The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks

I The Twin Sisters 1835, 1865, 1905

“Damn them,” Henry Graves said, “Damn them straight to hell.”

“What is it, Hank?” Sol Thomas asked.

Graves wiped the sweat from his brow and motioned with his head for Thomas and the others in their party to follow. The afternoon was sweltering, the land covered with a blanket of wet, oppressive heat. August in Houston is never temperate, and this, the fifteenth day of August 1865, was no exception. Climbing off the Galveston, Houston & Harrisburg Railroad platform, Graves led his party around the back of the wood-framed whitewashed building until they were out of earshot of any Union sympathizers.

“You see that pile of cannon?” Graves whispered.

“Sure,” Jack Taylor noted, “damn Yankees are probably shipping them north to the smelter.”

“Well,” Graves said, “two of them are the Twin Sisters.”

“You sure?” Ira Pruitt asked. “You sure those are Sam Houston’s San Jacinto guns?”

“Positive,” Graves said. “I read the plaques mounted on the carriages.”

Sick with measles, John Barnett crouched in the dirt before he fell over. “Lord,” he said.

The men were standing in a semicircle on the packed dirt. Off to the side was Dan, Henry Graves’s friend and servant. It was four months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and other than a few skirmishes in Texas, the long War Between the States was finally over. The five soldiers were dressed in the Confederate butternut-colored wool uniforms used in the last years of the war. The uniforms were tattered, dirty, and soaked with sweat. The men didn’t look much better.

Thomas had a swollen jaw, the result of a rotting rear molar he had been unable to have extracted. Pruitt looked like a walking skeleton. The scant rations available to a common soldier on the losing side of the war had caused him to shed nearly fifteen pounds. His uniform hung on his frame like coveralls on a scarecrow. Taylor was limping. The soles of his boots had worn through in several places, and he had stepped on the bent end of a rusty nail while aboard the railroad cattle car.

And then there was Barnett, a proud citizen of Gonzales, Texas. Barnett had emerged from the war relatively unscathed, only to be infected with measles upon mustering out. His face was splotchy and covered with tiny spots. The skin that was unaffected was a pale white. Bamett had a temperature of 101 degrees — not much higher than the temperature outdoors. Only Graves looked reasonably healthy.

Graves stared to the west at the sun, a glowing red orb clouded in haze hanging low near the horizon.

“Be dark in a few hours,” he noted, “and the train north doesn’t leave tomorrow until midmorning.”

Thomas reached into his pocket and removed a tattered piece of paper. “My commanding officer said there was a hotel here that was supportive of Confederate soldiers.” He handed the paper to Graves, the de facto leader of the defeated soldiers.

“Harris House,” Graves read. “Let’s make our way there and talk this over.”

The Confederates walked down Magnolia and into the town of Harrisburg. Dan followed a short distance behind.

“You need to sign that you are accepting,” the clerk said.

Inside the shipping office along the levee in New Orleans, Dr. C. C. Rice checked the receipt and initialed it. Then he walked up the gangplank and joined his family on the deck of the steamboat. The United States had a policy of neutrality concerning the war between Texas and Mexico, so the two cannon in his control had been listed on the manifest as Hollow Ware.

The pair of cannon had been forged at the Cincinnati foundry of Greenwood & Webb in secrecy, paid for by funds donated by the citizens of Ohio who were sympathetic to the Texas cause. Lacking foundry marks, ammunition, caissons, or limber chests, they weighed around 350 pounds each.

Two metal tubes—700 pounds aggregate weight — were destined to free a nation.

“They’re raising that big board,” Eleanor Rice said.

“That’s called the gangplank,” Mrs. Rice said sweetly. “It means the trip has started.”

Eleanor’s twin sister, Elizabeth, smiled. “That means we’ll soon be in Texas,” she said to her father, who clutched her hand, “and then me and Ellie get our horses, right?”

“Yes, dear,” Dr. Rice said, “soon we’ll be at our new home.”

The trip of 100 miles down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, combined with the 350 miles across the Gulf to Galveston, took ten full days. It was just past 9 P.M. when the boilers were stoked and the boat made her way into the Mississippi River current.

“It took us longer than scheduled,” Mrs. Rice said, as the steamboat passed over the bar into Galveston Harbor. “Will there be someone to meet us?”

“I don’t know,” Dr. Rice said. “We’ll just have to see.”

“There she is,” Josh Bartlett shouted.

The ship was several hours overdue, and his hastily assembled band had grown more and more drunk as each minute had passed. Bartlett reached over to support a tuba player as he struggled into his instrument. The fife player was laughing hysterically.

“Get ready, girls,” Dr. Rice said, as the ship was tied fast to the pier.

The crate carrying the cannon was rolled out of the hold and down the plank, followed by Dr. Rice, his wife, and the twin girls. The makeshift band was playing a crude medley of Texas revolution songs as Dr. Rice set foot on the wood-planked pier. Bartlett, dressed in an ill-fitting suit covered by a red sash denoting his largely ceremonial position in the Republic of Texas government, walked forward and shook Rice’s hand.

“Welcome to Texas,” he said, over the noise from the band.

“Thank you,” Dr. Rice said.

Rice opened the top of the crate to show off the two guns, then nodded to his twin daughters, who stood next to him on the pier.

“On behalf of the citizens of Cincinnati,” Eleanor said.

“We present you these two cannon,” Elizabeth finished.

The drunken fife player stopped playing for a moment and yelled over the heads of the small crowd of people assembled. “Looks like we have two sets of twins here.”

“Twin sisters for freedom,” Bartlett said, laughing.

A straw-haired lad of sixteen climbed from a mare flecked with sweat.

“Mr. Houston,” he said breathlessly, “the guns have arrived.”

Houston was crouching in front of his tent, sketching out battle plans on the dirt with a stick. He smiled broadly, then turned to his aide.

“Make sure they are brought forward immediately,” he said to the aide, Tommy Kent.

“Right away,” Kent said.

“This changes everything,” Houston said, rubbing the dirt clear with his boot.

The odds were against the Texans. Houston commanded an army of 783 troops. The invading Mexican forces, capably led by General Santa Anna, numbered 7,500. The Mexican soldiers had uniforms, regular rations, and numerous field pieces to lend them support. The Texan troops were ill equipped, underfed, and, until now, lacking even a single cannon. Most of the Texans had little or no combat experience. The Mexican troops had been drilled and honed into a cohesive fighting force.

Until now, Houston had been content to retreat. Three months prior, when Santa Anna’s troops had poured across the Rio Grande, the Texan army consisted of a small garrison located at the Alamo at San Antonio, another at the fort at Goliad, and a small contingent of troops that had assembled at Gonzales.

The Texans were outnumbered and outgunned.

“Sir,” Kent reported, “we have no shot for the guns.”

“I was afraid that might happen,” Houston said. “I’ve had the men scrounge around. We managed to locate enough scrap metal and broken glass to give Santa Anna something to think about.”

“Scrap metal?” Kent said in surprise.

“Nails, broken horseshoes, and metal chain,” Houston said.

Kent smiled. “I’d hate to be hit by that,” he said quietly.

“In that case, Mr. Kent,” Houston said, “I’d stay to the rear of the sisters.”

When the sun rose on the morning of April 21, 1836, it was tinged a blood red. Afternoon brought with it a haze, making the light dim and the mood sleepy. The temperature was in the low seventies, and a light breeze blew the smoke from the fires at the Mexican encampment at San Jacinto toward Houston, who was camped less than a mile away. There had been a few small skirmishes earlier in the day, but for the most part it was quiet.

“The smoke has lessened,” Houston noted. “They have finished their afternoon meal.”

“Is that what you have been waiting for?” Kent asked.

“No, Mr. Kent,” Houston said, “I’m waiting for them to bed down. We will attack at siesta time.”

“Make sure guards are posted, then relieve the men,” Santa Anna ordered.

Santa Anna waved his hand at a horsefly, then opened the flap of his tent and walked inside. The heavy noon meal and three glasses of wine had made him sleepy. His quartermasters had liberated several pigs from the Texas countryside, and he and the troops had enjoyed fresh meat for the first time in a week.

Standing by his cot, he removed his uniform and folded it over a wooden chair. Dressed in slightly dingy long underwear, he scratched a bug bite under his arm, then climbed under his smooth silk sheets and embraced his mistress.

Sam Houston was walking along a line of troops.

“This is for Texas, men,” he said. “Move quietly forward, flanking the twin sisters. When you hear the sisters sing, we go straight to the center.”

Houston stared at his men. They were a ragtag group dressed in fringed buckskin, dirty work clothes, even a few old uniforms left over from the Revolutionary War. For weapons they carried their personal black powder guns, knives, and swords. They were farmers, ranchers, prospectors, and blacksmiths.

But they burned with the fervor of the righteous.

“Yes, sir,” the troops said as one, “for Texas.”

“And let every man remember the Alamo,” Houston added.

The sister to the right sang first. A second later, her sibling cried out as well.

Yelling at the top of their lungs, the Texans lunged into the fray, urged on by a soldier with a flute playing “In the Bower.”

“Remember the Alamo — remember Goliad!” they shouted.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon when the first load of nails shredded two Mexican tents on the far edge of the battlefield. The guns continued to fire until their barrels were cherry-red. Then a swarming horde of screaming Texans charged the Mexicans’ crude barricade. Black powder smoke filled the air, while bayonets and swords flashed through the haze. The Mexican troops tried to rouse themselves from their slumber, but they were unable to assemble before they were inundated by the determined Texans.

“Into the center,” Houston screamed.

As soon as he heard the first cannon fire, Santa Anna stumbled from his tent. All he could see were smoke and chaos. The element of surprise proved a strong equalizer. Eighteen minutes after the first shot was fired, the battle was over. The Mexicans suffered 630 dead, 208 wounded, and the rest were taken prisoner. Nine Texans died that day. Twenty-eight others, including Houston, were wounded.

Santa Anna surrendered his army and any claim to Texas at San Jacinto, thanks in large part to the Twin Sisters.

“Lemonade or whiskey,” Rob Harris, the proprietor of the Harris House, said.

“Whiskey, but we’re a little short,” Graves said. “How much for the bottle?”

Harris lifted the square glass bottle and made sure the cork was loose, then handed it over the front desk to Graves. “It’s on me, soldier.”

“You’re a true Southern gentleman,” Harris said.

“There’s some tin cups in the sideboard,” Harris said. “You boys make yourself comfortable on the porch. You can usually find some breeze there.”

Graves collected the cups, then walked out onto the porch. Barnett was upstairs in his room, felled by the measles. Thomas, Pruitt, and Taylor were out back at the well pump, washing off the dust from the journey. Dan was dozing under the shade of an alder tree.

Graves poured a tin cup of whiskey, then sat in a rocking chair. Taking a sip, he stared at the town and began to plan. Harrisburg was a thriving hamlet. Along with the Harris House were two other hotels, several stores, and a steam mill to hew raw lumber. The railroad depot, located at Magnolia and Manchester, consisted of the station, a machine shop, and yards where a few locomotives were stored. All told, there were a few hundred souls — some friendly, some not.

A whistle from a steamer on Buffalo Bayou broke the silence, and Graves turned his head to the east. Buildings blocked his view, but he could see the trail of smoke from the stack. He watched the smoke travel north, then start east. The vessel was starting up Bray’s Bayou, the smaller stream directly in front of the hotel. She was on her way to Houston.

Graves sipped the burning liquid. His eyes watered, and he wiped them on his sleeve. A skinny dog, little more than bones and fur, rolled in the dirt of Kellogg Street in front of the hotel. At the sound of an approaching wagon, the dog jumped to its feet and ran north along Nueces Street. The sun was down, and the sky was growing darker. To the east, Graves could just make out the first star of the coming night.

“Henry,” Pruitt said, “you seem lost in your own world.” Pruitt was wiping his face with a threadbare cotton hand towel.

“Just thinking,” Graves said, “about the sisters.”

“While you were cleaning up, I reconnoitered,” Pruitt said. “There’s a wooded area north of the train station near Bray’s Bayou.”

“What’s the land like?” Graves asked.

“It’s rough,” Pruitt admitted, “but there’s a crude wagon path.”

Sol Thomas climbed up the front steps. His face was fresh-scrubbed, and that made his swollen jaw more visible. “No dentist in town, but the blacksmith offered to help,” he said. “I declined.”

“Here,” Graves said, pouring a cup of whiskey “this should help.”

Thomas took the cup and downed it in a single gulp.

Jack Taylor limped out of the front door onto the porch. “So how’s this going to work?” he asked.

“Let me explain,” Graves said.

Just past midnight, with a crescent moon overhead, the men slipped one at a time from the hotel and met up at the stables. John Barnett had rustled himself out of bed, but he did not look good. In the dim light, he glowed a blotchy pale white. He and Dan were the only two not to partake of the whiskey, and it showed. The others seemed filled with an alcohol-fueled fervor. Dan just looked scared.

“Matches?” Graves asked.

“Got them,” Thomas said, “and the tools.”

“I was just up at the station,” Taylor said. “It’s quiet.”

“I walked the path an hour ago,” Graves said. “There’s nobody to the north of the train station — it’s clear all the way to Bray’s.”

They moved through the town like silent wraiths. Two blocks west, they turned. Two more west to Manchester Street, passing a few houses that were blissfully quiet. Turning north, they passed a few blocks of empty fields until they reached the station and found the Twin Sisters, still on their carriages amid a jumbled mass of other, larger cannon. The air smelled of gunpowder and grease, swamp soil and sweat. Graves stared for a second at the pair of famous cannon, then turned to Thomas.

“I hear something,” Thomas whispered.

“Get down,” Graves ordered.

The men crouched alongside the landing.

Two Union soldiers were stumbling along the tracks from east to west. They were safely in their cups after a night of liberty and oblivious to their surroundings. Singing an Irish ditty, they cut across a field outside the station, making their way northwest to their encampment three-quarters of a mile distant. Had they turned to the south, they might have been able to make out the men crouched along the platform. Instead, they stumbled toward home. Graves waited until they were out of sight before speaking.

“That was close,” he said. “Let’s drag the guns from the pile and get out of here.”

Feverishly, they began moving the cannon and their carriages into the darkness, Graves and Dan pulling on one, Pruitt, Thomas, and Taylor dragging the other. Barnett stumbled along in the rear, keeping watch.

After moving a few hundred yards into the trees and bushes, they stopped not far from the bayou.

“Gather some tinder,” Graves ordered Dan.

Thomas removed the matches from a round metal container, then began to arrange the twigs and leaves Dan retrieved. Barnett was leaning against a tree, unable to be of help.

“Henry, the wood of the carriages is good and dry,” he said slowly. “Won’t smoke much.”

Graves nodded. “You just take it easy, John. We’ll handle the work.”

Taylor removed one of the shovels from the wagon and limped a short distance away. He started poking the ground, seeking soft earth. Thomas broke a few more twigs into smaller pieces, then struck a match. It sputtered, then fizzled out. Removing a knife from his pocket, he shaved the sulfur from a half-dozen matches and piled them on some dried leaves. Positioning himself on his knees, he bent his head down next to the tinder.

“Come on, now,” he whispered, as he struck another match.

The match sparked, and he thrust it into the pile of sulfur, which burst into flames. The leaves ignited, and the small tinder began to burn. Thomas waited a few minutes, then began to fan the flames with his hat.

Graves stared at the crescent moon. A few clouds passed in front, and then it was clear again. “Hotter than a smitty’s forge,” he noted.

The whiskey the men had consumed was wearing off, and with it went the false bravado. If the nearby Union troops stumbled across their little operation, it could mean imprisonment, even death. It was time to move this along.

“You find a spot?” he said to Taylor, who stepped into the light from the fire.

“Got one, Henry,” Thomas whispered. “It’s near those pines over there.”

“Light those cattails in the fire for torches,” Graves said. “Dan, you go with Jack and get the hole started.”

Dan followed Taylor a short distance into the woods.

“I have a good fire,” Thomas noted.

“Then let’s start lifting these carriage pieces onto the Same,” Graves said.

Taylor was soaked in sweat. The first few feet had been easy. Sandy soil and loose loam. Then the pair had struck a layer of solid soil. Now they were going down inch by inch.

“Wish we had a pick,” Dan said easily. “Make this go quicker.”

Graves poked in the fire with a stick. Dragging out a metal fitting, he waited until Pruitt poured water over the blackened metal, then reached down and tossed it aside. There was already a pile of metal plates and bolts, enough to fill a bucket.

“Fill that empty bucket with what metal will fit,” Graves said to Pruitt, “then dump it in the bayou. Bring back a full bucket of water.”

Pruitt bent down and began tossing the warm metal pieces into the bucket.

Graves walked over to where the digging was progressing and whispered to Taylor, “How far you down?”

“About three feet,” Taylor noted.

“That’s deep enough. Help pull the twins over here and drop them in their grave.”

Dan climbed from the hole. The cattails were almost out, and the light had grown dim. “Ain’t much of a hole, Mr. Taylor.”

“No, it ain’t, Dan,” he said, “but it’ll have to do.”

As if on cue, Graves, Pruitt, and Thomas appeared, dragging one of the cannon.

“Jack,” Graves whispered, “you and Dan on one side, me and Sol on the other.”

Walking the few feet to the hole, they tossed it in, then walked back and repeated the procedure with the second gun.

“Ain’t much of a hole, Jack,” Graves said, grinning.

“That soil was a damn shade harder than it looked, Henry,” Taylor said.

Dan began to shovel dirt over the guns, as Graves stepped back and wiped his hands on his pants. “Let me have your pocketknife, Sol,” he said quietly.

Sol reached into his pocket, removed the knife, and flipped it open. He handed it to Graves, who pricked his finger and handed it back. Thomas did the same, then handed it to Taylor, who reached up and handed it to Bamett.

“Now, men,” Graves said, “this is a blood pact that we tell no one about any of this until such time as the Confederacy rises again.”

The men touched fingers together.

“The Twin Sisters stay hidden,” Taylor said, “until they are safe.”

The men repeated the mantra.

“Mark a few trees with the ax,” Graves said, “and spread leaves over the hole.”

Taylor grabbed the ax and hacked marks into several nearby trees, while Pruitt and Thomas covered the area with leaves and branches. Graves walked a few yards to the east and stared into the distance. He could just make out a light inside a top-floor room of a three-story house in Harrisburg. Taking his bearings from all points on the compass, he walked back Barnett had turned the wagon around and was pointed back toward the tracks.

“Let’s get on out of here,” Graves said quietly.

“We’re here, John,” Graves said easily.

Barnett was staring out the window. “Seems so long ago, Henry,” he said, “like it was a dream.”

Graves and Barnett stepped off the train in Harrisburg into a vastly different world. Harrisburg was slowly being absorbed into Houston, and the area had been greatly built up in the last four decades. Graves had become a doctor, while Barnett was now a successful businessman in Gonzales. The men had aged and were no longer the wild-eyed youthful soldiers of 1865. Graves’s hair was more white than blond. Barnett, for his part, sported salt-and-pepper hair and a middle-aged paunch. Over the years, the pair had lost touch with Taylor and Thomas. It was rumored that Taylor had settled in Oklahoma in the land rush of 1889. It was said Sol Thomas had gone north to the Dakota Territories when gold was discovered, then died when he stepped out in the street in Deadwood during a bank robbery and caught a stray bullet. No one really knew. Dan had chosen to remain in Graves’s employment after he was freed. He had passed away in 1878 when an outbreak of yellow fever swept through the South.

“Let’s start back at the Harris House,” Graves said, staring up as a Ford Model C backfired on the street outside, then puttered away.

The two men walked the short distance to Myrtle Street, then looked around in surprise. The block where the hotel had been located had been razed. To the north was a new building with a sign that said “Harrisburg Electrical Cooperative.”

“Let’s ask in there,” Graves said.

Barnett nodded and followed Graves inside.

The clerk at the counter looked up as the two men entered. “Can I help you?”

“There used to be a hotel named the Harris House,” Graves said, smiling. “You familiar with that?”

“No,” the clerk said, “but hold on. Jeff,” he shouted in back.

An older man walked out carrying a rag. He wiped his hands. The man was tall and lean. His hair was going to gray, and he had a neatly trimmed beard.

“Jeff’s been around these parts forever,” the clerk said.

“Do you know where the Harris House Hotel was located?” Graves asked.

“I haven’t heard that name in thirty years,” Jeff said, “since just after the War of Northern Aggression.”

“We stayed there just after the war,” Barnett offered.

“After the war,” Jeff said. “You boys Yankees?”

“No, sir,” Graves said, “rebels. I’m Dr. Henry Graves from Lometa, this here’s John Barnett of Gonzales.”

Jeff nodded. “Good. I don’t trust Yankees.”

“About the hotel,” Barnett said.

“You men are two blocks south of where the old hotel was located,” Jeff said. “The streets were all changed ’bout ten years after the war when they relaid the railroad tracks. It’s all different around here now.”

“The tracks were moved?” Graves said anxiously.

“Sure enough,” Jeff said. “This city’s been all changed around since you was last here.”

“There used to be a three-story house near the bayou,” Graves said quickly. “You know the house I mean?”

“The old Valentine place,” Jeff said. “That’s still there. Three blocks north and two blocks west.”

“Thanks a lot,” Barnett said.

“No problem,” Jeff said. “If you need some more help finding something, you just give me a shout.”

That day, Graves and Barnett searched for where the cannon were buried.

But that, and all subsequent searches, turned up nothing.

II Dr. Graves, What Have You Done? 1987–1997

Every time we return from searching for the Twin Sisters cannon in Harrisburg, we swear we’ll never go back. It’s the only sane thing to do. I don’t wish to demean the good citizens of Harrisburg, but I can envision more exotic locales to spend a holiday. Why we’ve come four times to torture ourselves, I’ll never know. That we go again and again borders on psychosis, which means we have definitely lost contact with reality.

Like other searchers who have become addicted to the Twin Sisters, some of whom have looked half a lifetime, I believe that, despite the fragmentary and incoherent evidence, they are buried somewhere around Harrisburg. This isn’t all that inconceivable when you consider that I believed in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and virgins until my fortieth birthday.

No one really knows what happened to the famed Twin Sisters cannon that were put to good use by Sam Houston at the battle of San Jacinto. Stories circulated that they were dumped in Galveston Bay to keep them out of the hands of Union soldiers, or sent north after the war where they were melted down, or — the most fabulous tale of all — buried after the war in Harrisburg. The truth is probably lost in the mists of time.

The only good source is the eyewitness account of a Union soldier stationed in Houston who found the cannon lying in a pile with several others near his barracks. Corporal M. A. Sweetman, who was about to be mustered out of the army, wrote in his diary, on July 30, 1865:

Sweetman also found another pair of guns that he thought interesting:

Sweetman then exits stage left while Dr. H. N. Graves enters stage right.

On their way home after the end of the war, Dr. Graves and his buddies step off the train at Harrisburg six miles south of Houston on August 15, 1865. In Graves’s own words:

He goes on to say:

I have a problem with this statement. Number one, what woodwork? An entire gun carriage was built of wood. Number two, a fire would have caused suspicion. Union soldiers were camped within a mile and often walked to Harrisburg for food and drink. Number three, what was left of the carriages to throw in the river if they were burned? And number four, why roll the cannon 400 yards into the woods when you could have rolled them on carriages? Besides, you can’t roll cannon because of the trunnions, the pins opposite each other on a gun so it can be pivoted up and down. This scenario doesn’t make sense. Also, it was a hot, sultry night. These guys were toughened by war, but they weren’t at their physical peak, and one of them had measles. So I don’t believe they hauled the guns as far as Graves claimed, certainly not through a forest at night. They must have used a road or path most of the way before turning into the woods.

Graves went on:

This is the only detailed account Graves gave. If only he had said which direction he and his buddies took when they stole the cannon and pushed them off into the night. Regrettably, he left more questions than answers.

Before leaving, the men all took a solemn oath that none of them would ever reveal the secret of their hiding place until all possibility of their cannons’ capture and confiscation by enemy hands was removed.

In 1905, forty years later, Dr. Graves, Sol Thomas, and John Barnett returned to Harrisburg and attempted to relocate the site where they buried the guns. They drew maps separately, according to their memories of the landmarks, and compared sketches. The maps all coincided; however, the men were not successful in finding the exact spot, since the terrain had undergone marked changes — a situation I find all too often on NUMA searches.

The three men actually found three of the original marked trees and two of the stones they had placed in the general area. This would indicate that they must have been within a dozen feet of the Twin Sisters.

Another fifteen years passed, and then, in 1920, a reporter with the Houston Chronicle by the name of Mamie Cox persuaded Dr. Graves to come back to Harrisburg for another try at finding the Twin Sisters. In her story, Graves was driven around Harrisburg before stopping in the general location of the guns’ burial. Unfortunately, no record was left as to where the car stopped for the search or to whom the property belonged. Supposedly, Graves found two of the landmarks he left in 1865.

So ends an intriguing tale of a mystery filled with bafflement.

Texans have been drawn to search for their heritage over the decades. Many individuals and groups have probed the landscape around Harrisburg looking for the guns. They’re probably the only tourists who go there. Despite their efforts in analyzing clues and pursuing tantalizing leads that never pan out, they still search. And so does NUMA.

We first beat the bushes in the fall of 1987. Wayne Gronquist, Austin attorney and then president of NUMA, assembled a group of ten or so Texans who owned metal detectors and were fired up for the hunt. The first probe concentrated on the area west of the railroad tracks that run north across Bray’s Bayou into Houston. We spread out in a line and worked inland from Bray’s Bayou.

It was like trying to pick up confetti with a nail on a stick during a windstorm. Over the years, industrial manufacturers had used this location to dump everything from scrap metal to steel fifty-five-gallon drums to old refrigerators. There was so much iron that the metal detectors and magnetometers almost burned up.

I made the only discovery of the day. When sweeping through a field of high grass, I was startled down to my socks when two illegal immigrants leaped up and took off across the field. They must have been either hiding or sleeping when I almost walked on top of them. I shouted after them, “It’s okay, enjoy your day!” But they never turned or looked back before vanishing in the woods.

In 1988, Gronquist met up with another group of Texans looking for the cannon, led by Richard Harper and Randy Wiseman, who agreed to join forces with NUMA. Our people consisted of Bob Esbenson, Dana Larson, Tony Bell, and the Ross family. We all gathered in Harrisburg in March to begin the sweep. While we searched along the bayou, Harper and Wiseman hired a huge backhoe to dig a hundred-foot trench twenty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, but found nothing of interest.

The next day, using the Schonstedt gradiometer, I found an iron rim that came off an old wagon wheel and dug it up along with several old bottles. I felt the rim was too narrow for a cannon carriage, more in keeping with the size of a buggy wheel. But Harper and Wiseman became enthused, and they felt sure the rim came from the Twin Sisters gun carriage. They later dated the bottles to sometime in the 1860s.

The next day, there was a conflict between the two groups. Harper and Wiseman became angry because one of the people who had volunteered to bring his metal detector was a known treasure hunter. Why this bothered them, I’ll never know. If found, there was no way the guns were going anywhere but to the state capital in Austin, and from there to the conservation labs at Texas A&M. They were also disappointed that we had not rented a bigger backhoe, even though we had excavated along the railroad tracks where they requested. Then there was a problem of proprietary rights. I got the idea that they thought the Twin Sisters belonged to them and that we were interlopers cutting into their territory.

I figured this was the perfect time to steal off into the night and head to the nearest saloon for a tequila on the rocks.

For the next safari through the. tick-infested Harrisburg bush country, I called on the services of Connie Young, the noted psychic from Enid, Oklahoma. Along with Craig Dirgo, on his first expedition with NUMA, we drove through Harrisburg while Connie worked her magic. She sensed a pair of hot spots between the Southern Pacific railroad tracks and Bray’s Bayou. We then continued to Galveston, where Wayne Gronquist and a group of volunteers were searching for the Republic of Texas warship Invincible. Connie thought there was a possibility that Invincible might be under the sand on the beach, since the shoreline had worked out nearly half a mile after the long rock jetties were built around the turn of the century. A Texas rancher, who had volunteered his services, drove up and down the beach in his SUV while I dragged a gradiometer out the rear end. Connie, Craig, and a Boy Scout came along for the ride.

We were passing time waiting for a target to make itself known on the recorders, when I turned to Connie and said, “Time sure flies when you’re having fun.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when the rancher drove over a ditch in the beach without slowing. Craig and I both tumbled from where we were sitting on the tailgate. He rolled on the sand and back to his feet. I went straight up into the air and down onto my head. The blow crushed two of the discs in my spine. Anguish and torment can’t describe the pain. I could only gasp, unable to utter a word. Everyone stood around in a daze, thinking I had broken my back, until Craig walked over, picking sand from his ear, then looked down at me on the ground.

“You don’t look so good,” he said, tilting his head to allow the sand to run from his ear.

Over time Dirgo has proved to be a master of the obvious.

“Move your leg for me,” he said.

I did, though in much pain. He reached down to help me to my feet.

“I think you’ll live to write another day,” he said, as I slowly rose to my feet, “but we might want to take a side trip to the hospital.”

A trip to the hospital and an X ray told the story. I’ve lost half an inch in height due to age and another inch and a half to a pair of mashed discs. I had compressed from six feet three to six feet one in two seconds and was no longer as tall as Dirk Pitt, the hero in my books. A year and six months would pass before the pain slowly receded.

I think Craig said it best that day after we left the hospital and were driving back to the motel in the rental car. “I thought we killed the goose that laid the golden egg.”

“I’ll make it,” I said through gritted teeth.

Craig steered along the road running down Galveston’s sea-wall. “You know the good thing about motels?”

“What’s that,” I asked.

“Ice machines.”

Craig, who over the years has proven to be a more than an adequate scrounger, continued. “I’m going to get a trash bag and fill it with ice,” he said, “then I’ll take some duct tape and wrap it around your body to hold it in place.”

It worked, but I looked like a hunchback.

Unable to go out on the search boat the following day, I instructed Gronquist to begin running search lanes at the outer edge of the grid and work in while hunting for Invincible with the gradiometer. Not wishing to sit around, I thought I could take my mind off the pain with a side expedition. So Connie, Craig, and I took a little handheld magnetometer and drove the short distance to Harrisburg and looked for the Twin Sisters.

Craig ran the mag over the area while Connie experienced vibes. There was a low reading, perhaps suggesting a buried target. Craig then drove into town and rented a backhoe and operator. I was still in the throes of anguish when Connie, bless her heart, bought me a lawn chair to sit on and relax my aching back during the dig.

As soon as the operator with the backhoe arrived, it began to rain. We sat there under newspapers, teeth clenched, as Craig, crammed into the scoop, went down in the trench every few feet, and swept the mag around the bottom, which was now rapidly filling with water. The mag target petered out as we went deeper.

I paid off the patient backhoe operator, and we drove back to the motel where we stay in Galveston, Gaidos Motor Lodge. No sooner did we walk in, Connie drenched, Craig looking like a snowman built from mud, and me sloped over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, than we find Gronquist and crew packing and almost ready to depart.

I said, “What’s going on? We have another four days scheduled for the project.”

Gronquist snapped his bag shut and began walking out the door. “We overturned the boat in the surf, and the gradiometer was immersed and shorted out in the salt water. So we’re calling it quits and going home.”

I was somewhere between enraged and infuriated. “But you finished the search grid.”

“Nope,” muttered Gronquist. “We were running the first lane when a wave spilled over the side.”

“I told you to begin out where it’s calm before working toward the surf.”

Gronquist merely shrugged. “I though it best to start in close where I thought the ship might be.”

I thought it was a pity it wasn’t Sunday and Gronquist could have stayed in bed.

Craig wiped some mud from under his eye and looked at me. “I might be able to fix the mag,” he said, “but do you mind if I take a shower first?”

Later that night, he repaired the damage with a hair dryer borrowed from the front desk, along with some WD-40, solder, and a soldering gun from the hardware store. By that time the volunteers had already given up, but Connie, Craig, and I managed to spend the remaining days in a fruitless search for the cannon.

So ended the great calamity of 1989.

I should have scratched the Twin Sisters off my list of things to do, but I was swept away in an orgy of obstinacy. We’d be back.

The next few rounds of battle were fought by Craig and me, along with my son Dirk. When Craig was running the NUMA office, he would drive up to my house on Lookout Mountain outside Denver a couple of times a week to report on what was happening, and we’d spend hours talking. One of the topics was the Twin Sisters. He didn’t want to give up and neither did I, so we would occasionally reread the tale and format strategies. Our flights of fancy could become quite elaborate and detailed.

My personal favorite was the time we waited until dark and then set off into the woods near my home with a pedometer. After walking four hundred yards in a random direction, we marked several trees with dabs of spray paint and returned by a different route. We then waited a week and set out to find them. We never did. Not only that, when we later checked the distance once again with the pedometer, we found that the area where we had searched for the marked trees was more like two hundred or two hundred and fifty yards from my house. That showed that, without accurate aids, estimating distances in a forest at night is at best a hit-or-miss proposition.

Next we tried carrying a bag of Portland cement, which weighs a lot less than a heavy iron cannon, a distance into the woods. I think I can now tell you that if they were carrying the guns, they didn’t go four hundred yards. More like a hundred and forty yards.

In 1989 and 1994, Craig stopped in Harrisburg for a day here and a day there while going to or returning from other searches, but to no avail. In 1995, when NUMA returned to search for the Texas Navy ship Invincible, Craig and I had a go at it again. I still laugh about this. My son Dirk was due to arrive from Phoenix to lend a hand that afternoon, and since Harrisburg is close to Hobby Airport, where Dirk was arriving, Craig and I figured we could search almost right up until his plane was due to arrive and then rush over and pick him up.

Over the years, we had moved around our search area and were now concentrating in an area north of the old railroad station and east of the current north-to-south running line. This area is heavily wooded and brushy. Long sleeves and a machete are good things to have. Craig and I marked off a grid and began methodically covering the area. Every chirp from the detector needed to be dug, and we’d brought along a pick and shovel for that purpose.

My first big find was a bum that was living in the woods — I scared him awake by nearly stepping on him as I walked along, head down. He ran off into the woods like a deer frightened by a bear. He even left his cardboard box behind. I moved it to the side I’d already searched and checked under it — nothing.

By now it was getting hot, and Craig and I were sweating. We continued to search. An hour or so later, Craig discovered a fifty-five-gallon drum that had been buried, not too long after I discovered an old engine block that had been buried. So went the next few hours until early afternoon. We had decided to wait and eat lunch until after we picked up Dirk, since we figured they probably wouldn’t have fed him on the plane.

Leaving markers to show the area we’d covered, we grabbed our pick, shovel, and detector and walked back to the rental car. I looked at Craig. His T-shirt was wet enough to wring out, and his face was covered with dirt. He opened up the trunk of the rental car and tossed in the tools while removing two cans of warm soda. “Tom Clancy’s drinking fine champagne right now,” he said, as he handed one over.

“Thanks,” I said, as I popped the top.

Craig walked around and opened the car door — and a wave of heat erupted from inside that dried out my eyeballs. He slid into the driver’s seat and twisted the ignition. A few minutes later, we were cruising toward the airport. I looked at my watch. “We should have just enough time to park and walk inside,” I said.

Craig slid the rental car into a short-term parking spot, and we walked across the asphalt toward the terminal. Oh, was it ever hot! Then the doors to the terminal slid open, and we walked into the baggage claim area. It must have been forty degrees in there; Craig still swears he could see his breath.

And then there were the stares coming from the deplaning passengers. Craig seemed oblivious as he walked along, searching for Dirk, but the sight was comical, to say the least. His boots were coated with dirt and mud, his pants and shirt wet with sweat. That wasn’t the funny thing, however — as soon as he’d walked inside, the cold had instantly chilled him, and he was twitching like a Georgia farmer going ice-fishing for the first time. Both his shoulders were pumping up and down, and he was rubbing his hands together like a maniacal scientist intent on destruction. As he walked along, the crowd parted like a tank going through a crystal shop. Then Dirk approached from the other direction, headed for the baggage carousel.

At first glimpse, he actually stopped and broke out laughing.

“What in the hell,” he said between laughs, “happened to you two?”

“It’s those damn Twin Sisters,” I said. “We’ll tell you about it outside.”

Those damn Twin Sisters. Dirk and Craig did more work in 1997 when NUMA was in Galveston searching for the Invincble. This time, they moved outside the prime search area and scanned around some of the nearby homes. When Dirk and Craig work together, it often resembles a bad Abbott and Costello routine. The two feed off each other, passing the time doing poor comedy skits and worse impersonations. It usually starts with an innocuous comment and goes downhill from there.

And the Twin Sisters send both men into a frenzy.

“Hot enough for you?” Dirk began, as the pair unloaded the equipment from the trunk of the rental car.

“All we need is water and some good people,” said Craig.

“Of course,” replied Dirk, “that’s all that hell needs, as well.”

Craig hefted a pickax. “Volunteers,” he said. “We need volunteers.”

Dirk removed the last of the equipment and shut the trunk. “We could run an ad,” he said, as the pair began walking toward the search area.

“Looking for a few people who enjoy intense boredom interspersed with moments of extreme discomfort. Masochists welcome,” Craig said.

“Are your hobbies magnetometry, sweating, and digging holes? NUMA needs you.”

“Did you ever hide stuff from yourself just for the thrill of finding it later? You may be our type.”

“Will you work for free?” said Dirk.

Craig laughed. “Will you pay us to suffer?”

Dirk pointed to a ditch in front of an old frame house. The men began swiping the gradiometer back and forth. Craig watched the readout.

“Have you ever been so hot that your tongue was sweating?” Dirk said.

“Ever had to wash your clothes in a motel-room sink?”

“Because the Laundromat turned you away?” Dirk said.

“Stop,” said Craig. “Back about a foot.”

Dirk scanned the area.

“It’s small,” said Craig. “Continue.”

“Do you like greasy diner food?” Dirk resumed.

“Can you exist on a diet of taco chips and warm soda?”

Dirk looked over at Craig. “This area is magnetically deserted. Let’s move on.”

“As barren as a whore’s heart.”

“As deserted as a Vanilla Ice concert,” said Dirk.

This gives you a pretty good idea of what the first thirty minutes of the search went like. You can expand it for eight hours or so to understand the verbal barrage I’m faced with. When possible, I send the two off alone. If not, Ralph and I banish them to the rear deck of the search boat.

Later that day, Dirk received a good reading inside a horse corral. Craig, and the gift of a case of cold Miller Lite, convinced the owner to let them dig. After digging through the packed soil for most of one hot afternoon, the pair located an old anvil buried six feet deep. So they moved on to the next target. Such is the nature of what we do.

In early 2001, Craig flew to Phoenix so we could go over progress on this book. We spent a couple hours going over the Twin Sisters file and have come up with yet another hypothesis. Time will tell on this.

Both Dirk and Craig did make one request, however: When NUMA returns, they want to schedule it for some month besides August. Wimps.