The Sea Hunters Part 25

Jimmy, John, and Colin gazed quizzically at the crazy image on the monitor. "No fisherman I know would act like that," said John matter-of-factly.

"How odd," I said, fighting off laughter. "Maybe he's one of those dock entertainers who dance for money."

Colin swallowed the bait. "I never seen any dock dancers."

I strung the joke for another five minutes before Bill wised up.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say that looks like Clive."

So there I am, recorded for all time, making an absolute a.s.s out of myself.

Generally, the time ash.o.r.e proved productive. I met with Danish diver-archaeologist Gert Norinann Andersen, who had spent a great deal of effort searching for lost ships along the Jutland Coast. His wreck projects operated on even a smaller shoestring than mine. His only piece of detection gear was a grappling hook, which he and his partner dragged up and down the sh.o.r.eline. A deal was struck between the quiet Dane and the demented American. If we helped him look for several wrecks he had yet to discover, he'd use his findings to put us in the ballpark of U-20. As it turned out, it was a profitable arrangement for both sides.

The weather was still rotten, but with Andersen and his diving partner on board, we headed south to the site where U-20 grounded sixty-eight years before. The seas rolled with six-foot waves that Arvor brushed aside as if she were on a Sunday cruise up the Thames.

Thanks to her stabilizers, violent pitch and roll were kept to a minimum. Poor Bill Shea went ashen and retired to his stateroom less than a mile out of Thyboron, and we didn't see him again until we docked that evening.

Two hundred thousand years from now, it's doubtful whether Denmark as we know it today will exist. The sea is eroding the coastline at an incredible rate. Concrete bunkers and gun emplacements the Germans built during World War II to repel invasion are already sitting in ten feet of water a hundred yards from sh.o.r.e. This erosion is a boon to marine archaeologists and wreck hunters. Hundreds of ships that ran aground up and down Jutland and were buried under the beach for the past five hundred years now lie exposed out in the water.

We anch.o.r.ed near Vielby Beach. The site was not difficult to pinpoint because older residents remembered seeing U-20's conning tower rising above the water some distance from the beach. Several told of how they stood and watched as she was blown up. A few sweeps with the side scan sonar and we had a target. The Danish divers went over the side and soon returned. They had found the wreck, but rough seas were kicking up sand on the bottom and visibility was reduced to only one or two feet. About 1 P.m the wind died and the sea calmed and cleared enough to see five feet. Everyone dove and surveyed the wreck.

Andersen produced an excellent sketch showing her final disposition.

U-20 now lies nearly four hundred yards from sh.o.r.e in seventeen feet of water. When the sea isn't restless, she is an easy dive. The lower section of her hull lies exposed. The conning tower and various pieces of debris are scattered around in the sand. The diesel engines still sit in their mounts, and the Danish divers found a propeller shaft coupling with an engraved bra.s.s plaque, giving the manufacturer and date it was installed in U-20. There it was, signed, sealed, and delivered. A certified identification.

I would have liked to dive on the wreck and recover artifacts for display at maritime museums in the United States, but archaeologist Andersen and the Danish government did not approve. So I came away with only side scan recordings and a drawing by the divers.

The broken corpse of U-20 has far more significance for Germany, England, and the U.S. than Denmark. I'm sure that if someone took the time and made the effort to apply for a permit for a survey and artifact-retrieval project, the Danes would grant it.

I also hope the country acknowledges the tremendous contribution Gert Nonnann Andersen and his a.s.sociates have made on behalf of Danish marine archaeology. Without his fort.i.tude, U-20 would still lie undiscovered. In my book, he gets all the credit while I felt privileged just to work with him.

It was now my Turn to repay the favor.

Sweeping the coast between U-20 and ThyborOn, we located several wrecks the Danes later surveyed and identified. Two of them were historically significant: the Royal Swedish steamship Odin, run aground in 1836, and the Alexander Nevski, a Russian steam frigate that was stranded while carrying the crown prince in 1874. According to the records, everyone was saved from both ships, including the Russian crown prince.

We returned to ThyborOn and bade goodbye to the Danes after several rounds of good Danish beer. The next morning we found a large sailboat tied to the Arvor Since every s.p.a.ce was taken along the dock, yachting courtesy dictated that the owner of the sailboat ask permission of Arvor's skipper to moor his sailboat to the outside of our boat and walk across our deck to and from the dock. Permission as a rule was always granted.

The problem? There was no request.

Jimmy Flett, a kind gentleman, said nothing and graciously allowed the yachtsmen pa.s.sage over his deck. The sailboat's crew consisted of two married couples, German to the core. They'd stare at our motley crew and babble in their guttural language, which grates on the ears.

My dad, tried to teach me German but it would have been easier to build a nuclear bomb in the bathroom. He never spoke the language after coming to America. The only words that stuck in my brain were nasty, and of little use for tuning into their conversations.

They played some crazy Kraut rock and roll during all hours of the night and day with the volume set somewhere between Thunderclap and Nuclear Detonation. The women wore your average, garden-variety brief bathing suits. But the men advertised their pubic hair in string bikinis. Our crew of good conservative Scotsmen were not entertained.

They were wishing for the sound of bagpipes.

I saw it as my duty to prevent another Battle of Jutland by engaging in s.a.d.i.s.tic foreplay. The Cussler with a song in his heart had a fiendish plan. When the Germans began blasting their rock and roll across the harbor, I counterattacked with my Dixieland jazz tapes.

It was no contest. Bill Shea heads up the video department of Brandeis University.

He hooked up enough speakers with enough decibels to blow the three little pigs' brick house down. At dawn the German sailboat retreated to the other side of the harbor. Life became good.

From the standpoint of sea-search technology, World War I shipwrecks are not that difficult to find. I'm the first to admit that we accomplished little of archaeological significance. But our efforts were greatly appreciated by fishermen from four countries. We turned over copies of all our doc.u.ments, giving precise locations to their government fisheries offices. Having more accurate wreck positions made it easier for many of them to sail directly to the wrecks and drop their gill nets. This magnanimous and benevolent good deed resulted in the most harrowing experience of the trip.

Danish fishermen are a fascinating breed. They live in rather plain red brick homes with simple peaked roofs, kept immaculately clean at all hours by gorgeous blonde wives, infiltrated by incredibly wellbehaved blond children. They also own huge, modern fishing boats equipped with enough instrumentation to impress the crew of a s.p.a.ce shuttle. Their investment must be staggering. I saw no boat that cost less than a million American dollars.

Fishen-nan Poul Svenstrop kindly offered to drive Jinnny Fiett and me to the port of Ringkobing, where he docked his boat, containing his sonar fish-detection records. Our purpose was to compare his wrecksite positions with ours. The forty-five-mile drive to Ringkobing from ThyborOn was leisurely. Sve I nstrop, who spoke excellent English, swapped sea tales with Jimmy and questioned me about publishing books.

I found that every self-respecting Dane writes stories and poems.

During the dead of winter, it seems to be a national pastime.

After stepping aboard his boat, a floating factory as compared to the smaller trawlers I was familiar with along the East and West coasts of the United States, we studied our collective wreck positions. I pointed out two sites that he and his fellow fishermen had been unable to find and gave him confirmed positions, while he showed me three that I had missed. I was especially interested in the North Sea's midchannel between RingkObing and Hull, England. I showed him my estimated position of U-21. Svenstrop knew of two wrecks in the general area, but had no knowledge of their size or construction. He did say neither seemed very large.

Like most fishermen, Svenstrop was not interested in maritime history. He could point out the position of a shipwreck that he'd recorded on his exotic-fish-detecting gear, but he couldn't tell you its name, construction, or date of its sinking. He flat didn't care.

The ordeal began on the return trip to Tbyboron. No more congenial conversation during a leisurely journey. Svenstrop envisioned himself as a race-car driver who should have had a lifetime seat at a Grand Prix pit area. He flattened the accelerator of his Volvo station wagon until it almost touched the radiator. No matter that a cloudburst dropped a curtain of water that cut visibility to about a hundred feet.

Though never having owned a Volvo, I am quite aware of their outstanding roadholding abilities. But traveling at eighty-five miles an hour over a paved cowpath with no dividing line, barely wide enough for one car and even less for one coming from the other direction, and dodging a minefield of potholes while plunging through a downpour, goes far beyond mere reckless adventure.

Jimmy Flett, having faced the worst the sea and Germans could throw at him, sat in the front seat as rigid as a bronze sculpture. I lay in the back petrified, one hand clutching the doorhandle, praying my life insurance was paid up and my estate in the hands of a good attorney.

There were no fences along the road and local cows acted as if they had the right-of-way. Svenstrop must have kept score. I saw notches on his steering wheel. I could have sworn the cows turned to vapor as we seemingly pa.s.sed through them. Svenstrop laid on the horn and never deviated one inch as a Holstein loomed up in the windshield.

I'd heard of playing chicken but never cow. When we finally pulled into Thyboron, my hair had turned white. Jimmy headed straight to the galley for his favorite bottle of scotch.

I'll bet Jutland farmers found many a gallon of sour milk in their buckets that day.

The weather improved a bit and we headed out into the North Sea in search of the warships sunk during the great naval engagement off Jutland between the Royal British Navy and the German Imperial Navy in 1916. Our first target was the British battle cruiser H.M.S.

Invincible.

As mentioned earlier, we swept over the position marked on Admiralty charts and found her huge remains slightly over a mile from where she was supposed to be. Next came two German destroyers and H.M.S.

Defence, a British battle cruiser that suffered a direct hit, which penetrated her powder magazine and blew out her bottom. Almost all of her crew of a thousand died with her. It took thirty-six hours before we found her ma.s.sive, partially silted-over hulk. Except for jagged pieces of her wreckage protruding from the muck, she reads on the side scan as a huge mound.

The next phase of the project was to cross the North Sea to the fishing port of Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast, where we planned to meet up with NUMA president Wayne Gronquist. I then wanted to make a brief, third attempt to find John Paul Jones's Bonhomme Richard.

During the crossing, we had only to make a short detour to the approximate position where Otto Hersing scuttled his beloved U-21. I laid out a nine-square-mile search grid and converted it to Jimmy's Loran charts.

At last, the time came to bid a fond farewell to the hospitality of our Danish friends and the thriving metropolis of Thyboron and sail off into the sunset. With the Royal Yacht Club ensign flying at the stern jackstaff and the NUMA flag flapping at the mast, we tooted our air horn to the people of the town and headed out through the harbor etties.

I might mention that NUMA does indeed have its own banner.

Nothing jazzy, just an old sailing ship on a red-, white-, and blue-striped background with the word EUREKA. The flag has been flown on almost all our expeditions since 1978 and is beginning to look a bit faded and frayed.

Two hours out of Thyboron, we ran into a violent Force 8 gale that beat the sea into a foaming caldron, with waves ten to twelve feet high.

I couldn't recall many roller-coaster rides that were worse than this one. Furniture, table settings, and a.s.sorted debris were soon strewn all over the main saloon. Below, my cabin looked as though a bomb had gone off. n.o.body bothered to tidy up the boat.

There is no experience that can match standing in the wheelhouse of a sixty-four-foot boat as the bow dips into a trough, while you stare up at the crest of the next oncoming wave fifteen feet above you, then watch the wall of water surge over the boat in a frenzy of green water and white spray.

It looked odd to see the windshield wipers beating back and forth while submerged. What made the situation especially unsettling was the MAYDAY calls from some of the smaller fishing boats far out in the North Sea. Jimmy offered over the radio to Turn the Arvor toward the stricken boats, but sea-rescue fleets from both Britain and Denmark, no strangers to the vicious whims of the North Sea, declined his a.s.sistance and replied that they had rescue ships on the way.

The automatic pilot went on strike along with the stabilizers that reduced the boat's roll. Poor Bill Shea took to his bunk for the next forty-eight hours, and never made an appearance until we docked. He was so sick that Colin and I struggled down the pa.s.sageway every hour to his stateroom and checked to see if he was still among the living.

We also made certain the sideboards were up on his berth to keep him from being pitched out onto the deck.

It seemed strange to hear a wind howl like banshees and see a rampaging sea under serene blue skies free of clouds. The sight was ugly and beautiful at the same time. Jimmy, John, and Colin spelled each other at the wheel during the night, while I sat on the bench in the wheelhouse behind the helmsman and gazed at the little red digital numbers on the Loran that blinked off the distance we had yet to travel before reaching Bridlington.

I felt little fear of whatever the North Sea forced on us.

Knowing that my steadfast crew of Scotsmen had come through much worse weather, and the Arvor III was built like a concrete privy, I felt as secure as a toad under a waterfall. I even refrained from complaining about all the bruises I had received from being constantly thrown into objects much harder than my body.

Strange as it seems, I found it all exhilarating. Jane Pauley once asked me on the Today Show if I might have been a sea captain in a prior life. I answered, "I'd like to think so." Perhaps the genes were pa.s.sed along by my ancestor Roger Hunnewell, a fisherman who was lost at sea in the middle 1600s off New York.

Colin, unable to cook, offered me a roast-beef sandwich, which I gratefully accepted. Then I tied myself to a chair mounted on the deck and promptly dozed off.

Though it doesn't seem logical, being pitched about during a storm at sea acts like a narcotic. You become incredibly drowsy and actually fall into a deep sleep while your head flops from side to side like a hand puppet with palsy. I was lucky in never becoming seasick. My practice is to take a couple of Dramamine pills the first day I step on a boat. After a day at sea my body adjusts and I never have to bother with medication again. I came very close to getting sick this trip, but it was more from the diesel fumes drifting through the cabins with the portholes closed than from the action of the waves.

By the time we reached U-21's last reported position, the winds and seas had decreased by half. Hardly ideal conditions for a grid search, but I had come too far not to make the effort. Bill was still on his back, but Jimmy Flett was game. So we threw over the side scan sensor and began running search lanes in a rotten sea that showed no consideration.

For six hours we rolled and pitched before we found a wreck that produced a perfect likeness of a small freighter, but no submarine. I found a ca.s.sette tape in Arvor's library of Franz Liszt and listened to the rousing strains of his Second Hungarian Rhapsody while the boat tumbled along at a breathtaking five knots.

The chair I used in front of the side scan recorder was not bolted to the deck. Jimmy turned to tell me that we had reached the end of one lane and he was coming around to start another. At that moment, we were hit broadside with a monstrous swell. My chair went over and I did a backflip, disappearing from Jimmy's view around a bulkhead. He sent John back to see how badly I was mangled.

Clutching a handrail for support, John stared down at me lying on the deck. "Did you strike your head?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "My eyes always cross like this when I'm under stress." After two minutes of ma.s.saging another four or five bruises and black and blue marks, I was back in business.

Settling behind the recorder, I saw that U-21 had appeared as a tiny stain far off on our starboard side while I was flat on my back.

Jimmy struggled to run four more pa.s.ses right over the wreck. It was useless to lower the camera in a rotten, uncooperating sea.

Dimensions on the sonar recording indicated an approximate match and the outline of a submarine.

Our navigation instruments put her at 54 14 30 by 04 02 50.

We found the only two ships in the area that Svenstrop positioned on his personal charts. There are no other wrecks on any chart within a radius of twenty miles. The U-boat lies slightly less than a mile east of the Admiralty, German, and Danish records. She was a nice little discovery. As far as historic firsts went, we now knew the grave sites of Housatonic, Hunley, H.M.S. Pathfinder, and U-21, and could go back to them at any time with little effort.

Much had been accomplished in less than a month, and we still had almost three weeks to go. Now it was on to the port of Cherbourg, France, to search for the famous Confederate raider Alabama and Belgian troop transport Leopoldville.

Silent But Deadly Christpnas Eve, 1944 chill wind and a light snow blew across the harbor in Southampton, England, December 23. Pier 38 seemed as busy as a baseball stadium before the start of the World Series. Shuffling slowly forward, more than two thousand Gis of the United States Army's 66th Infantry Division, known as the Black Panthers, milled about the pier, waiting to board the troop ship Leopoldville. Like a lethargic disease, a general lack of enthusiasm had infected the men. World War II was six months past D-Day and winding down to a conclusion, or so everyone thought.

The troops waiting to board believed the dirty job of mopping up pockets of German resistance would be their only legacy. In a war that had seen many great heroes, these troops feared they would never have CHERBOURC the chance to show their courage.

Word spread about the German Army's launching a counterattack referred to as the Battle of the Bulge, but few took any stock in the rumor. Details were sketchy and vague. It was a weak German thrust broken by Patton, some said. The Krauts were already crushed, came a report from nowhere. Merely a last gasp by the Germans, who were on the verge of surrender. They couldn't have been more wrong. The soldiers beginning to march up the gangways would have been astounded if they had known they were going into battle against a ma.s.sive German a.s.sault that had shattered'American forces in the Ardennes Forest.

Adding fuel to the malaise among the troops was their unexpected movement. The 66th Division had recently been billeted at a staging area near Dorchester. With no orders and little to do, they all looked forward to an en . oyable Christmas in their warm barracks. Presents were purchased in the nearby city to be pa.s.sed around or sent home as gifts. Company cooks had carefully planned a feast with turkey and all the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to be washed down with gallons of beer and an ancient British concoction called mead. A number of -local girls were persuaded to attend. But promises of good cheer were dashed when they received orders to move out and take trains to Southampton. There they were to board a foreign troop transport, chartered by the British Navy.

Torn from their cozy billets so close to Christmas, the men of the 66th were now standing in the freezing air while hasty decisions were made about their future movements: 2,235 were about to board Leopoldville, while the rest of the division were loaded aboard the H.M.T.

Cheshire, a British transport newer and in better shape than the Belgian liner. The division's trucks and heavy equipment were loaded onto LSTs for the trip across the English Channel to Cherbourg.

Earlier in the afternoon, two thousand paratroopers had been loaded aboard Leopoldville, and then told to disembark because they were on the wrong ship. No reason was offered for the mix-up. Knowing the army, most simply shrugged and never bothered to ask. It was an ominous sign none knew how to read.

The paratroopers did not know until later how lucky they were to celebrate Christmas Day.

The men of the 66th were finally cleared to board two hours after midnight of the 24th and didn't finish until eight in the morning.

With the snarling black panther patches worn proudly on the sleeves of their olive-drab winter coats, the men trooped aboard Leopoldville.

Disorganization was the order of the day. Because of the prior foul-up with the paratroopers, no berthing a.s.signments were made for the men of the 66th in advance. They were hurriedly a.s.signed compartments as they stepped onto the main deck. Units were broken up, dividing friends, splitting squads from their companies.

The confusion was a further omen of the tragedy to come.

Platoon Sergeant Robert Hesse of Heavy Weapons Platoon, Company D, 264th Regiment, dutifully followed instructions directing him and his buddies through an open hatch and down a steep wooden stairway into cargo holds that had been converted into cramped quarters for transporting troops. Seven crudely constructed wooden decks with low ceilings and bunks stacked four high now filled the cargo holds. The men were crammed together in dimly lit steel caverns like pa.s.sengers on a New York subway during peak rush hour. Ventilation was far from adequate. The air soon became warm and stale, the smell of perspiration adding to the stuffy atmosphere.

TWenty-year-old Hesse from Roselle, New York, thankfully dropped his pack, duffel bag, and rifle onto the crowded deck and removed his helmet. "So this is home for Christmas," he muttered to no one in particular.

Captain Charles Limbor stared through the wheelhouse window at the ma.s.s of humanity climbing his ship's gangway in the bitter cold and observed the disorder silently. Shifting legs that were beset with poor circulation and at times most painful, he tried to find a comfortable position. Born and raised in Belgium, he had been employed by the Belgian Lines for nearly twenty-five years. Limbor stood slightly under six feet tall. His skin was naturally tanned, unusual for someone Flemish. Genes, he often mused, from some forgotten ancestor in the Belgian Congo in Africa. His hair was gray, silver at the temples, and his eyes brown. At age forty-six, he was withdrawn and quiet and kept to himself. Those officers who had sailed with him on numerous voyages found him difficult to approach, but they all considered him a competent seaman.

His actions twelve hours later would be completely out of character.

He studied a message from his radio operator and turned to his Chief Officer, Robert de Pierpont. "We'll be accompanied by the British troopship Cheshire and a small fleet of American landing craft."

"And our estorts?" asked de Pierpont.

"One French and three British destroyers."

"I hope they notified the Germans there will be no trespa.s.sing."

"No sign of the Luftwaffe since D-Day," Limbor said, sighing.

"And the German E-type torpedo boats only make hit-and-run strikes two hundred miles north of here."

"There still could be U-boats lurking about," said de Pierpont.

Limbor shrugged indifferently. "Not with so many Allied warships guarding the Channel and the skies filled with subhunting aircraft.

Most of the U-boats are out in the Atlantic chasing convoys. I doubt if any are operating in this area."

Although she had undergone a complete refitting only eight months before, to the American troops boarding Leopoldville she looked tired, old, rundown, and dirty. Built in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1929 by John c.o.c.kerill & Sons, she went into service for -the Royal Belgian Lloyd Lines, transporting cargo and pa.s.sengers from the Belgian Congo and other ports in Africa to her home harbor of Antwerp, Belgium.

After the war broke out, she was refitted in Liverpool from pa.s.senger liner to troop transport. During the next four years, she carried mostly British troops to and from the Mediterranean. After the invasion of France, she made twenty-four crossings from England to the beaches of Normandy, landing over 53,000 men. Until her final voyage, Leopoldville transported 124,240 soldiers safely through dangerous waters to their destinations.

Leopoldville was rated at 11,500 tons, with a length of 479 feet and a 62-foot beam. Her engines could push her through the water at a maximum speed of 17 knots. She carried 14 lifeboats, with a capacity of 797 persons; 4 large rafts; 156 Carley floats; and 3,250 life preservers. She was armed with 10 Bofors guns, one 3-inch bow gun, a 4-inch stern gun, and one 3-pounder antiaircraft gun. The crew numbered 120 Belgians, 93 Congolese, and a British contingent of 34 officers and men, who manned the guns and supervised the troop loading and landing.