The Sea Hunters Part 17

The Hunley was truly a pathfinder in the submarine conflicts that were to come in the future.

Beauregard was most impressed with the performance and ordered that the submarine and her crew be given whatever a.s.sistance the army and navy could provide. With renewed support, Dixon took the craft out whenever weather permitted, taking ever greater risks in futile attempts to reach an approachable target.

Then unexpectedly, in early February of 1864, Alexander was ordered to go from Charleston to Mobile to engineer and construct a breech-loading repeating gun. In his own Words, he said, "This was a terrible blow both to Dixon and myself after we had gone through so much together."

His requests to remain with the Hunley were rejected. The needs of the service dictated that Alexander go where his talents were most essential. He was replaced by a volunteer from an artillery unit stationed at one of the city's many forts.

Dixon carried on alone until he was lost that fateful night of February 17, 1864.

The Toughest Find of All July 1980 Through the centuries, sailors have been haunted by superst.i.tions concerning their lives at sea. A woman on a ship was once considered unlucky. Ships with male instead of female names met unfortunate fates. No sailor would kill an albatross, a no-no long before the Ancient Mariner came along. In light of modern technology and progressive thinking, most sailors' superst.i.tions have been thrown overboard and forgotten. One tradition, however, still has its share of firm believers. They contend that it's unlucky for a ship to sail from Port on a Friday. Right up until the Turn of the century, insurance companies charged an extra Premium for any ship that cast off for a voyage across the sea on a Friday.

In 1894, a Scots merchant and shipowner in Liverpool became incensed at having to compensate his captains and crews for laying over until Sat.u.r.day. Nor was he excited by the prospect Of paying outrageous Premiums to greedy insurance company owners. He decided to explode the old wives' tale once and for all time.

He ordered a ship built. The keel was laid on Friday. The vessel was launched on Friday and christened the Friday on Friday. A captain was even found whose name was Friday. Then, after loading an expensive cargo on board and refusing to insure it, the Scots merchant waved farewell as the good ship Friday, with Captain Friday at the helm, sailed off on Friday bound for New York.

The good ship Friday and her intrepid crew were never seen or heard from again.

There are unlucky ships and there are unlucky ships, but the Confederate submarine Hunley has to hold some kind of record. Three times she sank, two times she was raised. Over twenty men died within her iron walls. Nine still lie entombed there.

For someone like me, addicted to mysteries of the sea, Hunley cast a spell that I found about as irresistible as a starving cat staring at an overweight rodent exercising on a treadmill.

Through the decades after she triumphed and vanished into oblivion, many tried to find the little sub that could, and all failed.

Claims were made of discovery, but none were substantiated. No photo or proof was ever produced. All that was known for certain was that she was never seen again.

Theories abounded on the fate of the vessel. They were so numerous you had to pick a number before advancing a new one. Was she destroyed in the explosion or sucked into the hole she made in the Housatonic, as several researchers touted? Did her crew suffer from the effects of concussion and drift out to sea unconscious or dead before the sub sank? Could the blast have loosened her plates and rivets, causing her to sink before completing the return voyage to Breech Inlet? Suppose her crew, jubilant from the triumph, headed into Charleston Harbor to tell the populace and the city's commander, General Pierre Beauregard, in person, and were run down by one of many Confederate harbor transports? What if she made it all the way home and then sank at her dock?

Here was a mystery with a thousand clues but no conclusive leads.

I never accepted her fate as united with Housatonic. The postCivil War salvor, Benjamin Mallifert, was no slouch. He extensively salvaged the Union sloop-of-war and emphatically wrote in his diaries that he found no trace of Hunley. Lieutenant Churchill, in the salvage schooner G. W. Blunt, dragged the bottom five hundred yards around the Housatonic, finding nothing of the torpedo boat.

After the war, diver Angus Smith and his brother searched five acres around the wreck, hoping to cash in on P. T. Barnum's $100,000 reward for the famous sub. In a letter dated 1876, Smith said that he had sat on the fish torpedo boat that was lying alongside the Housatonic, and could raise her at any time. But like so many who followed with their claims of discovery, Smith never produced a shred of evidence.

In 1908, diver William Virden was awarded a contract by the Army Corps of Engineers to lower the wreck because it had become a menace to navigation. After raising four tons of old iron and blasting the remains of Housatonic to smithereens, he received $3,240 and stated that he saw no signs of the submarine.

The case for the sub's escape after blowing a hole in the stern of her enemy was established when researcher Bob Fleming pried open the wax seal and laid his eyes on 115 pages of handwritten testimony from the naval court of inquiry proceedings after the sinking. Resting in the arcBves at Suitland, Maryland, and unopened for 120 years, the testimony by Housatonic crewmen reported that the torpedo boat had pulled back close to fifty yards before the explosion. One ship's crewman, Seaman Fleming (no relation to our researcher), reported that after the ship sank under him, he climbed to the rigging ahead of the rising water. Under further questioning he stated: "When the Canandaigua [the ship that came to the survivors' rescue] got astern, and was lying athwart [neither perpendicular nor parallel but on an angle] of the Housatonic, about four ship lengths off, while I was in the fore rigging, I saw a blue light on the water just ahead of the Canandaigua, and on the starboard quarter of the Housatonic.

This was enough for me to believe the Hunley had left the site of the sinking. It was also a billboard advertising the resting place and fate of the submarine, but I failed to grasp the significance.

There was also the report by Colonel O. M. Dantzler, commanding Battery Marshall off Breech Inlet, where the Hunley's dock was located: "I have the honor to report that the torpedo boat stationed at this POst went out on the night of the 17th instant and has not returned.

The signals agreed upon to be given in case the boat wished a light to be exposed at this post as a guide for its return were observed and answered. An earlier report would have been made of this matter, but the Officer of the Day for yesterday was under the impression that the boat had returned, and so informed me. As soon as I became apprised of the fact, I sent a telegram to Captain Nance, a.s.sistant adjutant-general, notifying him of it."

There were those who were skeptical of this report, especially about the part where the HunleY's lights were "observed and answered."

They thought perhaps Colonel Dantzler was lax, had ignored the failure of the submarine to return, and was covering his tail by blaming his officer of the day. I disagreed and initially bought the report as truth, and so I originally laid out our search grid close to sh.o.r.e, figuring a blue light held on the surface of the water could not be seen much over a mile. Relying on Colonel Dantzler was a miscalculation I later regretted.

I began preparations for my first attempt at finding the Hunley by applying for a permit from the University of South Carolina's Inst.i.tute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA). Alan Albright, the inst.i.tute's lead archaeologist, was most cooperative, despite a few reservations about some upsWA outfit that claimed to be a nonprofit foundation that did not seek treasure.

Dubious of someone who claimed he wanted no artifacts for profit, Albright stared at me with the look of a fox scenting a wolf on a changing breeze. "If you find the Hunley, what then?"

I smiled cagily and answered, "That's your problem."

The NUMA team began to arrive in Charleston and drove across the bay to the Isle of Palms, where my advance man, Walt Schob, had arranged for everyone to stay in a rundown old motel whose little stucco bungalows looked as if they might have served as a meeting and storage facility for Prohibition bootleggers. Bill Shea thought perhaps Puff the Magic Dragon had crawled there and died after frolicking in the autumn mist. I'd rarely seen separate bedrooms with a common bathroom in the middle. It made for some wild and crazy confrontations.

We certainly had a diverse crew. Doc Harold Edgerton appeared with his side scan sonar and subbottom penetrator, as he called it.

Peter Throckmorton, who launched ancient shipwreck archaeology in the Mediterranean, came. Dan Koski-Karell, the archaeologist our state permit was issued to, also came. Bill Shea, Dirk Cussler, Walt Schob, Wayne Gronquist, and Admiral Bill Thompson, the driving force behind the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C all showed. Dana Larson was as always on hand to lend support, and our resident psychic from Duke University, Karen Getsla, appeared to head up our magic department.

Adding to the gala festivities, everyone's wife and girlfriend also showed up, the girlfriends of the single guys, that is. I can't recall if they were invited, but they all came anyway. Miraculously, everyone got along and had a jolly time.

The only ticklish moment came when Throckmorton announced that he was going to prepare a co uni s men ty upper, serving his renowned sauteed shrimp with special sauce, stolen from a discriminating goatherd in Turkey. He took over the motel kitchen and recruited the wives and girlfriends, driving and ordering them about as if he were Captain Bligh commanding a seagoing cooking school. His demands did not go down well with the ladies.

While Peter poured his soul into his exotic sauce for the shrimp, his kitchen help quietly mutinied behind his back.

One of the ladies found an old pair of castaway socks in a trash can behind the motel. As Peter's gourmet shrimp sauce was simmering on the stove, the socks were added and stirred into the pot. The ladies of the kitchen demonstrated great discipline by not saying a word, but simply setting the bowl with the sauce on the buffet table with the rest of the entrees. I believe Walt Schob and Bill Shea were the first ones through the line, and as they lifted the ladle to spread the sauce on their shrimp and rice, their expressions of antic.i.p.ation slowly transformed to looks of bewilderment. Without a word, they skipped the sauce and moved on down the line. The performance was repeated by all the men, not sure whether the socks were for seasoning or a joke. The ladies, of course, fought so hard to keep from coming unglued with laughter their eyes flowed with tears.

At last the moment the whole world was waiting for. Throcko started through the food line. When he came to the sauce and ladled up a sock, he froze in stunned awe. It was if he underwent a total personality change. He stood there looking like a man whose wife just ran off with an itinerant racc.o.o.n breeder. Then he slowly picked up the pot by both handles, went to the door, and threw sauce, socks, and pot into an oleander bush that had expired by the time we closed down the expedition and headed home.

The escapades on sh.o.r.e were only matched by those at sea. One that averted tragedy occurred two days later. The crew of the Zodiac inflatable boat that I had chartered to run search lanes close to sh.o.r.e consisted of Bill Shea, who scanned the proton magnetometer, Dan Koski-Karell, directing the navigation, and my son, Dirk, who steered and operated the boat's outboard motor.

In those years the most accurate navigation system for running tight thirty-meter lanes was the Motorola Mini Ranger. We found that, rather than mounting the equipment in an already crowded boat, it was more efficient to direct the search from a van on sh.o.r.e via radio.

Each morning, the search team would proceed through Breech Inlet, the same channel used by Hunley 120 years previously, and then take up a base position as instructed by the Mini Ranger operators.

This morning as Shea, Koski-Karell, and Cussler motored through the inlet, they noticed people on sh.o.r.e shouting and waving frantically at the water ahead of their Zodiac. Only then did the NUMA team spot three tiny heads in the water being swept out to sea by the strong ebb-tide current. Cussler steered the boat toward the bobbing heads.

As he pulled alongside, Shea and Koski-Karell jumped overboard, grabbed three little boys, none of whom were over nine years old, and hoisted them into the boat.

It was a near thing. Another minute or two and the boys would have drowned. As it was, they were in the initial stages of shock and beginning to Turn blue. It W'as nothing short of a miracle that the only boat within miles that could navigate the shallow but treacherous waters of the inlet happened to be at the right place at the right time.

Returning to the beach, the rescuers were met by the hysterical mother and aunt of the boys, who immediately hustled them into a car and drove off, no thank you, no words of appreciation, not even a wave of acknowledgment.

When we returned the following year, I met up with the local sheriff and asked if he ever heard anything about the three boys who were s.n.a.t.c.hed from the water by our team. He said he wasn't sure, but he thought one of them might have drowned. I straightened him out by happily reporting that all three were pulled from the water alive and kicking.

I used to wonder why fate whispered in my ear to go and find Hunley.

Perhaps there was more to the message than merely finding a shipwreck.

Because our NUMA crew was there that day, three children have grown to adults and perhaps, just perhaps, they walk the beach with their children and tell them how Daddy would have drowned if not for three strangers in a rubber boat.

While the Zodiac began searching for Hunley along the sh.o.r.e, working out toward the open sea, our second boat surveyed the site of Housatonic. Probes pretty well established the outline of the remaining hull and one boiler. There was no indication of the submarine.

No cartoon series could have done this part of the expedition justice.

The boat was an old dilapidated twenty-seven-foot cabin cruiser called the Coastal Explorer long past its prime. The boat had two engines, and one of them was always dying from some mechanical malady.

And though she broke down every afternoon like clockwork, repairs were made and she somehow always brought us home. Well, almost. Once, as we headed for home after a day of surveying, both engines coughed and ran out of fuel a hundred yards from the dock. Fortunately, the boys in the Zodiac happened along at the same time and towed us in.

A voyage in the Coastal Explorer always reminded me of a trip to downtown oz.

The boat was owned and captained by a truly nice guy, whose name was Robert Johnson. We affectionately referred to him as Skipper Bob.

His two crewmen, who were students at the famous Charleston Citadel, were a pair of real characters. These guys made Gilligan look like a paragon of efficiency. What they lacked in finesse they more than made up with humor. When things got tedious, they would march around the boat to a drumbeat. I'd never seen anyone beat a drum with a flyswatter before. Their true names are forgotten, which is probably best. We called them Heckle and Jeckle.

One day the sea was a bit choppy and the door to the cabin kept swinging open and then banging shut. The latch was either nonexistent or broken.

"Fix that d.a.m.ned door!" ordered Skipper Bob.

Heckle and Jeckle sprang into action. As Doc Edgerton and I watched in fascination, Heckle grabbed a huge sledgehammer as Jeckle s.n.a.t.c.hed up a nail the size of a railroad spike. Then, in one deft motion, they drove the spike through the bottom of the door and into the wooden deck.

"The door will swing no more," Heckle announced triumphantly.

Skipper Bob nodded with satisfaction, seemingly immune to the damage to his boat.

"You've got to admit," Doc said to me with his celebrated grin, "there's a method to their madness."

"Maybe," sez I, shaking my head in wonder. "But I doubt if they'll be asked to write a handy hints column for the Ladies' Home Journal."

Working with Doc Edgerton was a joy. He would sit in a lawn chair staring at the recorder of his subbottom penetrator, rocking in motion with the boat. Just at the point where we all swore he was about to fall over, the boat would roll in the opposite direction, and he'd sway back in unison.

The Coastal Explorer follies continued without letup.

The crew were especially fascinated by Karen Getsla as she sat on the bow and tried to tune in on Hunley's location. Seemingly going into a trance and holding up her hands as if they were antennas, she could envision the bits and pieces of scenes during the sinking. But she could not pin down a precise site.

I'm convinced psychics can see things in their minds that go far beyond anything I can imagine. The problem for psychics with locating a sunken ship is that there are no landmarks on open water. No nearby railroad, water tanks, telephone poles, or rivers to mark a position.

Still, they're fun to work with, and I never hesitate to give them a chance to try their powers.

On the next voyage of our intrepid boat, Wayne Gronquist's girlfriend, Debbie, a gorgeous creature who stood at least five feet ten, came along for the ride. I've always welcomed women on our search boats. But I'm always apprehensive in light of the fact that we seldom have bathroom facilities and females are not noted for iron bladders.

I get this from my wife, who makes me stop at every other gas station when we're on the road.

As soon as we left the harbor and circled around a two-mile rock jetty into the open sea, Debbie stripped down to her bikini and stretched out on the roof of the forward cabin directly in front of the windshield, soaking up the sun and displaying her pulchritude to bulging eyes inside the cabin.

Heckle and Jeckle stared enthralled. It was as if they were witnessing the second coming of the Messiah. Even Doc looked impressed.

Skipper Bob peered at the expanse of smooth feminine flesh that filled his entire windshield, turned to me, and muttered vaguely. "I can't see around her."

I shrugged. "Steer with your compa.s.s and do the best you can."

It goes without saying that we didn't accomplish much that day.

Even the final voyage before we rang down the curtain on that year's expedition did not go without incident. On the way in, Skipper Bob decided to save three miles and twenty minutes attempting a short cut by crossing over the rock jetty at high tide. There are times it's better to be safe than sorry. This was one of them.

With a dull thud Coastal Explorer bounced onto the rocks of the jetty and came to an abrupt halt.

I dropped into the water and dove under the hull. The keel appeared to be hung up between two rocks. I found that by standing on a rock and putting my shoulder against the bow I could actually move the boat a few inches as the crest of each wave pa.s.sed under. While I was engaged in saving Coastal Explorer for another day, I heard a splash behind me and felt the presence of someone who had joined in the effort. I turned, and there was Doc in his shorts pushing for all he was worth.

A newspaper reporter, who had come on board for the day and was apparently a good Catholic, thought the boat was doomed when Doc and I went over the side. To him, we were abandoning a doomed ship.

He began running his rosary beads through his fingers so fast smoke came out of them.

Then I looked up. The fearless crew were all leaning over the railing and idly watching while drinking cans of Pepsi. Doc was seventy-seven, I was only fifty, and none of the high and dry observers had yet to see twenty-five, yet they all stood by while two old farts grunted and eventually heaved the boat into deep water.

Coastal Explorer had been holed, and by the time we reached the dock there was nearly two feet of water in the engine compartment and main cabin.

The following year when we returned for another try at finding Hunley, I was saddened to see the remains of the faithful boat all chopped into pieces, lying forlornly in the marsh behind Sullivan's Island.

Despite a short run, the NUMA follies managed to eliminate a two-mile-long grid, beginning at Breech Inlet and extending a half mile out to sea. We were now reasonably sure that the elusive little submarine had not gone down close to sh.o.r.e or in the surf but must be lying further out toward Housatonic.

I've always affectionately recalled this expedition as the Great Trauma of '80.

Once More with Feeling June 1981 ost of the old gang came back for another try the following summer.

This time Walt put us in a big, comfortable house on the beach at Isle of Palms. He even obtained the services of a cook. She turned out sumptuous meals, usually drowning in grease.

She went through Crisco faster than a whale through plankton. Her only quirk was that she refused to make grits, a dish I've always enjoyed. But since I was the only one partial to grits, the rest of the team couldn't have cared less.

I love that old Southern down-home cooking. Give me red-eye gravy and biscuits, grits with b.u.t.ter, and chicory in my coffee, and I'm ready to s.n.a.t.c.h up a sword and lead Pickett's charge up Cemetery Ridge.

Obtaining the permit this time was merely a formality. Alan Albright generously offered a top-of-the-line archaeological dive team and firstrate outboard boat. The total crew ballooned to seventeen people with the arrival of half a dozen young volunteers: Coast Guardsman Tim Firiney; two students from the North Carolina Inst.i.tute of Archaeology, Bob Browning and Wilson West; my son-in-law, Bob Toft; my son, Dirk; and a local young man, David Farah, who proved most helpful and whose parents threw a wonderful barbecue for the search team.

This time we were also joined by Ralph Wilbanks and Rodney Warren from the university. Bill O'Donnell and Dave Graham of Motorola flew in to operate the Mini Ranger positioning system.

This expedition went as smoothly as a fashion model's shaven leg.

The equipment ticked away without missing a beat, the weather cooperated with smooth seas, and the only injuries, luckily, were sunburn, seasickness, and hangovers. Running @-meter lanes, we searched a total of sixteen square miles, taking up where we left off the year before, searching out and beyond Housatonic. Success was mingled with failure. Although we did not find Hunley, we discovered five Confederate blockade runners and three Union ironclads.

Walt Schob handled the university boat and tracked the grid lines, while Bill Shea, fighting mal de mer every foot of the way, operated his homemade proton magnetometer. During communications over the portable radio, Walt referred to the outboard as the Steak Boat. His reason for calling it that came from not wanting it known he was a.s.sociated with state property. There are some things that just can't be explained articulately.

Dirk and Dave Graham sat in a Budget rental van, parked in the backyard of a house next to Breech Inlet, and operated the Mini Ranger.

When the boys on sh.o.r.e got bored keeping the Steak Boat on track, they engaged in elaborate fly-killing contests, keeping score by scotchtaping their victims to the wall of the van.

The lady who owned the house was most accommodating. One afternoon, she invited the crew in for c.o.c.ktails. She was a very gracious host until 6:30 rolled arOUnd- Then we were informed that we had to leave because she was having another party for her friends and neighbors and she didn't think we had anything in common. I guess there are some idiosyncrasies about Southern hospitality that those of us from the North and out West will never quite fathom.

For the dive and chase boat, we chartered a dependable vessel owned by Harold Stauber, a guy with the patience of a tree trunk, who knew the waters around Charleston like his own living room. with this boat, named Sweet Sue, our team followed up the targets picked up by the Steak Boat, dove on them, and identified them as either old shrimp-boat wrecks or sunken barges. Most anomalies proved to be junk tossed off ships. Over a span of three hundred years enough debris has acc.u.mulated on the bottom in and around Charleston Harbor to keep a sc.r.a.p dealer in business for three generations.

During slow days when Steak Boat failed to run across any anomalies that remotely suggested a submarine, my team on Sweet Sue searched for other historic Civil War shipwrecks. The previous month I had stumbled on an interesting piece of data. While comparing old nautical charts with new ones, I noticed longitude meridians prior to the twentieth century ran approximately four hundred yards farther west than later projections. What caught my eye was that the 52nd meridian seemed much closer to Fort Sumter on an 1870 chart than on a 1980 chart. Testing this revelation, we discovered several wrecks four hundred yards west of where they were marked on contemporary charts.

The first ship we located was Keokuk, a dual-turreted citadel ironclad that went down after being struck ninety-two times by Confederate cannon fire. She lies off the old abandoned Morris Island lighthouse under four feet of silt. The Union monitor Weehawken caine next, a famous warship sunk in heavy weather, the only ironclad that actually defeated another during the war. We found her buried eight feet under the seabed.

Most people think that shipwrecks sit proud on the bottom. A few lie exposed, but the majority that went down close to land settled in the soft silt and were slowly buried by wave action over the years.

One surprising discovery was Patapsco, a Union monitor that struck a Confederate mine in 1865 and sank off Fort Moultrie, taking sixty-two members of the crew with her. Because she sits in the channel, which is scoured by currents, we dove and found her sitting upright on the bottom. Though she was extensively salvaged after the war, the U.S.

Navy still considers her a burial site. So we looked but didn't touch.