Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks

FOREWORD BY CLIVE CUSSLER

Ships and their crews have been sailing off into oblivion since the dawn of recorded history. Through the millennia, more than a million ships have sunk or gone missing, along with untold numbers of their crews. A million ships is an impressive statistic not believed by most landsmen. Yet, to call the seven seas a vast cemetery is an understatement.

During the ages, storms have wreaked havoc on entire fleets, some consisting of more than a thousand ships, that were torn apart and hurled to the bottom. The first tragedy may have taken place when one of our Cro-Magnon ancestors happily discovered he could float on water atop a log, at least until he fell off and drowned. From that time forward, huge ships, small boats and men have vanished in an unending surge beneath the waves into dark watery depths that have yet to resurrect their dead.

Except for divers holding their breath and diving in shallow water, shipwrecks seemed as impossible to reach and touch as a rock on the moon. Finally, less than two hundred years ago, divers in hard hats, breathing air pumped down from the surface, started working on the sea bottom and riverbeds. At long last, the sea begrudging began to give up her secrets.

Treasure and salvage came into their own. Salvage became a thriving enterprise, while treasure hunting was about as hit or miss as buying stocks in a bear market. Suddenly, shipwrecks in shallower waters became accessible. The boom was on, and shipwrecks were discovered and studied in a prodigious number of projects. Soon, modern technology enabled the salvage of wrecks thousands of feet deep beneath the sea’s surface.

The dead in the depths of the sea have no tombstones, no grave markers, nothing to identify their remains that quickly cease to exist. There is an eerie feeling about diving on a shipwreck. You can sense the presence of the crew that died with the ship. A wizened old diver once said that swimming through a shipwreck was like walking through a haunted house.

The last to come on the underwater scene were the marine archeologists. These are about as strange and diverse people as you could ever hope to meet. They seldom become wealthy, and their main claim to fame is in their reports on shipwreck explorations, surveys and artifact removal for conservation and study. Some publish books on their expeditions, some teach, while many work in the commercial end, surveying for government or private corporations that develop properties along waterfronts which might contain history. Not until an accredited archeologist declares the site free of historical artifacts can they begin construction.

Nautical archeologists fight like the furies to preserve a wreck and keep it out of the hands of salvers, treasure hunters and sport divers who are out to pillage shipwrecks of historic significance. Mostly they win, but often they lose the battle to protect a wreck from looters. Their biggest problem is money. Few state, local and federal government agencies have the funding to preserve shipwrecks, so the archeologists squeak by on shoestring budgets from one project to the next.

One who has made a difference is Jim Delgado, a man whose dedication and hard-earned efforts have made a contribution to the field of nautical archeology that cannot be equaled. Of all the archeologists I’ve known in my years of chasing after historical shipwrecks, he is one of the few who has his feet on the ground and knows more about lost ships than the Congressional Library and Lloyd’s of London wrapped up together. His exploits beneath the sea have become legendary.

I’m honored and privileged to call him a friend.