Wes is quiet and unyielding, the kind of guy who could walk through a hurricane, a forest fire, and an earthquake while maintaining his set little grin, then step up to a bar, order a beer, and ask the bartender where the action is.
Their endurance was little short of incredible. The hours spent running search lanes seemed a lifetime, but they never wavered. At 8
A.M Ralph and Wes were waiting at the dock. Their day did not end until they returned to the dock, refueled the boat, and pulled it up the ramp onto its trailer. They seldom saw home before eight o'clock in the evening. No matter how rotten the weather or how rough the sea, they hung tough hour after hour.
The name of Ralph's boat was Diversity, and the only times he looked a bit irritated was when everyone insisted on calling it Perversity, especially over the radio for all to hear. Naughty minds are difficult to control.
Visitors who came on board thinking they would find the search filled with thrills inevitably asked to be taken back to the dock after two or three hours. If they didn't become seasick, they were dying from tedium. Shattering novice visions of excitement and adventure became a daily routine. The hunt for shipwrecks takes dedication and perseverance. Leisure time comes only when you step onto a nice steady dock.
On this expedition the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology supplied the dive boat, using sport divers who paid for the privilege of hopefully finding and diving on Hunley. This part of the operation became very reminiscent of the follies on board Coastal Explorer fourteen years earlier. They lost the buoys our boat dropped over their dive sites for them, once claiming they were carried off by dolphins. Finding and probing the targets was also a hit or Miss proposition. The university's chief project investigator, as he was called, was fond of announcing that every anomaly they dove on and probed had the same dimensions and configuration as Hunley. He was particularly enamored of one such target that turned out to be an old steam engine.
On one occasion, a sport diver had a problem on the bottom and came within an inch of drowning. He might have if not for Harry Pecorelli III, a fine diver and archaeologist, who made the rescue.
Craig Dirgo and Dirk Cussler, however, did their best to provide entertainment during the long days on the water. Craig is a big man both in size and weight, who ran the NUMA office for several years.
When standing next to each other, with Dirk standing six feet four and thin as a garden hose, they could have presented a reasonable facsimile of Laurel and Hardy. One played off the other. I couldn't help wondering if Heckle and Jeckle had been reincarnated.
They were given a small fifteen-foot outboard boat and sent out with a gradiometer to run lanes in shallow areas. The boat looked as if it was used in the invasion of Normandy: tired, worn, and rundown.
Starting the motor was a major event. At least three times their call for help came over the radio of Diversity. Then we'd have to break off our search lane and perform a rescue operation. We'd always find them with a dead motor, drifting out into the ocean toward Portugal.
Finally giving up on their lemon, Dirk and Craig came on board Diversity, where they entertained the crew by performing their rendition of Treasure Island, with Craig taking the role of the pirate, Long John Silver. There were laughs, but the reviews were mixed.
Craig's contribution to our communication network came when we were contacted by Walt Schob on the dive boat. Walt radioed that Craig's voice was breaking up over his receiver. So Craig picked up a bullhorn, set the speaker against the transmitter, turned up the volume, and hailed the dive boat. All of us laughed till it hurt when Walt's voice came back: "Hear you loud and clear now. Atmospheric conditions must have improved."
There wasn't much I could contribute on board during the long hours, except making an occasional decision concerning where to search next. I spent the time dozing, listening to big-band music over my Walkman, and flying kites. I'Ve often thought of trolling for fish since we only travel at about six to eight knots, but could never muster enough interest.
One evening while we were cruising up to the fuel dock after a day's search, a fellow shouted across the water, "Are you Clive Cussler?"
Egotistically flattered at being recognized by my striking features, I asked, "How did you know?"
"By the orange dial on your dive watch," he replied. "Like the one Dirk Pitt wears in your books."
I looked down at my big twenty-seven-year-old Dora dive watch and sagged in disillusionment. He had guessed it was me by my wristwatch, not by my devilish good looks. There is nothing like a dose of reality to bring one down off his pedestal. Actually, my biggest disappointment was yet to come, and it had nothing to do with ego.
After eliminating another ten square miles and identifying several buried anomalies as old sunken trash, our third attempt at finding Hunley slowly wound down and was written off as another failure. To me, this was a hard setback. Certainly there was no regret in making the effort, but the futility of knowing we were looking in the wrong place hurt.
What piece of evidence had I overlooked? What signs pointing to the final resting place of the sub was I ignoring? Had I misinterpreted the research?
Earlier, I had relied on Colonel Dantzler's report and concentrated the search between Breech Inlet and Housatonic. But Hunley was not there. The only straw left to grasp was in expanding the borders of the search grids.
Determined to find Hunley and her crew before my final deathbed gasp, I made a decision that assured success. I contracted with Ralph Wilbanks and Wes Hall to keep the search alive during their free time.
They agreed, and I returned home to Colorado to write another book and pay for all the madness.
Ralph and Wes went out rain or shine and searched the grids I fared them through the fall and winter of '94 and into the spring of '95. Then on May 4, I received a phone call from Ralph at six in the morning.
Still half asleep, I heard him say, "Well, I guess I'm going to send you my final bill."
"Are you giving up?" I asked in a sudden wave of disappointment.
"No," Ralph said calmly, "we found it."
I can't remember my immediate reply, but I think it was something stupid like "Are you sure?"
"It's a done deal," said Ralph. "Wes and I and Harry Pecorelli dug through the silt and c@e in contact with the forward hatch tower.
Then we uncovered the snorkel box and the port dive fin."
"Before we unveil the discovery," I said, "we must have absolute proof. People have been claiming they found Hunley since 1867, but none of them ever produced a shred of proof. We've got to have photos."
"We can do better than that. Wes, Harry, and I will go back and shoot video."
I held my breath and asked, "Where did you find her?"
"About a thousand yards east and slightly south of the Housatonic.
"Then it survived the explosion, but had yet to begin its return voyage to Breech Inlet."
"Looks that way," said Ralph.
"Isn't that about where we dove in '81? On that object we thought was a Coast Guard buoy?"
"I've had nightmares over that for fourteen years," Ralph sighed.
"But I'm not going to let myself believe we misidentified it."
"My fault for not insisting you uncover more of it."
The answer had been lurking in the dust of time. I had previously ignored Seaman Fleming's sighting of the blue light while awaiting rescue in the rigging, because I saw no reason for Hunley to hang around the area for nearly an hour, risking capture before the Union warship Canandaigua arrived to rescue Housatonic's survivors.
The problem lay in my miscalculation of the time high tide turned to ebb and the water began sweeping toward the shore. I put it too early.
For some inexplicable reason I assumed the tide reversed soon after the sinking, not two hours later.
Too tired to crank their propeller against the adverse current, Hunley's crew must have moved away from Housatonic and waited until the tide worked to thei
r advantage and carried them home.
But that didn't answer why she sank and disappeared. Again, Fleming produced the key when he stated that he saw the blue light just ahead of Canandaigua. That suggests that Hunley's crew had perhaps thrown open the hatch covers to soak in the fresh night air while waiting for the tide to Turn. As Canandaigua steamed past toward Housatonic, her wash rolled into the exposed openings and swamped the submarine. Or, perhaps, as the closed hatch covers indicate, the Union warship unknowingly rammed Hunley, and sent her to the bottom.
Someday soon, when the submarine is raised, we'll have the final solution.
The team's historic discovery had taken place on the afternoon of May 3, 1995. Ralph had tried to call me that evening, but I wasn't home. After hearing the wonderful news, I wandered around in a daze for three days before the significance of our achievement truly sank in.
Mi The find came one afternoon when Ralph had a hunch. After eli n 0 noting one of my g 'ds, he decided to return to the Housat nic site and work farther east. After an hour, the magnetometer recorded a target that was appropriate for Hunley's metallic mass. Harry Pecorelli had accompanied Wes and Ralph that day, and he went down first to probe the target. Harry moved the silt until he touched a large iron object. He came up and notified Ralph and Wes that what little he saw didn't appear to be a sub, but he recommended further investigation.
Wes Hall dove and enlarged the hole in the silt until it was about twenty-five inches wide by twenty-four inches deep. He identified what proved to be the knuckle on the hinge of a hatch cover. Returning to the surface, he announced, "It's the Hunley. We've come down on one of the hatch covers."
Ralph immediately swam down and enlarged the hole until the hatch tower was eighty percent uncovered. He noticed that one of the little quartz viewing ports was missing, so he eased his hand inside and discovered that the interior of the submarine was filled with silt, a factor that may well have preserved the remains of the crew.
Satisfied that they had indeed found Hunley, they returned to port, drove to the museum in Charleston, and stood gazing at the sub's replica. "Do you realize," said Ralph, "that we're the only three people in the world that know what parts of the replica are incorrect."
Then they bought a bottle of champagne, went out to Magnolia Cemetery, and celebrated with the ghost of Horace Hunley.
Shortly after the Diversity team returned from videotaping the buried submarine, my son, Dirk; Craig Dirgo; Walt Schob; and I flew in to make the formal announcement at a news conference. First we all gathered on Ralph's boat the day before to go out and see Hunley for ourselves. But Mother Nature must have been suffering premenstrual syndrome. What she giveth she taketh away. We were beaten out by heavy weather and high seas. There was no diving that day.
I'll just have to wait until the day Hunley is raised before I can see the results from years-of effort and $130,000, the approximate cost of all the research and four surveys. My only memento is Ralph's buoy that marked the wreck during the video shooting.
We held a press conference to announce the discovery on May 11 beside the replica of the Hunley in front of the museum in Charleston.
Videotapes were provided for television stations, and photos were given out to the press.
Then the excretion struck the oscillator.
A great fight erupted over ownership. The State of Alabama, where Hunley was built, wanted it. South Carolina claimed it belonged to them for future display in Charleston. Even descendants of the original salvor of Housatonic filed a claim. The Federal Government said no way, since all abandoned Confederate property fell under the jurisdiction of the General Services Administration.
The vultures came to roost like gargoyles brooding over a derelict cathedral. Wilbanks, Hall, and I all caught hell because we held back on giving out coordinates to the location until we were reasonably assured the submarine would be recovered and preserved in a proper and scientific manner.
The state institute of archaeology demanded we Turn the site over to them for verification. What was there to verify? I was actually sitting on the fence until the director of the institute said a buoy should be placed over the wreck as a warning to vandals. My feeling was that a buoy was no different from a neon sign that proclaimed, THIEVES, COME ONE, COME ALL. Not a bad call as it turned out after rumors floated around reporting that collectors of Civil War artifacts had offered $50,000 for a hatch cover and $100,000 for the sub's propeller.
NUMA made no claim. I only wished to go home and begin research on the next wreck I hoped to find. Yet I was accused of desecrating the grave of Confederate war heroes, raping the wreck, ransoming the sovereign state of South Carolina, and scheming to carry off Hunley and set it in my front yard in Colorado. The Sons of the Confederate Veterans wanted to burn my books. I was called a glory-hunting charlatan, a con man, a scavenger, and a Benedict Arnold for betraying the noble profession of marine archaeology. Rodney Dangerfield gets more respect than me.
For a while I was afraid they were going to take away my bicycle.
Fortunately, saner minds prevailed, who were fully aware of what the NUMA team had truly accomplished. My combined expeditions had spent a total of 105 days running 1,196 Miles of survey lines over rolling seas in search of the submarine with no thought of financial gain or veneration by the masses. We looked upon the project as a challenge, and our only profit was the satisfaction of achieving a long-sought goal and preserving our maritime heritage.
The good people at the General Services Administration eventually turned title of the submarine over to the U.S. Navy and their Historical and Archaeological Department, led by Dr. William Dudley and Dr.
Robert Neyland, who are dedicated to seeing Hunley raised and conserved by the most skilled and experienced professionals in the business, using the latest technology to do the job right.
South Carolina State Senator Glenn McConnell formed a commission to work with the navy in the recovery and eventual display in Charleston after it was agreed to Turn over the historic vessel to the state in perpetuity. Since then, scientists from the National Park Service's Submerged Cultural Resources Center, who had surveyed the battleship Arizona and the ships sunk after a nuclear blast at the Bikini Atoll, have uncovered about fifty percent of the Hunley to determine its condition. They found that the submarine was more advanced and sophisticated than previously thought. Their consensus is that she is sound and can be moved following Proper archaeological guidelines.
With the proper funding a program can now be created to give the Hunley @ crew a proper entombment with honors and enshrine the submarine as it looked during her voyage into history. We hope that by the time you read this, the hull will have been lifted from the silt in which it has lain for over a hundred and thirty years and be resting in a preservation facility in Charleston. From there, it is only a matter of time before Hunley will go on display to be viewed by future generations for centuries to come.
Perhaps Ralph Wilbanks's greatest contribution, besides his discovery of Hunley, was his cocktail creation, which he shared with everyone on the team. Goslings Black Seal Rum mixed with South Carolina Blenheim Bottling Company's fiery ginger ale and an entire sliced lime.
There is absolutely no drink like it. Three glasses and you're ready to walk along the beach and kick sand on Hulk Hogan.
I could have used a shot during a television news show when the interviewer asked me, "Mr. Cussler, considering your long years of effort and the nitpicking flak that has surrounded your find, do you actually believe the staggering amount of money you spent was worth it?"
"Worth it?" I snapped. "Hell, yes, it was worth it! There are some things you can't measure in time and money. The search for Hunley was one of them. If we hadn't discovered the only intact warship from the Civil War, I'd still be poring over charts and writing checks while Ralph and Wes were out on the water hunting for it."
Sometimes, but not always, it pays to be a tenacious optimist. The lost locomotive of Kiowa Creek
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I Journey to Nowhere
May 1878
The bustle of activity in the railyard of the Kansas Pacific Railroad in Denver, Colorado, gave no indication that a disaster was impending. Colorado had become a state two years earlier, and Denver was rapidly growing in regional importance. Trains from the East, bearing the fruits of eastern industry, rolled into the yard several times a day. There they were unloaded, and some, for the trip to California, reloaded onto trains with extra locomotives for the climb over the Rocky Mountains. This evening, except for a downpour from a storm that never seemed to pass, it was business as usual.
The heavy rain had been falling hard for days, and half the city became flooded when Cherry Creek and the Platte River overflowed.
The record-setting deluge was unusual for May, but Colorado's climate was notorious for changing from sunny warmth to three feet of snow within twenty-four hours. The only thing that could be safely said about the Rocky Mountain state's weather was its guarantee of unpredictability.