Research is the key. You can never do enough research. This is so vital I'll repeat it. You can never do enough research. Without a ballpark to provide reasonable boundaries to look, you'll be wasting time and money on an effort with the same probability of success as finding the Pied Piper of Hmnelin and the town's kids on Mars. Sure you can get lucky, but don't bet your bank account on it. The odds can be a hundred to one, and yet there is still that slim possibility of victory. A thousand to one? Not worth the effort.
Research can either lower the odds or tell you it's hopeless.
Many's the wreck project I filed away without making the slightest attempt to explore because the data showed that it was a lost cause. A ship that disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico, a ship that vanished on a voyage from Bermuda to Norfolk, a ship that sailed unobserved into oblivion somewhere between San Francisco and Los Angeles, forget them.
Without a clue, you're looking at a search grid that could extend over a thousand square miles.
If and when they decide to be found, it will be purely by accident.
Threading the needle through investigation and study is my true love.
I've often said that if my wife threw me out of the house, I'd take a cot and sleeping bag and move into the basement of a library.
Nothing can match the intrigue and rapture of knowing you have pinpointed the location of a lost artifact and thus found the answer to a mystery thought unsolvable through the dust of centuries.
Many people think looking for a lost ship is exciting and adventurous. I can't speak for the big boys, the old pros like Bob Ballard and his Wood's Hole Institute team, but for the little guy it's no bed of orchids. The truth is, the actual search is the living embodiment of tedium. You're thrown hither and yon in a small boat by waves from dawn to dusk, sweating your pores out in a humid climate while fighting to keep from becoming seasick as you stare at little lines squiggling across graph paper. Still, when an image appears on the sonar recording or the marker sweeps across the aluminized paper of the magnetometer and you know you've got an anomaly or a target that matches the signature you're after, the anticipation becomes overwhelming. Then, when the divers surface and report that they've identified the object of your search, the blood, sweat, tears, and expense are forgotten. You're swept by a wave of triumph that beats sex any day of the month. Well, almost.
I receive ten to twenty letters a week from people volunteering their time and energies to NUMA. I deeply regret turning away their kind offers. Many think we're a big conglomeration with a ten-story building perched on pilings over the ocean. The truth is, we have no office, no employees, not even our own boat. We tried operating NUMA out of an office for a couple of years under the able management of Craig Dirgo, but there was little or no business to conduct and we closed it down. Expeditions only occur when I'm in the mood, which is seldom more than once a year.
Our crew of volunteers is small. Few are divers. Most are marinehistory buffs and electronic technicians. When we go to a particular area to search for a lost ship, we charter a boat and invite local divers familiar with the waters we'll be working. Quite often we are joined by members of a state archaeology team.
Because most of our expeditions are funded by my book royalties without any type of donations or grants, my wife and accountant, and yes, the IRS, all think I require a frontal lobotomy because I indulge in all this madness for no profit or gain. This is actually the first time in nearly twenty years I've put my experiences down on paper. I'm new at writing in the first person, but it does provide an opportunity to mention and thank all the wonderful people who have supported NUMA.
If there were more peculiar persons like me out there willing to spend money without the slightest hope of a return, we could take on more projects. A few people have talked big about wanting to become involved with NUMA's search for legendary shipwrecks but never put their checkbooks where their mouths are. I wish I had a bottle of beer for every time someone offered to contribute to a shipwreck search only to back out at the last minute. I could open my own saloon on promises alone. Many have promised much, but with no pot at the end of the rainbow; not one ever came across with a dime. Too bad they'll never experience the excitement of the chase or the satisfaction of a successful discovery.
The only man I know who shares my love of the search and is willing to lay a buck on the line is Douglas Wheeler, an executive from Chicago. He generously comes through whenever NUMA launches a search for the unknown.
Eccentric that I am, I've never searched for treasure or taken artifacts NUMA has raised from a wreck site. All recovered objects are used strictly for identification purposes before being preserved and donated to museums. Nothing is kept. Visitors and guests are stunned to find no maritime artifacts in my home. My only mementos are thirteen models I've had built of the shipwrecks NUMA has discovered, the buoy tied to the Hunley when my team first dove on it, and a life ring from Arvor III.
Why do I do what I do for no financial gain and despite frequent failure? I can't really say. Curiosity maybe? A fanatical desire to achieve what is all too often the impossible? To find something no one else has found? There aren't many of us out there who are driven by the same madness.
Alan Pegler is one who dared to follow that faraway drummer. Mr. Pegler, a jolly man with thick Burnsides whiskers, was the owner of a thriving plastics manufacturing company. One morning over breakfast, he read in the London Times that the Flying Scot, the famous crack express train that ran between Edinburgh and London during the late twenties and early thirties, was going to be sold for scrap. He contacted the chief director of the railroad and purchased the majestic old locomotive and its cars before they were destroyed. He then had the entire train immaculately restored to its former glory. Not content to let the train merely sit in a museum, Pegler took the Flying Scot on whistlestop tours throughout England and the United States.
Unfortunately, the operation proved exorbitantly costly and drove Pegler into bankruptcy. He was, however, able to donate the Flying Scot to a nonprofit foundation, which currently maintains and operates it for the public. People, young and old, can still thrill to the sounds of a steam locomotive as they are carried through the countryside under a column of black smoke and white steam.
At the bankruptcy hearing, the rather stern judge admonished Pegler: "Your downfall arose from your unbounded enthusiasm for railways.
The Flying Scot has been your folly."
Pegler, incredibly cheerful under the circumstances, answered, "Of course, I cannot say that I do not regret losing all my money, my house, my country manor, my villa in Italy, my Bentley and my Volvo, and being left with only what I stand up in. But I do not regret one moment buying the Flying Scot. It was saved and that is worth it all."
Obviously Alan Pegler is my kind of guy.
What follow are the chronicles of lost shipwrecks and the remarkable efforts by a group of dedicated NUMA volunteers, who worked long and hard to find them. The people who are portrayed, past and present, were and are real. The historical events, however, although factual, were slightly dramatized to give the reader a more focused insight into the action.
Through by Daylight
Monday, January 13, 1840 tapping from the two-wheeled hansom cab, a tall bearded man shivered from the bitter cold and buried his chin beneath the collar of his coat. He set his carpetbag on the icy sidewalk, reached up, and handed the fare to the cabbie, who sat elevated behind the carriage.
The man paused to glance at his pocket watch. The Roman numerals on the gold timepiece told him it was two minutes past three P.M.
Reassuring himself that his ticket was firmly in the breast pocket of his coat, he hurried through the terminal to the pier on the other side.
The bearded man had booked passage on the steamboat Lexington, bound from New York for Stonington, Connecticut, the terminus where passengers transferred onto the railroad to continue their journey to Boston. He was returning home there, where he was Smith Professo
r Of Modern Languages at Harvard, after giving three lectures and selling his latest poem. He never considered remaining in the confines of a New York hotel longer than necessary. He rarely felt comfortable in the city and was anxious to reunite with his wife and children without delay.
Seeing black smoke surge through the steamboat's tall forward stack, and hearing the shrill sound of its steam whistle, he began running madly across the wooden planks of the pier, forcing his way through a wave of passengers who had disembarked from the steamboat Richmond. Apprehension mounted and quickly turned to frustration.
Too late. He had missed his boat.
The boarding ramp had been laid on the pier by dockworkers, and the ropes that had moored the boat to the pier were being pulled aboard by her crew. Only a few feet separated the hull from the dock. The man was tempted to jump the gap. But one glance at the ominous, frigid water and he quickly changed his mind.
The captain was standing in the open door of the wheelhouse, staring at the late arrival. He smiled and shrugged. Once a boat cast off and left the dock, no captain ever turned back for tardy passengers.
He threw the disappointed ticket holder a brief wave, stepped into the wheelhouse, and closed the door, happy to return to the warmth of the pot-bellied stove beside the big steering helm.
The man on the pier stood there panting, his normally white face turned crimson. He stomped on the planking of the pier to shake the crust of ice from his feet as he watched Long Island Sound's fastest steamer slip into the East River, her side-paddle wheels churning the gray-green water. He failed to notice a dockworker, who moved beside him, puffing on a pipe.
The stranger nodded at the departing boat. "She leave without you?" he asked.
"If I had arrived ten seconds earlier, I could have jumped aboard," the stranded passenger answered slowly.
"There's ice forming on the Sound," said the dockworker. "A miserable night to be making' a passage."
"The Lexington is sturdy and fast. I've booked passage on her a dozen times. I'll wager she'll dock in Stonington by midnight."
"Maybe so, maybe not. If I was you, I'd be thankful to stay warm on land till the next boat leaves in the mornin'."
The man gripped the carpetbag under one arm and shoved his gloved hands deep in the pockets of his long coat. "Curse the luck," he said gruffly. "Another night in the city is the last thing I wanted."
He took one last look at the steamer making its way upriver through the cold, forbidding water, then turned and walked back to the terminal, unaware that those few feet between the dock and the hull of the departing boat had spared him an ugly and violent death.
"I'd have sworn that crazy fool was going to jump for it," said Captain George Child.
The pilot of the Lexington, Captain Stephen Manchester, turned without taking his hands from the helm. "A mystery to me why passengers wait until the last minute to board."
Child stepped to the front of the wheelhouse and peered at a thermometer that was mounted on the exterior window frame. "Barely four degrees above zero. She'll hit a good five degrees below before this night is over."
"We'll see ice before we dock in Stonington," said Manchester.
"The old Lex is the strongest boat on the Sound." Child pulled a cigar from his coat pocket and lit it. "She'll see us through."
A veteran ship's officer with four years' experience in steamboats traveling the Sound, Child routinely served as master of Mohegan, another of the passenger line's steamers. But this night he was substituting for the boat's regular master, Captain Jacob Vanderbilt.
The brother of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was in the early stages of amassing a fortune in ship and rail transportation, "Intrepid Jake," as he was called, had a reputation that bordered on the foolhardy. He often drove the Lexington on her runs across Long Island Sound at a furious rate. Fortunately for Jake, as it turned out, he was home with a nasty head cold and had no choice but to Turn over his command to Captain Child.
Unlike Jake Vanderbilt, George Child was a cautious skipper who rarely took chances. He stood by Manchester as the pilot concentrated on navigating the Lexington through the dangerous tides of Hell Gate.
From there, the tortuous narrows of the East River widened slightly until the boat passed Throgs Neck and steamed into the often treacherous waters of the Sound.
He left the comfortable heat of the wheelhouse and made a brief inspection of the cargo. The space beneath the promenade deck was packed with nearly 150 bales of cotton, some piled within a foot of the smokestack casing. For some strange reason Child failed to be concerned about the heavy concentration of inflammable cotton stacked so close to the casing that had caught fire only a few days before. So long as the necessary repairs had been made, he chose to ignore the potential hazard.
The rest of the cargo, in wooden crates, was stowed around the shields surrounding the engine. Satisfied the cargo was tied down properly and would not shift under the onslaught of heavy waves, he dropped by the cabin occupied by Jesse Comstock. The boat's clerk was busily counting the money taken in from the passengers, who paid for their meals in advance. Child did not interrupt Comstock's concentration, but stepped to a hatch and dropped down a ladder into the center section of the boat, where the engine and boilers were mounted.
The Lexington was powered by one of the most efficient steam engines of her day, built by the West Point Foundry. This was a vertical-beam engine, commonly called a walking beam, activated by a forty-eight-inch-diameter steam cylinder with an eleven-foot stroke.
The engine's piston rod was connected to a long shaft that drove the forward pivot on the walking beam, converting the up-and-down thrust to the aft shaft that powered the crank that turned the Lexington's big twenty-three-foot-diameter paddle wheels with their nine-foot sweeps.
Her boiler furnaces were originally designed to burn wood but had now been modified to take coal. When a full head of steam approached the red line on her pressure gauges, she cut the water at close to twenty-five miles an hour, faster than most Confederate blockade runners two decades later.
Courtland Hemstead, the boat's chief engineer, was examining the quivering needles on the dials of his brass steam gauges when Child tapped him on the shoulder. "Soon as we pass Sands Point, Mr.
Hemstead, pour on the coal," Child said over the roar of the boilers and the sound of steam. "I want a fast run."
" 'Through by daylight," that's our motto," Hemstead said, pausing to spit a stream of tobacco juice into the bilge. "Too bad Captain Jake came down with the fever and you had to leave your fireplace for a run this night."
"I'd rather sail in January cold than a November storm."
"Cold is the last thing I worry about down here by the boilers."
"Enjoy it while you can," Child said, laughing. "When summer comes, you'll be sweating in Hades."
Hemstead turned and began shouting orders to firemen Benjamin Cox, Charles Smith, and two other stokers, as they shoveled coal into the fire boxes of the big boilers. Child enjoyed the warmth for a minute or two longer before climbing back up the ladder and making his way to the captain's cabin to wash up for dinner with the passengers.
Manchester turned the wheel over to his helmsman, Martin Johnson.
He wiped the glass, which had begun to mist from the inside, and peered at the beacon on Kings Point. "Three degrees to port," he said to Johnson.
"Coming three degrees to port," Johnson acknowledged.
Manchester picked up a telescope from the forward counter and peered at a schooner that was approaching on an opposite course to port. He noted that she was heeled to the leeward from a brisk breeze.
He put the telescope back and studied the Sound ahead. The sun had dropped behind Manhattan Island in their wake and darkness was settling over the water. What little ice he was able to see was caked mostly on the calmer surface around inlets of the shoreline. There was no apprehension as he stared over the blackening water. Now that they were in the open Sound, the tric
kiest part of the voyage was over, and he began to breathe a little easier. He felt safe on the Lexington.
She was a stout boat, fast and ruggedly built for heavy weather.
Her keel had been laid by the shipyard of Bishop and Simonson of New York on a warm Monday in September of 1834. Unlike later steamboats that were designed by men who drafted detailed plans, a wooden model of the hull was carved and altered to the whims of Commodore Vanderbilt until he was pleased by the results. Then, using the model as a guide, full-size outlines were drawn in chalk. Next, carpenters, exacting craftsmen of their time, cut and joined her timbered framework.
Later renowned as a man who revered Ebenezer Scrooge, Cornelius Vanderbilt stepped out of character and went overboard in making the Lexington the finest passenger vessel of the era. He lavished a considerable fortune on ornate teak deck railings, cabin doors, staircases, and interior paneling. A fancy lounge and dining saloon comprised the main cabin. All deck lighting, curtains, and furniture were of superb quality and could have graced the finest mansions of New York City.