by Hep Aldridge
One hot Florida afternoon, we met for a cool beverage and to catch up on research that Lawrence had been doing on salvage beyond the three-mile limit since our search area would be between five and six and a half miles offshore to start. We ordered our drinks from Mitch and jumped into discussion. Lawrence informed us he had some good news and some not so good news… "Okay, what’s the good news?" I asked.
"First off," he said, "we don’t have to give the state of Florida shit! We’re in Federal waters so the state statute on treasure recovery does not apply." We agreed that was good news; now what about the not so good? He continued, "Because we are in Federal waters, we have to go by Admiralty Law to place a claim on our search area. That means we would have to go through Federal court to get our claim legalized. If we didn’t and found something and then left the site for whatever reason, someone else could move in and work it. We would have no legal recourse in the claim jumping. Going through the Federal legal claim system could take two to three months."
"Crap,” I said, "that is bad news.”
He continued, “We can’t legally look for anything till we file the paperwork.”
“That complicates things,” I said. “Even if we started our search illegally and found something there’s no way we could spend 24 hours, seven days a week on site till the red tape was taken care of.”
Lawrence said, “Well, that’s the only way you can protect and maintain a claim on what you’ve found; stay anchored to the site until you can file Federal papers and get salvage rights approved.”
Damn, if we found something, and that’s a big if, we would have to come up with a way to protect it when we had to leave until all the paperwork got final approval. Now there was a problem that would require a creative solution. Our drinks arrived, and we spent more time in our own worlds, pondering this new dilemma.
I said, "We’ll just have to cross that bridge when, and if we Come to it." We agreed, and I asked Lawrence to let the rest of the guys know what he had found out as soon as he could. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the boats tied up in the marina slips and sipping frosty cold beverages. Two days later, I got the phone call from Fitz.
We were to meet him at Merritt Island Airport at 0900 hrs. the next day. Dimitri took off work, and Joe, Lawrence, and I all met at the airport at 0800. At 0900 hours sharp, a nice-looking Bell Jet Ranger with the Acme Corporation logo emblazoned on its side landed. As the rotors spun down, we walked out on the tarmac to meet Fitz. He was talking to the guy that had pulled up in the refueling truck.
When he finished, he came over to us and said, “Top o’ the morning to you, gentlemen.” We all greeted Fitz, and I introduced Lawrence. Greetings completed, we headed to the chopper, just as the co-pilot’s door swung open and the woman from the reception desk climbed out. Dimitri stumbled when he saw her, and Lawrence’s jaw dropped a couple of inches.
I said, “Fitz… the receptionist?”
He laughed and said, “She doesn’t spend all her time behind the desk; that’s Shannon O’Reilly, one of my best operatives and one hell of a pilot."
I looked at him and said, “Really?"
“Yep, stole her away from one of those alphabet soup organizations as you call them, about three years ago. She’ll be flying co-pilot today. I would give you the honor, but she’s a lot better looking than you. Besides, she can actually fly this bird if she has to."
“No argument from me,” I said. Fitz and I watched as Dimitri and Lawrence made a beeline for her.
He chuckled. “Those boys had better watch themselves, or she’ll eat them up and spit them out before they know what’s happened."
“That tough, huh?”
“You better believe it; she’s as tough as nails and can be as ornery as a rattlesnake that’s just had its tail stepped on, and just as deadly." I heard Joe chuckle behind me. Damn, first impressions can be deceiving! O’Reilly had just given me a whole new level of respect for receptionists! As we got to the bird, I herded Dimitri and Lawrence away from our co-pilot and into the passenger’s compartment as Fitz settled up with the guy in the fuel truck. Within ten minutes, we were in a low hover over the runway and cleared for take-off. Fitz came on over the headsets, “Okay Colt, where we headed?"
I leaned forward and handed O’Reilly a piece of paper with the GPS coordinates on it. She took it and entered it into the navigation system as we rose and headed eastward down the runway. Once we broke out over the Banana River, we started a serious climb and turned north. Within minutes, we cleared the beaches, and I heard the turbine winding up as we gained altitude and speed. We had the doors open on both sides, and the view was impressive. The blue- green Atlantic rushing by below, sun glinting off its surface, salt air filling the cabin; it was a very smooth and enjoyable ride, if short.
In about fifteen minutes, Shannon came over the Coms, “Dr. Burnett, we’re approaching the coordinates."
"Great, when we get there, can we go into a hover so we can get our visual bearings?"
“Roger that,” she replied. In another couple of minutes, we were hovering about 500 feet over our destination. There was minimal chop, so bottom visibility, even from this altitude, wasn’t too bad. Binoculars and video cameras came out of our bags as we positioned two people in each door, Joe and I on the port side and Dimitri and Lawrence, the starboard. We did a quick orientation scan and then asked Fitz to take it down to 250 feet. We maintained the hover but slowly descended.
He came back saying, "I’m in a due north hover, port side is facing due west."
"Roger that," I said. "Can you crab to the west and let’s see if we can find the shoals?"
He said, “Love to.” The chopper started a westward crab at 150 feet. We scanned the waters for the next five minutes to no avail.
“Take us north about a mile and then back west.” Again, we made the maneuver, and as we started our westward course, we spotted the shoal. "Okay, hold it here for a minute." We stopped and hung motionless. "Take us to the southernmost end of the shoal and then run parallel to it for its entire length and can you get us down to about 100 feet?" Again, the chopper moved in a smooth arc and when we got to the end of the shoal, turned again descended and made its run northward. We had been video-taping the whole run, but nothing jumped out at us. I moved forward to talk to Fitz, and when I leaned into the cockpit, he was sitting there with his arms crossed and head laid back, resting peacefully. I looked at Shannon and realized she was the one doing the flying.
Fitz sat up and looked at me and said, "Told you."
"No shit!" Then I spoke to them both, "Take us back to our starting point and do a straight line north to a mile beyond the shoal, come about, and do a run to the southern end of the shoal about 100 yards west of our first track. Keep the back and forth up till we get about six miles west of the shoal.”
Fitz looked at me, and then at Shannon, who replied, “Roger that,” and banked to our new heading. I moved back and told the guys what the plan was, so keep their eyes open and video cams running. In two minutes, Shannon came across the Com channel, “Starting our run now." And so, for the next hour, we covered most of the identified search area, spotting several dark spots on the bottom and marking them with the camera’s built-in GPS and our handheld units for later investigation. Shannon called the search area covered; we had been in the air for almost two hours.
I said that should do for our first outing and we could head back anytime. The whine from the turbine increased as we gained altitude and speed heading back to the airfield. After landing, I invited Fitz and Shannon to join us for a beverage and a little debriefing. They accepted, and we adjourned to the Corporate Bar.
When we got there, I asked Mitch if we could use the small dining room (our conference room). She said sure and led the way. As Dimitri and Lawrence jockeyed to see who would get the seat next to Shannon, Mitch took our drink orders. When she got to Fitz, he ordered, "A double Dewar’s on the rocks and for Ms. O’Reilly, a sweet tea with lemon.
"
She looked at him and said, “You know I hate sweet tea.”
He laughed and said, “You’re in the South now, O’Reilly, so when in the South do as the Southerners.”
She snorted, “Bullshit,” and then to Mitch said, “Unsweetened tea, no lemon.”
"He laughed and said, “Ugghhh, undrinkable.”
She replied, “Well, I am driving!” That got a chuckle from all of us.
In the next hour and a half, we discussed the day’s search. While not extensive, we did at least cover the area within the circle of Tony’s Computer model and were able to shoot video of the shoal. I felt pretty good. Having Fitz and his crew on board with us would make a hell of a difference.
On our drive back to the airport, Fitz said, “Give your computer guy my number and tell him to call me in a day or two. We will send him our data as soon as we get it downloaded from the bird.”
I said, “What data?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? While we flew the search patterns, we were recording the sea bottom with a neat little gizmo the boys in the lab came up with last year. It’s kind of like LiDAR for water."
"What?” I said.
"Yeah, you know LiDAR, right?"
"Yes," I replied. "Light detection and ranging, uses a laser and stuff. I’m familiar with LiDAR, but for land, not water?"
He nodded "My boys have come up with something new. This is cutting-edge stuff. NOAA is sniffing around, and the military has recently taken an interest. It takes the LiDAR concept to a whole new level by making the water invisible. Good to about 70 feet for now. It then gives us a high-definition image of the bottom and whatever is lying around. I won’t bother to try to explain the science behind it. It’s proprietary and classified. Just be ready for some nice 3D images of the bottom and what’s lying around down there. It will be better than any side scan sonar image we could have gotten."
I said, "Wait a minute, you tell us this now…! After we sat back there shooting hand-held digital video, you come up with this space-age imaging. That makes what we did look like stone axes and flint knives! Why didn’t you tell us about this earlier and we could have just flown the pattern using your stuff?"
“Well, I didn’t want you to feel useless; after all, it’s your company."
"Damn it, Fitz, from now on could you be a little more forthcoming with your toys, their capabilities, and availability? I have a feeling it will save us a lot of time and effort!" I could see his grinning face reflected off the windshield of the bird.
Without turning, he said, "Sure thing, Bucko, whatever you say."
We dropped them off and watched the Jet Ranger fade into the distance. Joe broke the silence, "That guy is one hell of a trip.”
"Yeah,” Dimitri replied, “and he’s got one hell of a co-pilot." I shook my head as we headed to the vehicles, these guys. I held my excitement in check on the drive home, but all I could think of was that with what we already had in place, and now Fitz’s resources, we might have a real chance of finding this mystery ship and unlocking its secrets after all! Hot Damn!
Chapter Six
I contacted Tony with Fitz’s information, and true to his word, got a call from him two days later saying they had sent the data. Within thirty minutes, an excited Tony called me, saying he had gotten the data and holy crap, I had to get over there to see it. It was “way cool.” As I drove to his house, I came up with a plan, sort of. Over the past few months, when weather permitted, we had been towing the mag behind the Lisa B in the Banana River, getting a feel for operational handling. The controller that came with the mag was a series of LEDs that lit up when it detected an anomaly. The more-LEDs lit, the stronger the signal; it was okay but not optimal. Its box had a USB port, so it could connect to a computer.
Software was available, but Tony didn’t care for it, so he wrote his own program that took the data coming from the fish and plotted it in a three-dimensional grid with depth, signal strength in a numerical readout from one to ten and exact GPS location of the hit. It saved all the data it received from the fish to the hard drive of a laptop for later retrieval and analysis. Then we could print everything out and compare it to chart information. That made it much easier for us to return to the precise location of the anomaly after completing a full sweep of an area.
We had gotten good at working with it, thanks to all the pieces of pipe and metal junk Nils had provided us for bottom targets. We tied a line and float to the objects, both large and small, and made passes over them, and from the computed data, learned how to figure approximate physical size, location, and depth. This was when Nils got the nickname, “Junkyard.” He had an unending supply of “stuff” that we could use for targets. We burned a fair amount of fuel but were happy with the results. We now felt confident we could take her out to sea and be productive. School was dismissed; it was time to get serious!
I thought now with Fitz’s data and our video footage, once we reviewed it, we were ready to move to the hunting phase of this operation… at last! When I got to Tony’s place, he was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. “Colt, this is great,” he said. “It's so cool; check this out.” He had the big 70-inch screen in place and displayed on it was a view of the shoal in such detail it was breathtaking. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; it was as if someone had drained the ocean, revealing the bottom and its contours in high definition.
“Damn,” I said, “that will beat anything our video gives us.”
Tony said, “Well, yeah!”
Stone axes and flint knives, I thought. I asked Tony if we could manipulate the image.
“Heck, yeah, watch this,” and he touched the screen and zoomed in on a specific section of the shoal. It was amazing. I could see individual outcroppings and rocks laying on the bottom all in fantastic detail. Tony went on, “And we can watch the entire thing like a video or stop it at any place and zoom in for a closer look and shift the perspective, so we are almost looking at it from the side.” As he was speaking, he went through everything he was describing on the screen. He said, “But wait, there’s more!” He had downloaded our video footage into his Computer and now pulled it up on the screen, above Fitz’s data. I could sync both images based on the GPS data so we could run them together and have a view from the surface and below.”
“Now that was slick,” I said. I had him run the data and video for the shoal. Beautiful pictures, but except for some junk scattered around, there wasn't anything that resembled the wreck of a Spanish galleon. Well, I thought, it was over 300 years ago. I said, “Let’s call a meeting for tonight, and we can go over all the footage.” Tony agreed and said he'd contact Nils AKA “Junkyard” and Lawrence.
“I’ll contact the rest, and we’ll meet here at 7.”
If our level of enthusiasm and excitement was high before, this meeting pegged the excitement meter! When we gathered that evening, we went straight into the data; no one hit the beer fridge or the grog locker first. That was unheard of in the annals of “Risky Business.” However, what we saw kept our minds off drinking for a while. Tony explained that Fitz had set us up with a secure data link, encrypted. There was no way our data or communications could be monitored. He had said he felt better having it that way. We were all impressed. I guess we will have to call him Santa with all the presents he was providing.
As we went over the shoal data and video, it impressed the guys as much as Tony and I had been when we first saw it. From there we moved to the search footage from our search pattern. Unbelievable is the only word I could think to describe it. We could identify what remained of at least four small boats on the bottom along with more “space junk,” probably old booster parts from the early days of the Cape launches and one larger vessel that looked to be a trawler around 75 feet long lying on its side. There were a few more anomalies we couldn’t identify that will require closer investigation.
After an hour and a half of viewing we took a break. It was time for a round of cold beverages. As we sat a
nd talked about what we had just viewed, Dimitri spoke up, “I’m thinking we need to dive on those things we saw on the bottom. If they look promising, we can run the mag across the area and see what we get. I’m ready to get wet!"
Doc agreed. “We’ve done a lot of research over these past months. I think it’s time to see if any of it will pay off. I’m with you, Dimitri; time to blow bubbles!” A chorus of assents sealed the deal.
I spoke up then and said, "Agree, but I would like to start with the shoal and see if that gives us any clues. We should either confirm or eliminate it as the place where the longboat sank, if possible. If it was, it would help us in determining which of the targets we have seen on the bottom would be a good starting place to look for the ship. Besides, it’s shallower diving for starters, and we could use the handheld detector instead of having to drag the mag." There was a lot of discussion on this topic; I knew the guys were itching to get in the water, but I felt that we needed to clear up the question about the shoal first. Was it where the boat sank or not? If we found nothing, then we may have to rethink our whole search area, despite what our Computer model was telling us. I convinced the guys to think on it for a day or two, and we would meet again and come up with a decision. All agreed, and in the meantime, we needed to keep close tabs on the weather for planning because, one way or another, we were hitting the water.
The next day I called Fitz and let him in on our plan.
"I’m glad you’re happy with the data. I was pleased when I reviewed it here." I asked if his new gizmo had a name and he replied, "For now, we’re just calling it Neptune. I’m sure that will change."
