The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks

I The White Bird 1927

“Seems like it’s a fifty-fifty proposition,” Charles Nungesser noted.

“And how do you figure that?” François Coli asked.

The men were standing on the packed dirt at La Bourget Airfield outside Paris. Nungesser was a handsome man with a rakish air. His chin sported a scar from one of his many crashes during World War I, but his eyes still burned with an intensity that showed no fear. Coli was more compact, with a jaded air about him. His upper lip was covered with a bushy black mustache. A black patch covered the eye he had lost in the Great War, and his cheeks were becoming jowls. Coli’s double chin was resting on a silk flight scarf.

“Either we take off in this fuel-laden beast,” Nungesser said, “or we crash.”

“Flip of the coin,” Coli said.

“Soar into greatness,” Nungesser said, “or burn into history.”

“You make it sound so fun,” Coli said wearily.

To attempt the risky Paris — to — New York flight, Nungesser and Coli were inspired by glory, not money. The money due the winner of the Orteig Prize had awaited a claimant since 1919. Raymond Orteig, owner of the fashionable Brevoort and Lafayette Hotels in Paris, offered $25,000 to the first airplane that completed a Paris — to — New York or New York — to — Paris nonstop flight. While $25,000 was not an inconsequential sum, the acclaim that would be garnered by the winners was priceless.

Whoever won the Orteig Prize would be the world’s most famous living person.

The prior year, fellow Frenchman Rene Fonck, the leading Allied fighter pilot in World War I, made an attempt. The flight had ended in disaster. Fonck’s Sikorsky S-35 crashed on takeoff from Roosevelt Field in New York with a crew of four. Fonck and his copilot lived, but the radio operator and the mechanic aboard perished in the flames.

Commander Richard Byrd, famed for his exploration of the North Pole, assembled a crack team to make an attempt. A modified Fokker trimotor, similar to the plane Byrd had used for his North Pole journey, was selected. On April 16, Anthony Fokker, Byrd, pilot Floyd Bennett, and a radio man crashed while landing on a final test flight. No one was killed, but three of the four aboard were injured.

Ten days later, another group mounted an effort. With sponsorship from a U.S. group of war veterans named the American Legion, Lieutenant Commander Noel Davis bought a Key-stone Aircraft Corporation Pathfinder. When performing the final tests at Langley Field in Virginia, the Pathfinder went down, killing both Davis and his copilot, Stanton Wooster.

Next to tempt fate was Clarence Chamberlin in a Wright-Bellanca WB-2. Chamberlin and copilot Bert Acosta tested the plane, named Columbia, by staying aloft for a little over fifty-one hours, a new world’s record and more than enough time to reach Paris. On one of their last test flights, they lost their left wheel after takeoff. Chamberlin managed to land, but the damage to the plane would require time to fix.

At the same time, in San Diego, at the Ryan Aircraft Company, a former mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh was waiting for a low-pressure area to lift over the Rockies so he could fly east to make a solo attempt. He was sitting on a wooden folding chair in the hangar next to his plane, Spirit of St. Louis, studying the current weather reports, when the news reached him that Nungesser and Coli would soon take off from Paris.

The date was May 8, 1927.

“Monsieur,” the mechanic said quietly, “the time is here.”

It was 3 A.M., the darkest part of night. Nungesser and Coli were lying on wooden pallets covered by thick horsehair mattresses in a comer of the hangar at La Bourget Airfield. Nungesser was clutching his favorite war medal; Coli had removed his eye patch. They awoke immediately. Nungesser reached for the steaming cup of Viennese coffee the mechanic offered, while Coli sat upright and stared at the plane that would carry them into the history books.

L’Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird) was a French-built Levasseur PL-8. The white biplane had detachable wheels that would be jettisoned after takeoff and a watertight belly made of treated plywood that allowed it to land on water like a seaplane. Powered by a sophisticated water-cooled, twelve-cylinder Lorraine-Dietrich engine that produced 450 horsepower, spinning a massive propeller designed to fold away for landing, the plane had the smooth good looks of a dove in flight.

“She’s a beautiful mistress,” Coli said, as he pulled the eye patch over his socket.

“So much more so,” Nungesser said, “with the emblem attached.”

Coli simply smiled.

Nungesser’s ego was exceeded only by his flying ability. When he had insisted on attaching his personal emblem, Coli had readily agreed. The emblem was a black heart with drawings of twin candelabra holding lighted candles pointing toward the round humps at the top. Between the candles was a drawing of a casket with a cross on the top. Below that was the ancient skull-and-crossbones symbol. The emblem was positioned directly below and slightly to the rear of the open cockpit where Nungesser would fly the plane.

Coli rose from the mattress and pulled on his leather flight suit. “We should make ready,” he said. “The president will be here soon.”

“He’ll wait,” Nungesser said, as he leisurely sipped his coffee.

Outside the hangar, the sky was dotted with millions of stars. A rare wind flowing east washed across the ground, and if they were lucky it would carry White Bird across the Atlantic. André Melain was not staring at the stars or worrying about the wind. Instead, he was carefully smoothing the packed-dirt, two-mile-long runway with a small diesel tractor that featured a crude spotlight hooked to the battery. Placing the tractor in neutral, he climbed from the seat, then lifted some twigs from the dirt. After placing them in a metal box at the rear of the tractor, he climbed back aboard and resumed his meticulous work.

The President of France, Gaston Doumergue, had heard the rumors that Chamberlin had taken off in the now-repaired Columbia. After waiting to receive word from the French ambassador in New York City that the report was erroneous, he set off for the airfield.

The Orteig Prize had been funded by a Frenchman, and it was a matter of national pride that it also be claimed by a French team of flyers. Right this instant, however, Doumergue was cursing French engineers. The 1925 Renault 4 °CV carrying the president was stopped on the side of the road three miles distant from La Bourget. The driver had the hood of the car, emblazoned with the diamond-shaped Renault emblem, raised and was staring into the engine compartment. He fiddled with some wires, then returned to his spot behind the wheel and turned the engine over.

The engine fired and settled into a quiet purr. “My apologies, Monsieur,” the driver mumbled, as he placed the Renault in gear and pulled away from the curb.

Just under ten minutes later, they arrived outside the hangar.

François Coli was sipping from a glass of Merlot and nibbling on his breakfast of crusty bread smeared with runny Brie. Charles Nungesser had spurned the offer of wine for another cup of coffee rich with heavy cream and sugar. He was alternating between a chunk of bread heavy with pate and a hard-boiled egg in his left hand.

“Is the mailbag safely aboard?” he inquired of a mechanic who walked past.

“Stowed forward, as you requested,” the man noted.

Nungesser nodded. The special postcards would be post-marked after their arrival in New York and later sold as souvenirs for a handsome profit. He stared over at his navigator. Dressed in his full-leather flight suit, Coli looked like a sausage with a meaty head attached. Still, in spite of their differences, Nungesser trusted Coli’s ability completely. Coli came from a family of seafarers based in Marseilles, and navigation was in his genes. Shortly after the war, he had piloted the first nonstop flight from Paris to Casablanca across the Mediterranean. He was originally slated to make his own attempt for the Orteig Prize, but Coli’s plane had been destroyed in a crash.

For all his quiet demeanor, Coli wanted the honor as much as Nungesser.

The Renault steered past the crowds and made its way to the side of the hangar. The driver shut off the engine and climbed out, stepped back to the rear door, and opened it for Doumergue. The French president walked to the hangar’s side door, waited for the driver to open that, too, then walked inside.

Glancing to the right, nearest the overhead doors, he saw the white Levasseur. The tail of the plane was painted with a vertical stripe of blue nearest the cockpit, then an open stripe of white, then a stripe of red at the end of the tail. The colors of the French flag. Horizontally, above the stabilizer, were black block letters that read: P. LEVASSEUR TYPE 8. Just below the stabilizer was a painted anchor. The sheet metal surrounding the engine was also white and was rounded, like the end of a bullet. The nose of the plane was peppered with access panels, four round air intakes per side and a single exhaust pipe to port and starboard.

The light from the few electric lights in the hangar was dim, but Doumergue could make out Nungesser and Coli standing off to one side. He walked over and shook the men’s hands.

“This is the first I’ve seen the plane up close,” Doumergue said.

“And what do you think, Monsieur President?” Nungesser asked.

“The cockpit is farther to the rear than I thought it would be,” Doumergue admitted.

“Three aluminum fuel tanks that can carry 886 gallons are mounted just under the wings, just aft of the engines,” Coli said, grinning. “We wouldn’t want to run short of fuel before reaching New York.”

“An excellent idea,” Doumergue said.

Nungesser looked over to the French president. “Have we heard word of Chamberlin?”

“The rumors were false,” Doumergue noted. “At last report, he was still in New York.”

“Then the winds are against him and favoring us,” Coli said.

“So it would seem,” Doumergue said.

Nungesser turned and shouted to a mechanic. “Hook White Bird to a tractor and pull her onto the runway. Monsieur Coli and I have a date in New York City.”

The dozen workers in the hangar broke into cheers.

The eastern sky was paling with the first light of the coming dawn, as Nungesser and Coli climbed into White Bird and started the engine. A cacophony of noises washed across the hundreds that had gathered to watch the historic journey. Popping noises sounded as the engine belched and wheezed and then settled into a loud roar. Puffs of smoke billowed from the exhaust ports.

Nungesser engaged the propeller for a test.

A loud thumping noise came as the massive wooden blades began to beat at the air. Next, a screech, as Nungesser powered up and moved White Bird a short distance.

“Manifold pressure and temperature okay,” Nungesser shouted to Coli.

“Check,” Coli said.

“Control surfaces responding — fuel shows full.”

“Check,” said Coli.

“I say it’s a go,” Nungesser said.

“Confirm the go,” Coli shouted. “Next stop, New York City.”

Nungesser steered White Bird into an arc at the far end of the runway, then stopped and ran up the engines while holding the brake. The crowd had followed the plane downfield, and hundreds of people stood watching. Nungesser raised his arm over his head and as far out of the cockpit as he could, then waved to the crowd.

“Au revoir,” he shouted.

He pushed the throttles forward and started down the runway. It was 5:17 A.M.

André Melain watched White Bird roll past, then followed with the tractor. From his perch atop the tractor, he had a better view than most of the crowd. White Bird was gaining speed and passed the one-mile marker. Slowly, the plane inched skyward, then sagged back onto the runway. A collective sigh ran through the crowd. A hundred yards farther and the tail wheel was far off the ground. Suddenly, Melain could see under the belly of White Bird as she climbed foot by foot from the runway. A mile past the end of the runway and the plane was only seventy feet in the air. Then he saw what he was watching for — Nungesser dropped the landing gear, which fell through the dim light to the ground below.

Melain set off in the tractor to retrieve the prize.

“Coast ahead,” Nungesser shouted.

Coli marked it on a chart. “You are right on course.”

White Bird passed over the English Channel at 6:47 A.M.

Nungesser stared at the gauges. All seemed in order. He headed toward Ireland as he thought of his past. His had been a life of challenges and adventure. As a teenager, he had favored boxing, fencing, and swimming — all individual sports. As a young man, he’d found school oppressive and his desire to be outdoors almost overwhelming. At sixteen, he had quit school and convinced his parents to allow him to visit an uncle in Brazil. The uncle had resettled in Argentina, and it would be nearly five years before Nungesser found him, but in Brazil

Nungesser indulged in his love of mechanical things. He began to race motorcycles, and later automobiles, supporting himself with his increasing skills as a mechanic. He gambled, boxed for money, and lived the life of a bon vivant, but still something was lacking. He began to feel bored with his life and bound to the earth.

A few years later, he traveled to Argentina to locate his uncle. There he found the passion he had sought so long. Visiting an airfield one day, he approached a pilot who had just landed. He explained to the man that he was an accomplished automobile racer and thus felt qualified to fly — and the man laughed him off as if he were the village idiot. The man went inside, and Nungesser climbed into the cockpit, roared down the runway, and lifted off. After a short flight, he approached the runway and touched down. The owner of the plane was not so much angered as amazed.

In that instant, Nungesser became completely enamored with flying.

After a few weeks of flying lessons and a stint barnstorming in Argentina, he returned to France just as the winds of war began to howl. After a brief time in the cavalry, he wrangled a transfer to the air service and began a distinguished, if dangerous, career. Nungesser loved aerial combat and approached it with a passion that bordered on foolhardiness. After crashing many times, shooting down forty-five German planes and getting wounded seventeen times, he ended the war with a chest covered with medals, a plate in his head, and a silver ankle.

But after the thrill of war, his civilian life seemed sedate and ordinary.

He suffered financial setbacks and failed endeavors. After traveling to the United States, he barnstormed and starred in an early silent movie, but the fame and adoration he sought were slow in coming. All that was soon to change.

As soon as he and Coli made New York City, it would all be his.

“We should see Ireland in the next few minutes,” Coli shouted.

Coli, too, had felt the tug of flight. After switching from sea to air, he had been commander of an aircraft squadron during the war. Where Nungesser was foolhardy, Coli was persistent and methodical. As soon as he agreed to attempt the flight, he had insisted that they rigorously train and plan for the event. The men began a program of physical fitness using barbells, medicine balls, and light running. They practiced staying awake for long periods so they could better understand the effects of sleep deprivation. Their record was sixty hours. To ensure that he could keep them on course, Coli studied charts of sea and land. He checked and rechecked currents, wind patterns, and meteorological information. On test flights aboard White Bird, he noted speeds and elevations so he could better plan the route. And he studied Nungesser and his flying style. His partner on the flight seemed much more comfortable over land than water, and Coli had figured that into the plans. Once they reached North America, he would keep them over land as much as possible. Reaching into a picnic hamper, he twisted the top off a ceramic container of hot tea and poured himself a cup.

After he had finished, he poured one for Nungesser and handed it forward.

“Shoo,” the white-haired man said quietly.

Shamus McDermott sat on a rocking chair just outside the door of the net maker’s shop at the port of Castletown Bearhaven, Ireland. A few moments before, he had fed the fat, yellow tabby cat at his feet a sardine, and now the animal would not leave him alone. A lifetime of cod fishing had taken its toll on McDermott. The cold, hard work had given him arthritis, and the hand pain and phantom aches from the missing ring finger on his left hand never seemed to leave him nowadays. He would turn seventy years old this fall, and his days of working were eight years past.

These days, most of his time was spent watching and waiting.

In the mornings, he would head to the port and see the ships off. At night, he would wait for their return, then share a pint with the working fishermen. After a few tall tales and the dispensing of mostly unwanted advice, he would return to his small stone cottage to make dinner over his peat-fired stove. By 9 P. M., he would be asleep.

“That’s a strange sight,” McDermott said to himself and the cat.

Two thousand feet overhead, a stark white plane approached from the east. It continued over the town and out to sea in a relentless pursuit of some faraway location. McDermott watched it recede into the distance.

“Like a fine white arctic plover,” he noted happily.

Then he rose from the chair to walk inside the shop to notify the others.

The time was five minutes before noon.

“Reset to eleven A.M. local time,” Coli shouted at the moment the chart showed they had crossed the time line.

“Affirmative,” Nungesser said.

The Irish isle was no longer in sight. For the next thirteen hours, their only companion would be an endless expanse of open water. Coli stared at the sea below. From his vantage point thousands of feet above, he could make out small whitecaps on the ocean. The sea was breaking east. The predicted tailwinds had shifted.

“What’s she feel like?” he shouted to Nungesser.

“By the engine revolutions and indicated airspeed, I think we have about a twenty-five-knot head wind,” Nungesser said quietly.

“What happened to the predicted tailwinds?” Coli said.

“The weather is an unpredictable mistress,” Nungesser said easily.

Coli took a pencil and slide rule and calculated. On takeoff, White Bird had carried fuel sufficient for forty-four hours of flight. With the head winds, their speed would be reduced to close to eighty miles an hour. The current rate of fuel burn would leave them nearly four hundred miles short of New York City. He performed the calculations again.

“The low pressure has lifted,” the designer of Spirit of St. Louis, Don Hall, said.

“I’m planning to take off shortly,” Lindbergh said.

“No word yet on Nungesser and Coli,” Hall admitted.

“I pray they make it safely,” Lindbergh said.

“Then why fly to New York?” Hall asked.

“If they are successful,” Lindbergh said, “I can still claim the prize for the first solo flight.”

“The Ryan is gassed and ready to go,” Hall said.

“Let me just fill this thermos with milk,” Lindbergh said, “and I’ll be on my way.”

An hour later, he was high above the earth following the railroad tracks east.

The phosphorescence of the ocean and the stars overhead were their only companion. They were twenty-eight hours into the flight and an hour away from Newfoundland when the first pangs of doubt and fear crept into Nungesser’s mind. He was tired and hungry, and aching from sitting so long. The vibrations had made his arms cramp and his bottom numb, and the loud roar from the engines was giving him a splitting headache.

Coli was not faring much better. He was seated to the rear of Nungesser, farther back in the cockpit. Here there was less fresh air, and the fumes from the massive aluminum fuel tanks gathered in the fuselage. This, combined with the light rocking as White Bird made its way west, was giving him a mild case of seasickness. He opened a tin of crackers and nibbled a few.

“François,” Nungesser said, “open the flask of brandy and pour me a measure.”

“Very well,” Coli said.

He unsnapped a leather satchel and dug around in the bottom until he located the flask. After filling a tin cup, he tapped Nungesser on the shoulder and handed it forward.

“Merci,” Nungesser said, after taking a sip.

Coli stared at his pocket timer. “It’s time to switch tanks,” he noted.

Nungesser switched the brass lever. He watched as the fuel gauge reset to full.

“How long until we should see Newfoundland?” he asked.

“Within the hour,” Coli said.

Aboard Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh was approaching the western end of the Rocky Mountains. The moon was giving him some light. He could just make out strips of snow still atop the highest peaks. Climbing to thirteen thousand feet, he followed his course through New Mexico. And then the engine started to sputter. Below were jagged peaks and rocky ravines that offered little chance for a safe landing.

Lindbergh enriched the fuel mixture, and the engine smoothed some.

Most worthwhile pursuits are defined by moments of decision. He could either turn away from the string of mountains ahead and seek a safe place to land or he could press on. Lindbergh coaxed the balky engine to climb slowly. Altitude spelled safety if the engine conked out.

Two A.M. and Venus was at her zenith.

“To starboard,” Coli said, shaking Nungesser’s shoulder.

Nungesser concentrated on the water below. His head was reeling from lack of sleep and the incessant roar from the engines. It was cold at that elevation, and his nose was dripping. Wiping it with the sleeve of his flight jacket, he stared into the darkness below.

At the airfield just outside St. John’s, Newfoundland, it was six minutes before 2 A.M. Two dozen small fires had been lit on each side of the packed-dirt runway, and every available electric light had been turned on and pointed skyward. The fires formed twin lines and the main offices a giant dot — from the sky, the display looked like a giant letter i. The manager of the airfield, Douglas McClure, stared at his watch. The French flyers were a little overdue. They might be having trouble finding land.

“Go ahead and light the fuel pits,” McClure said to several of his helpers.

Yesterday they had dug a dozen holes in the earth with a tractor, then lined them with sand. Thirty minutes ago, McClure had driven past each hole and poured the contents of five-gallon diesel fuel containers into each hole. There were now pools of standing fuel and saturated sand spaced ten feet apart. He watched by the office as one of his helpers threw a lit torch into the first pit. The fuel flared twenty feet in the air, then began to burn with clouds of black smoke.

“Flare to starboard,” Nungesser shouted happily.

Coli strained his neck to get a better view. “There’s another.”

“I see lights,” Nungesser said.

“That’s St. John’s,” Coli said. “They promised they’d light the way for us.”

“North America,” Nungesser said.

“If all continues to go well,” Coli said, “we should reach Maine around seven A.M.”

At that same instant, Charles Lindbergh was looking down on the eastern plains of Kansas. Once he had dropped past the mountains, the air had warmed some and his engine smoothed out. Deciding the problem had been carburetor icing, he made a mental note to watch for it when he crossed the Atlantic.

Ungesser and Coli were exhausted. The vibrations, the relentless roar of the engines, and the lack of sleep had reduced them to automatons. An hour earlier, they had passed over Nova Scotia, but little had been said. They were thirty-four hours into the flight and 550 miles from New York City. Far below White Bird was the Bay of Fundy. The water was being whipped into whitecaps by a stiff wind. François Coli poked his head out the side of the cockpit and stared at the wall of clouds approaching to port. The sight was not reassuring. He scrawled equations on a sheet of paper and stared at his results.

“We are still nearly six hundred miles from New York,” he shouted. “How’s the fuel holding up?”

“I estimate six more hours of flight time,” Nungesser stated. “The head winds have changed and are now blowing north to south.”

“Then we have just enough to make it,” Coli said, “if nothing happens.”

“Then I should stay the course of forty-five degrees latitude?” Nungesser asked.

“Affirmative,” Coli said. “We’ll enter the United States just north of Perry, Maine.”

Nungesser stared at the wall of clouds only minutes away. “What then?”

“Once we enter the cloud bank, I’ll be unable to take a fix,” Coli said. “Our only chance will be to follow the coastline until the clouds break or we reach New York.”

“So we pray the winds push us south before we run out of fuel,” Nungesser said.

“That’s the idea,” Coli said wearily.

Anson Berry was in a small wooden rowboat on the south end of Round Lake, a dozen miles north of Machias, Maine. Berry was part owner of an icehouse. The coming months were, of course, his busy season, but his passion for fishing had got the best of him today. He had left work in early afternoon. After catching a few fat pickerel for tonight’s meal, he was due to spend the night at his camp on the shores of the lake. Casting a plug fifty feet away, he slowly reeled it back.

Five hundred miles from fame — five miles from infamy. White Bird was flying through a spring storm. On the ground, the storm was wind-whipped rain; at two thousand feet, it was a freezing hell. Hail and sleet pelted the small curved windshield to the front of the cockpit, and Nungesser’s goggles were fogged.

At just that instant, a bolt of lightning shot up and passed through White Bird.

Coli stared forward to the radium-coated instrument needles. The shock had shorted out the instrument panel, and the needles lay useless on the left side. Then the Lorraine-Dietrich started to sputter. They were above Gardner Lake, Maine. Nungesser twisted the knob to enrich the fuel mixture, and the engine smoothed some.

“We’re flying blind,” he shouted.

“What do you want to do, Captain?” Coli asked.

It was the first time in the entire flight that Coli had called Nungesser by rank.

“I’ll try to remain over water,” Nungesser shouted. “If the engine quits we can attempt a water landing.”

“Otherwise?” Coli asked.

“Otherwise we keep pushing on,” Nungesser said. “There is nothing else.”

Berry was swatting at a black fly at the same second his bobber was pulled under the water. Yanking the rod up in the air, he set the hook. Passing the rod to his left hand, he led the fish around the stem of the rowboat.

“Gotcha,” he said.

Inside the bullet-shaped housing protecting the Lorraine-Dietrich engine of White Bird, all was not well. The sleet being sucked into the air intake had iced the carburetor slide. Condensation in the low fuel tanks was magnifying the problem. The engine sputtered and popped as more of the chilled fuel was introduced. With the uneven running failing to burn off all the fuel, the engine began to flood.

“The engine is icing,” Nungesser shouted. “I’m going to take her down and see if we can find some warm air.”

Berry fought the pickerel to exhaustion and then slowly reeled in his catch. When the plump silver fish was alongside the rowboat, Berry glanced down into the water. The fish was sucking in water past her gills and flicking her tail in an attempt to find freedom. Reaching into the water, Berry grabbed the fish behind the gills and hoisted her into the boat. Removing the hook with a pair of pliers, he set the fish on the floor of the boat and held her back. Taking a wooden fish club in his other hand, he swung the club at a spot just behind the eyes. There was a loud thump, then the fish quit twitching.

Thump, thump, thump.

Berry stared at the fish.

Pop, pop, pop.

“Damn,” Berry said aloud, “it’s coming from above.”

Squinting through the mist, he scanned the sky for the source of the noise.

“We must make a decision,” Nungesser said. “To the south the clouds seem thicker, but looking north and east I can see light.”

“Without the airspeed indicator,” Coli said, “it’s difficult to calculate fuel burn.”

“We fought the good fight,” Nungesser said, “but I believe the Orteig Prize is going to elude us this trip.”

“If we continue on for New York, we will arrive on fumes,” Coli said.

“But the Paris-to-Quebec prize is within reach,” Nungesser noted.

“Quebec is only two hundred miles away,” Coli said easily. “We could make it with two hours of fuel remaining.”

“Then it is decided,” Nungesser said. “We make Quebec today, refuel, and make New York tomorrow. As soon as the weather cooperates, we fly home west to east.”

“Not quite as we’d planned,” Coli said, “but whatever is.”

“I’ll make the turn,” Nungesser said wearily.

If all went as planned, they could still beat Chamberlin and Lindbergh across the pond. And they would make the return flight with the benefit of experience. The Frenchmen were not giving up — at least not yet.

Anson Berry stared up at the clouds. The noise was closer now and becoming more defined. What had first sounded like a faraway locomotive now sounded like a logging truck in the air. Berry now knew it was a plane, a rarity in these parts, but where was it? The sound was coming from the south and growing in volume. He craned his neck around. For a second, he saw a flash of white. Then only clouds once again. He followed the sound as it passed over the lake from south to north. The sound diminished, then he heard it sputter, then go quiet.

“Merde,” Nungesser shouted.

Though Nungesser had no way of knowing it, the slide in the carburetor had frozen open. Raw fuel had poured into the float bowl and was choking the engine. Inside each of the twelve cylinders, the spark plugs were becoming wet. A strong spark might have helped matters, but the lightning strike had weakened the alternator and wreaked havoc with the voltage regulator. Just then the engine fired up and raced.

“Buy us as much altitude as you can, Captain,” Coli shouted. “I’ll seek out a lake for landing.”

Nungesser pushed the throttles forward. White Bird clawed at the air.

Anson berry waited until the plane was out of earshot, then resumed his fishing. Two more pickerel and he would call it a day. He had an hour, maybe two, of light, and he wanted to be inside his cabin with dinner on the table before night fell.

The engine sputtered and died once again. The clouds were thinning, and Nungesser knew there were clear skies only a few hundred feet above. White Bird continued to climb, powered only by the force from the last burst of speed until she exhausted her forward momentum. For a brief second, Nungesser could see the bank of clouds from above. To his left there was a hole in the layer, and he glimpsed the blue-green hue of water. Flaring his propellers, he pitched White Bird over in a dive.

“Hold on, François,” he shouted.

Mountains and bogs and wilderness below. White Bird floated down, slow at first, then gaining in speed. The landing angle was all wrong. Instead of a gradual descent, White Bird was plunging down like an albino fish hawk after prey.

Nungesser jammed an unlit cigar into his mouth and clenched his teeth as they fell downward, just on the edge of control. Coli knew it was bad — in the last hour his emotions had gone from exhaustion to disappointment to euphoria to acceptance. He was no longer mourning the end of his dreams but praying instead that he might somehow live. The hell with New York City or even Quebec — just to land safely once again would be enough. He removed a rosary from his leather flight bag and clutched it in his hand. Nungesser struggled with the yoke to pull White Bird from the steep dive, but the controls were sluggish and his arms weak from the long hours without sleep. White Bird slowly began to flare out of the dive. Nungesser could see the water below.

“François,” he shouted, “we’re going to make it.”

A moose stood in water up to his belly. He was chewing a mouthful of plants. A shadow passed over his head, followed a second later by White Bird. The sound of the wind whipping against the fabric wings less than twenty feet overhead spooked the beast. He beat a hasty retreat out of the water toward shore. Nungesser had managed to level out the plane, but he had no way to slow the forward movement. He slowly lowered the plane down to water level. White Bird was now ten feet above the water. He stared forward out of the cockpit.

The lake ended less than two hundred yards ahead. A rocky ridge rising eight hundred feet in the air lined the shore. If the engine would fire one last time, he might be able to force the plane into a 180-degree turn. He tried the starter, but the engine was dead. Nungesser pushed the yoke all the way down. They would not have a soft landing.

White Bird struck hard.

The bottom of the stationary propeller cut into the lower fuselage. The top broke off and shot rearward like a razor-sharp boomerang. It severed the top of Nungesser’s head just above the eyebrow.

The brain matter splattered Coli, who screamed in horror. White Bird continued forward on momentum, the ripped lower fuselage dragging while the left wing dipped over and struck a rock. White Bird spun counterclockwise as the wing was ripped off the side. Coli fell out and was hit in the chest by the horizontal tail wing. It crushed his ribs and broke his back. He was alive when he slipped from the wreckage, but he had no feeling in his arms and legs.

And then it was quiet, save for a small fire that the rain quickly extinguished.

II Rain, Black Flies, and Bogs 1984, 1997, 1998

One of the great mysteries of history is one that is little known nor long remembered. The tale of the White Bird and Nungesser and Coli could be a story by Stephen King, all the more so since the plane probably lies within a hundred miles of his house in Bangor, Maine.

The White Bird and its legend lay lost and forgotten for sixty years until author Gunnar Hanson researched the aircraft’s disappearance in 1986. Until then, it was generally thought that Nungesser and Coli had gone down in the middle of the Atlantic, but Hanson discovered that they had made it across the coast of Newfoundland, and then some.

Though the sky was heavily overcast with clouds as low as eight hundred feet, there were seventeen reports from people who heard it go over. Two claimed to have actually seen a white plane heading southwest at the approximate time that it was due to reach the North American continent. What gave the sightings, or rather hearings, credibility was the fact that they were all in a straight line, so there is little doubt White Bird made it across the North Atlantic and beyond Newfoundland. Four more sightings came in from Nova Scotia. At this point, Nungesser and Coli must have cut west for the Maine coastline. The final accounts, again in a straight line, came from people living in Maine.

The last person to hear the plane go over was Anson Berry, a reclusive fisherman who lived in the wilds alone. While fishing in a body of water known as Round Lake, about twenty-five miles north of the village of Machias, Berry heard a plane fly overhead late in the afternoon. He could not see it because it was in the overcast. The white color of the plane would have also made it difficult to spot against the clouds.

His earwitness account became colored through the years. Some claimed that he heard the engine sputtering and then die before a loud crashing sound. Others swore he never said any such thing. The next day, he walked to a small general store and asked if anyone else had heard an airplane fly over. No one had heard anything. But one old fellow, who was a boy when he knew Berry, stated emphatically that Anson never said anything about a plane crashing.

Because Berry was known as an honest man, no one ever doubted his story. His account also holds water because five other citizens of Maine who reported the White Bird passing over their head were in a direct line northeast of him.

Anson Berry will forever be a footnote in history as the last man to hear the engine of White Bird pass in the clouds above. The next thirty miles along the projected course of the aircraft would have taken it over totally uninhabited, thickly forested country, speckled with lakes and spreading into a vast impenetrable bog. Several miles past the great bog, the landscape becomes populated with towns and people, none of whom reported seeing or hearing the White Bird in 1927.

Theories abound. One has the intrepid French pilots, realizing that they can’t make New York, turning for Montreal. But that distance was too great for them to make with the fuel aboard. Or, knowing they were lost over land, they might have turned east for the coast and crashed in the sea. Another theory, backed by psychics, has them flying low and crashing into a mountain. Take your pick.

I contacted Gunnar Hanson in the summer of 1984. At that time, he was working with Rick Gillespie of TIGRE, another group interested in solving the mystery. Having other projects on the table, I dropped the matter until a few months later, when Gunnar called me to say he’d had a falling-out with Gillespie. I asked if he would like to pool search efforts with NUMA and me. He did.

We arranged to meet in Maine near the Round Lake area where Berry had lived. Ray Beck of Chatham, New York, also joined us, since he’d reported seeing an old engine half-buried in the ground above the Round Lake hills less than a mile from where Berry heard the plane pass. This was during a hunting trip in 1954. He generously offered the use of his vacation cabin, which was not far from the search area.

We gathered together and began walking the hills south of the lake. As coincidence would have it, Gillespie and his TIGRE group were also searching the area at the same time. It was raining, and Gillespie stayed in the town of Machias and held press conferences, claiming the discovery was only hours away.

My feeling has always been not to make a big deal out of an expedition until you have something to show for the effort. What was amusing was that we came, we searched, and we went home without Gillespie or his TIGRE group knowing we were present.

We forged through the wilderness of the beautiful country while the precipitation fell in a constant drizzle. For two days, we tramped the hills, Ray Beck trying to retrace his footsteps during the sighting of the engine so many years before. Nothing was found. Discouraged and soaked through clothes and skin, we returned to the cabin and made plans to try again the following year.

If I have learned anything looking for lost history, it is to keep an open mind and not become hung up on one theory and one theory only. Having always had faith in psychics, because they are such amiable and interesting people, and believing they see things that most of us can’t, I contacted Ingo Swann. Ingo is perhaps the world’s most respected remote viewer, a term now in use for people who imagine beyond.

He thought the White Bird project would be an excellent opportunity to conduct a controlled experiment. His associate, Blue Harary, well known for his work in remote viewing at Stanford University, came on board, as well as a lady named Fanny from Miami, Florida, who’d worked for many years with police departments in solving crimes. She holds classes for men and women with psychic talents and thought it would be a great chance for them to hone their skills. And, since they were working in different parts of the country, Ingo felt that there wouldn’t be any danger of them referencing or tuning in to one another.

First, Ingo sent them photos of Nungesser and Coli and their aircraft, along with a chart of the North Atlantic. His question was: “Did they go down in the ocean?”

They all came back with a no.

Then maps of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Bay of Fundy were sent.

Again the answer was no.

Next they received a map of Maine.

This time they replied with a yes.

He kept reducing the maps until he sent them a topographical map of the Round Lake area. Without hesitation, Ingo, Blue, Fanny, and her six students all put the plane wreck within a quarter-mile grid on the southern slope of Round Lake Hills. This struck me as amazing. Never in my dreams had I expected them all to agree on a crash site. If it were this easy for them to find lost historical ships and aircraft, future operations would all include psychic readings.

Now it was time to check out their predictions.

We gathered at Ray Beck’s cabin. Ingo and I met at the airport in Bangor and drove into the woods. How I managed to find the cabin during a thunder and lightning storm in the wilds of Maine, I’ll never guess. But miraculously I took all the correct turns until the lights of the cabin appeared. Ray was there, along with an old backwoodsman named Andy and two young fellows from New York City. Thunder rattled the log walls of the cabin as lightning flashed all around. It was indeed a haunted night. We sat amid the tempest, the big-time author, the renowned psychic, Ray Beck, who’d achieved fame and wealth inventing methods of plastic manufacturing, and Gunnar Hanson, a huge bear of a man at least six feet six and weighing 250 pounds. Only then did I learn that Gunnar was also an actor and had played the role of Leatherface, the butcher who dismembered bodies in the cult movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It goes without saying that I didn’t get much sleep that night.

For the next two days, we combed the site as directed by the psychics. Their visions indicated that the plane had become buried, so I brought along a small magnetometer, but it proved useless. There is so much ferrous geology under Round Lake Hills that the needle on the mag’s dial pegged and stayed there.

Then a plague struck. Just as we were wrapping up the search, the infamous Maine black flies appeared. I thought mosquitoes were bad. They’re trifling compared to black flies. Two things mystify me. One, how such a teeny-weenie insect can cause such an irritating bite. And two, why anyone would go to live in the wilds of Maine where they proliferate and attack. Ray Beck saved everyone a fate worse than death by passing out hats with nets that covered the head and neck.

The resulting search came as a crushing defeat. White Bird was not there. The entire ground was covered twice, inch by inch. Not a shred of an aircraft was found. Swann and the others were stunned with disbelief. How could eight remote viewers, working in separate areas of the country, come up with the same location yet nothing be found? Could they have tapped into one another’s minds? Is the plane indeed buried beneath the rocks of Round Lake Hills? Or was it carried off and sold for salvage many years ago without the finders reporting it? There were no solid answers.

I came up with theory number two hundred and thirty-seven. Since the White Bird had dropped its landing gear on takeoff from Paris and planned to land in the East River of New York, I figured that if they knew they were about to run out of fuel, Nungesser would have attempted a water landing. It wasn’t outlandish, considering the plane was constructed for just such an event. If this were a possibility, then they may have crashed and sunk to the bottom in any one of a dozen lakes along their projected flight course in a line beyond Anson Berry.

In April of 1997, I called on Ralph Wilbanks, and he and Wes Hall towed Diversity up to Machias, where we all stayed at the Machias Inn. Dirk Cussler came along with Craig Dirgo and Dave Keyes, assistant to NUMA trustee Doug Wheeler. Bill Shea also graced us with his presence. There are few people I enjoy as much as Bill. We’ve been through some harrowing times together.

Connie Young, the noted psychic from Enid, Oklahoma, also joined the search. Connie had worked with the FBI on the Tylenol murders, with incredible results. Connie envisioned the White Bird coming down in water and drew a diagram that nearly matched Round Lake.

We hauled Diversity over narrow, muddy dirt roads and found a little ramp on Round Lake. Local residents were dumbfounded. They’d never seen a boat that large on any of the lakes in the area and couldn’t believe we had pulled it over back-country roads. The effort didn’t come easy. Ralph had to stop often so the guys could chop off branches that hung over the road.

Every inch of Round Lake was surveyed with both sidescan sonar and magnetometer. Wes dove on two or three interesting targets, but they all turned out to be old logs. The water, strangely enough, was not blue or green, but a dark, rather attractive brown from the tannic acid in the logs that littered the bottom.

We found no trace of White Bird.

The other lakes we planned to search were in primitive areas that Ralph’s boat could not penetrate. He made a magnificent effort to take it all the way to the next body of water, Long Lake, actually arriving at a crude ramp, but the water was shallow and too littered with rocks for Diversity to be launched without knocking holes in her hull. This called for plan B.

We were lucky in meeting Carl Kurz, a local schoolteacher who was also an avid hunter-fisherman and restored rifles and shotguns. He generously offered his Zodiac boat with an outboard motor for our back-country searches.

The rain came down as we tackled Long Lake, which stretched on the other side of the Round Lake Hills. Ralph stayed reasonably dry in his slickers and big red fireman’s hat but grumbled most of the time, while Wes seldom muttered a word. The rest of us wandered around the woods between showers, but mostly sat in the cars.

During dinner that evening, Wes rolled out the sidescan recordings of Long Lake and examined them inch by inch. Plenty of rocks, but no sign of an aircraft or a lost fisherman’s boat either.

Over the next few days, we searched two more lakes without success. Still no White Bird, but we had fun despite the continuous rain. Everyone had their fill of Maine lobsters. I saw one store that had lobster on sale for $2.99 a pound. Our morning breakfasts were enjoyable, as we gathered around the table at Helen’s restaurant and planned the day’s search. And then there were Helen’s scrumptious pies. If he could have, Ralph would have loaded up Diversity’s cabin with them for the trip back to Charleston.

Dave Keyes took off early, because he was getting married and wanted a tattoo of his wife’s name.

Craig, Dirk, Connie, and I drove back to Bangor to catch the flight to Boston and then on home. I stopped at Stephen King’s house and walked up to the front porch. There were three or four cars in the driveway, including a Mercedes-Benz sports car. I rang the bell, knocked on the door, and mugged for the TV surveillance cameras. Nobody answered.

I yelled. “King, get out here, it’s Cussler.”

Dead silence.

I never knew if he was home or if I was persona non grata.

Fool that I am, I’d have probably volunteered for the rack during the Spanish Inquisition. I brought the gang back for another try in 1998. Except for Connie and Bill, the same motley crew returned. This time we were joined by my son-in-law, Bob Toft, and by William Nungesser, distant relative of Charles, who enthralled the team with stories about his famous kinsman.

Ralph and Wes searched the lakes while the rest of us tramped through the jungles of Maine in a futile search for White Bird. And guess what? It rained the whole time. We all came back to the hotel drenched. I’ll bet the manager would have turned the air blue with four-letter words if he’d known that I dried my sneakers in his microwave.

No matter how far we hiked, no matter how deeply we penetrated the wilderness, we always found old stumps of trees that had been cut down. It seemed that everywhere we searched, the lumberjacks had gotten there first.

A fascinating piece of history tells us that when the early colonies were formed in the seventeenth century, Maine was like a prairie. Trees grew only in occasional groves. For almost two hundred years, the land was farmed. But over the decades, farmers began to give up the land for other pursuits, or they moved west. Eventually, the open lands became covered with a giant forest of trees. Today it is so thick that it is difficult to walk through.

I mentioned to Carl that it seemed the entire state of Maine had been lumbered.

He nodded, smiled, and said, “Yes, twice.”

If that is the case, why hasn’t a hunter, a troop of Boy Scouts, or an army of lumberjacks ever stumbled on the remains of an old aircraft and the bones of her pilots? Scores of rumors and accounts of people finding an old engine have floated around for years. All have proven to be dead ends. Personally, I want to hear much more than simple engine sightings. Why haven’t they also found the three huge aluminum fuel tanks that were as tall as a man, the instrument panel, the propeller that measured eighteen feet in diameter, or the dozens of other pieces that made up the aircraft?

If she hadn’t been found after three-quarters of a century, the odds were only worsening with each passing season. Groups of local people spend their Sundays searching the woods. Perhaps one day someone will get lucky and walk into the wreck before they recognize it. In the meantime, the stories still thrive of old-timers sighting odd things in the forest, of mysterious engines dragged out of the wilderness and sold for scrap, of aircraft remains on the side of mountains spotted from the air during World War II. None pans out.

Either White Bird sank out of sight in a lake, which NUMA has pretty well covered, or she crashed in the vast bog that has never been entered by man or beast.

My bet is on the bog.

Will I ever go back again?

I hate to give up. My NUMA team would have never found the Hunley if we had quit after the first few tries. The next step is aerial remote sensing. Even that is a long shot, but every avenue must be traveled. Someday, I’ll come back with the gang and give it another shot.

Charles Nungesser, Francois Coli, and their magnificent White Bird lie waiting for discovery. They merit the fame for being the first to fly the Atlantic from east to west. It would not be right to leave them in an unmarked grave in a strange land. They must be found and returned to France as heroes.

They deserve no less.