Stolen Diving Suit

by Mike Hershman

  “Hey George Bailey, you got a minute,” Jeff said. “Let’s compare notes, maybe we can figure out where that boat is.

  29.

  The next morning, I walked back into the jail. Gerald was on the top bunk and Jeff sat on the floor. Mrs. Quigley let me take the two maps out of the library along with a copy of “Early Hamilton Island” and the ship’s logs of the rescue steamship. I brought in a large piece of paper and told them all about Grady’s shack and our survey.

  “You put a ladder up the shack,” Gerald said. “Man, that was really smart.”

  They were very interested in the letter from Thaddeus.

  “It sure sounds like it hit that damn rock and then drifted north. What was the total time from when it hit the rock until the rescue boat recovered the ship?” Jeff asked.

  “ I don’t know,” I said. “But I was thinking that it’s either on this shelf,” I said pointing to the map, “or it’s in 500 feet of water, and we don’t have to worry about it. We just work back from the rock to the north ‘til we get to the edge of the shelf. We can use lobster floats to mark off sections. We can also take the dinghy and explore other sections while you’re diving.”

  “What do you mean?” Jeff said, “How can we dive? We don’t have a suit remember.”

  “Don’t worry, I talked to Mr. Nolton -- he’ll let us use it. He just said to bring him some abalone if you find any down there.”

  “Wow,” Gerald said, “ You’d think an abalone fisherman would have had his fill of abalone.”

  “Who cares,” Jeff said, “I’ll get him all he can handle, but where do we get the lobster floats?”

  “Mr. Nolton fished for them too.” I laughed.

  I mapped out my plan. We’d first explore the high spot shown on the 1930 map. If there was nothing there, we’d work a 20-yard square at a time from the edge of the high spot. Walt and I would take a week off from our jobs. I was actually still on the job and Walt found someone to handle his job at the paddleboard dock. We planned to work the dinghy in the next square, while Jeff or Gerald dove in the other, using lines with large treble hooks and sliding sinkers. We would basically go back and forth dragging the hooks on the sandy bottom.

  “We’ll cover more ground that way. If we find anything then you guys can dive on it.” I explained to Jeff and Gerald.

  “You’ll probably pick up a fair amount of kelp, but it makes more sense than just diving here and there.” Gerald said. “We could be 20 yards away and easily miss it.

  30.

  Jeff sat at the helm and I sat in the opposite seat. Walt and Gerald were sitting on the engine cover and we’d brought a deck chair for Sharon. The “Scooter” looked like a different boat. It still needed a paint job, of course, but the boat and engine had been thoroughly cleaned. The old varnished cabin door had been sanded down. The engine hummed.

  30.

  It was 7:00 AM on Monday, our day off -- we had 12 lobster floats, painted white, each with a rope and concrete block anchors. The anchors were courtesy of Walt’s boss who had extra anchors in the shack.

  “What’s the plan George Bailey?” Jeff asked.

  “I’ve been thinking that we should start at the high spot and set up our floats. When we finish a section we’ll just move two floats and sort of hopscotch along so we’re sure to cover everything.” I pulled a clipboard out of my dad’s old leather briefcase.

  “I traced the map at home. I’ll keep track of the searched areas. I made four marks indicating where the first four lobster floats would go.”

  We arrived at the black buoy, marking the point where Thaddeus first saw the light. We figured the Bolivia had to be north of that point and set up our two search squares. Walt and I boarded our dingy, which we’d towed behind Scooter, and set out the first floats.

  “We’ll dive here,” Jeff said. Why don’t you two see if you can locate that high spot?”

  Walt and I took the tracing of the 1930 map and tried to orient ourselves so we could find the spot. We kept dropping our weighted fishing line and recording the depth. It took almost two hours, but we finally located the spot and marked it off with four other buoys. When we came back, Jeff and Gerald were excited to hear about our find.

  “We’ll go over and dive on that spot,” Gerald said. “ You guys drag this area with your fishing gear.”

  We hooked up our drag rig, which consisted of a large size treble hook with a weight. Sharon stayed on the Scooter with the maps and recorded our progress. She also worked on her tan. Gerald did the diving that day and Jeff manned the compressor and made sure the hose was clear.

  It was boring work just dragging fishing lines back and forth on the bottom, being sure to work every part of the grid. Sometimes we’d snag something: a piece of kelp, a rock, a couple of times our gear broke on something. We’d mark that location within the square for a future dive.

  After about three hours, we’d worked most of the square and came up with three snags, where our gear had broken off.

  Sharon waved us over to the boat. Gerald sat on the swimstep.

  “There’s nothing down there but a rock mound,” he said. “Did you guys find anything?”

  “Nah, we snagged the bottom a couple of times and lost our gear.”

  “Let’s have lunch,” Sharon said, “I made some bologna sandwiches and bought some soda for us and couple of beers for you guys.”

  “This is my idea of jail time,” Gerald said. “ Out on a boat drinking beer.”

  “I only brought one each.” Sharon said frowning at Gerald.

  “How were you able to buy them.” George Bailey asked.

  “I just told Ben they weren’t for me –he believed me.”

  “He’d sure never do that for me,” Walt laughed.

  Jeff looked at him and then at Sharon. “Who the hell would?”

  After lunch we picked up three of the four buoys marking the high spot and left one as a reference point. We spent the rest of the day with Gerald and Jeff diving on our snags and Walt and I working the next section.

  Days dragged on, it just seemed hopeless sometimes, and there was so much area. Even with our system, we knew we could easily miss the wreck.

  “Don’t worry,” Sharon said one night as we hid from her parents view by the front porch –“You’ll find it George Bailey – I know you will.”

  I sure didn’t.

  31.

  Harold wrote us a letter. He was working on a project called the Grand Coulee Dam.

  Boys-

  I took your advice and took the bus. That was the longest bus ride I’ve ever been on in my life. The darn thing stopped at every little Podunk town. When I finally got to this place I just couldn’t believe it. There’s a regular city here, the damn itself is absolutely the biggest thing you’ve ever seen in your life! They even have a gigantic cement plant here. I can get you guys on with my crew. We’re pouring concrete, tamping it down and finishing it off – we’ll be here a long time. The money’s good too.

  Say hi to Officer Keyes and Officer George Bailey. I’m behaving myself up here. I don’t think I’ll ever run in to another police department like the one at Hamilton Island.

  See you soon!

  Harold

  Jeff and Gerald would be released in a week. We had dragged 9 sections in all and not found anything except pieces of kelp. All of the dives on snags had ended up with Gerald or Jeff retrieving our sinker and treble hook after releasing it from some rocks.

  It was our last Monday before their release. Sharon came along again but insisted on working with me in the dinghy. Jeff had a cold, but still wanted to go. He spent most of the day in the forward berth coughing while Walt manned the compressor.

  Gerald dove on a couple of snags. We were getting close to the edge of the plateau now.

  “Let the line all the way out until you feel the sinker hit the bottom,” I said, while showing Sharon how to work the reel.

  I sat on the back seat, trolling along and watching my pol
e. We’d been at it for about forty-five minutes.

  “I’ve got something,” Sharon said. “Maybe it’s a fish.”

  “It’s not a fish, we don’t have any bait on the hook.”

  “It’s hard to turn ---here –you take it.”

  I grabbed Sharon’s pole and gave her mine. I slowly reeled in, it felt like a piece of kelp, Sharon looked over the side.

  “I can see it, she said it’s sort of blue, maybe it’s a fish.”

  “A fish!”

  “No –no – I can see it better now ---it’s a gravy pitcher.”

  “A gravy pitcher!”

  “Be careful, it’s just on by the handle.”

  We pulled it on board and looked at the pitcher. It was blue and white with brown barnacles, on the bottom was one word:

  Deutschland

  “That’s Germany, Deutschland means Germany!!” Sharon said, the “Bolivia was built in Germany. George Bailey and Associates have done it again!!!”

  We started screaming and yelling and jumping up and down on the dinghy. I thought for a minute it was going to sink.

  Epilogue

  We found the Bolivia all right, but it was right on the edge of the plateau. Most of the cargo slid into the deep water. We managed to find enough of the silver and some jewelry for the guys to fix up Scooter, buy Mr. Nolton’s suit and lobster traps, stay on the island and keep fishing.

  They insisted on us keeping a share, and a college fund was set up for the three of us. George Bailey and Associates had solved their second case.

  Author’s note

  This is a work of fiction, I made it all up -- except my neighbor Arty, who drove an ice truck on Catalina Island when he was going to college in the 1930’s, told me one story. It was about a guy who tried to make a diving helmet by cutting off the top foot or so of a water heater, and putting a hose where the cold water came in on top. He had the hose connected to a compressor and somehow stuck an old porthole on the front. Then he put the thing on his head and just walked in to the water.

  “It didn’t work too good,” Arty said.

  Another guy named Jacques Cousteau co-invented the Aqualung in 1943, which allowed divers to go down without using the old cumbersome diving suit. The sport of scuba diving really took off in the 1950’s. Scuba diving doomed the easily caught Abalone. It is now illegal to scuba dive for Abalone in California and they can only be caught by free diving with a special license in areas North of San Francisco.

  Thanks for reading my book. Please write a quick review on Amazon. Reviews help other folks take a chance on a unknown writer.