack in the middle of the day with eighteen Haitians, mostly women and children. They do like perfume and cologne. I passed the time reading a book on the battle of Gettysburg and realized I didn’t have it so bad after all.

  The scary part was coming up. I had been told the night before that if you didn’t have a valid passport, the airline pilots would not allow you to board. It seems they’re none too happy if American immigration officials won’t let you into the country. Not only were they liable for a hefty fine, but they had to transport you back to Haiti at their expense. I began to hope that being a hotshot author might carry an ounce of weight.

  At twelve noon on the dot, the plane’s engines could be heard through the cracks in the walls as it landed and taxied toward the shack. After a few minutes, a blond-haired pilot opened the door and stepped into the waiting room. He walked right up to me and handed me an envelope.

  “I hope to enjoy your book,” he said, smiling.

  I stared at the envelope and looked up questioningly. “Book?”

  “Yes, your friend gave me one of your books in Fort Lauderdale. He figured I’d know you by the author’s photo on the book jacket.”

  Craig Dirgo, bless his heart, had driven to the airport and given my passport to the pilot to give to me. The sun burst through the clouds. Then came the sound of trumpets, a drum-roll, and harp music. Home was just over the horizon at last.

  Haitian immigration whisked me through, and I ran, not walked, out to the airplane. Then there was a wait, while an official riffled through every passenger’s luggage. I’m sure he wished he had a different job when it came to my bag. It was filled with two-week-old laundry. We guys are like that. Why do laundry when you have someone waiting to do it at home?

  I don’t know if I was ever happier than when the wheels left the ground. For the next hour, I listened to the beat of the engines, making sure they were hitting on all cylinders. I couldn’t conceive of a mechanical problem that would force us to return to the bedlam of Cape Haitian.

  After a short hop, we landed on Caicos Island to refuel and were asked to leave the airplane and wait in the terminal as a safety precaution. Simple Simon Cussler, of course, walks through the wrong door into the heart of the terminal, finds the bar, and has a cold beer. Figuring it’s time to go back, I walked toward the exit door and was promptly stopped by a security guard the size of a redwood tree.

  “Can’t go out there,” he said sternly.

  “I have to get back to my airplane.”

  “You’ll have to go through immigration and customs.”

  The bile rose in my throat. Things just couldn’t go wrong now. Not after I’d been over the streets and roads of hell. My demon was a stubborn rascal. I was considering making a break for it, when the blond pilot walked by. A few words and he talked the guard into letting me accompany him to the plane. I wondered if my ordeal would ever end.

  I feel sorry for the people who never know the feeling of joy and bliss that comes from returning to the United States. You truly have to travel outside our borders to appreciate the advantages we all too often take for granted. We landed, and I smiled.

  Slapping my passport down with glee at the immigration booth, I was given a green light. “Welcome back to the United States, Mr. Cussler,” said the agent, with a friendly smile. “I read all your books.”

  It sure was nice to be home.

  Upon reaching the lobby of the terminal, I was surprised to see no Craig. A German like me, he prides himself on following schedules. I was sure he was supposed to meet me. I was looking around for a telephone when he strolled by, sipping a cup of coffee. He looked at me queerly.

  “You’re an hour early,” he said, taking a sip.

  I actually hugged him, I was so glad to see someone I knew.

  “Lynx Air has a fetish for departing and arriving early,” I explained.

  Craig stared at me. “Good God, boss,” he said slowly, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What in the hell did they do to you?”

  “I’ll explain it to you someday,” I said. “Right now, why don’t you take me to the hotel?”

  Craig grabbed my bags and started walking to his car. “We’ll go get you checked in,” he said slyly, “then there’s a Haitian restaurant I’ve been wanting to try—they say the jerked goat is tasty.”

  After checking into the hotel, we went to a good old American steak house. Craig had a sirloin, I had a chopped steak. Chopped steak just like my mother used to make.

  In a parting shot, before my guardian angel returned, the demon took away my first-class seat on the flight to Phoenix because I was a day late. I couldn’t have cared less. I was finally going home to my lovely wife and adobe home. That was all that mattered. Besides, coach was only partially full, and I had three seats to myself.

  We may never be able to prove 100 percent that the shipwreck we found was Mary Celeste. In a court of law, our evidence would be labeled circumstantial. Still, we are confident the shipwreck found in the coral is she, for a number of reasons.

  Alan Guffman of Geomarine Associates in Nova Scotia coordinated the scientific testing of the wood and ballast stones. The process of rock geochemistry and radiometric dating is complicated, but the results proved that the ballast showed the characteristic mineralogy and texture of the North Mountains basalt of Nova Scotia.

  The wood was identified as southern pine, often used in shipbuilding in New York, where Mary Celeste was rebuilt and enlarged. Some was white pine, which comes from the northeast United States and Canada. One piece of wood made everyone happy. It was yellow birch, which comes from the maritime provinces, including Nova Scotia.

  It was all coming together.

  James Delgado, noted marine archaeologist and director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, identified the copper sheathing as Muntz metal, a yellow alloy of three parts copper, two parts zinc, a substance that came into general use as hull protection against shipworms after 1860.

  We were getting closer.

  While the artifacts were being analyzed, I tackled the job of researching other potential wrecks that might have run onto the coral of Rochelais Reef. We had to prove we hadn’t found the wrong wreck. I hired researchers here and in Europe to scour the archives. Insurance companies cooperated, particularly Lloyd’s of London. No stone was left unturned. No records of shipwrecks were ignored. The results came back positive.

  A ship named Vandalia had indeed met her end in Haiti a hundred years ago. But she had run aground at Port-de-Paix, a bay sixty miles from Rochelais Reef, and she was later pulled off and scrapped. The only other wreck that was recorded in the same time zone was a steamship that burned in the port of Miragoane twelve miles away. The extensive research project proved conclusively that Mary Celeste was the only ship known to have run aground on Rochelais Reef and stayed there.

  Allan Gardner, John Davis and his ECO-NOVA team, and I could now say with a great measure of confidence that the grave of Mary Celeste had been found. The ghost ship’s story has been drawn to a fitting end.

  PART EIGHT

  The Steamboat General Slocum

  I

  Never Again 1904

  “THESE DAMN CORPORATIONS,” PRESIDENT THEODORE Roosevelt thundered, “are just a means of hiding.”

  Attorney General Philander Knox contentedly puffed on his pipe while Roosevelt raged. He was used to the president’s mercurial temperament—in time he would calm and come to the point.

  “They have all the benefits of man without the guidance of a conscience,” Roosevelt noted. “Trusts and corporations—they’ll bring this country down.”

 
Knox stared at the president. He was not a large man—five feet nine, 165 pounds—but he carried himself like a giant. At this instant, his face was flushed with anger, and the eyes behind his wire-framed spectacles were blazing. Roosevelt’s hair was dark and short and formed a small point near the center of his forehead. His hand was tugging the right side of his bushy mustache.

  “I agree, sir,” Knox said.

  “The Knickerbocker Steamboat Company,” Roosevelt said, “are just organized murderers.”

  “Uh-huh,” Knox said.

  “I want you and the secretary of commerce and labor to travel up to New York,” Roosevelt said, “and find the parties responsible for this disaster—then prosecute them.”

  Knox glanced at the president. The color was seeping from his cheeks as he calmed down. He watched as Roosevelt sipped from a glass of water.

  “Mr. President,” Knox said evenly, “I think that would fall under New York State jurisdiction.”

  Roosevelt spit a partial mouthful of water across the desk. “We are the federal government,” he said loudly. “We’re in charge here.”

  “Very good,” Knox said, rising from his seat in the Oval Office. “I’ll contact the secretary and make arrangements to leave tomorrow.”

  “Philander?” Roosevelt said, as the attorney general opened the door to the office.

  “Yes, sir,” Knox said easily.

  “Knock some heads up there for me,” Roosevelt said, smiling.

  “As you wish, sir,” Knox said.

  JUNE 15,1 904, THE PRIOR DAY

  Captain William Van Schaick leaned against the chart desk and scratched the date into General Slocum’s log. Thursday came with overcast skies and light rain, with the temperature hovering around eighty degrees. Toward Long Island, Van Schaick noticed the sun peering from the clouds—once the haze burned off, it should be a fine day.

  Van Schaick was tall and lanky, six feet tall, 170 pounds. His blue uniform was clean and pressed but faded some. The gold braid around his armpits was showing signs of tarnish. The fresh white flower stuck in his lapel appeared slightly out of place—like a new saddle on an aged horse.