The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks

by Clive Cussler

  “I think the barge is taking on water,” deckhand Frank Terbill shouted.

  Mallick twisted the wheel of Francis Ann as the weight from the barge pulled his stern toward the waves.

  “She’s been porpoising for the last half hour,” Mallick said. “I was hoping the seas would calm some.”

  Mallick felt his engine surge as the line connecting Maryland to his stern slackened.

  “She’s going to whipsaw,” Mallick managed to shout to Terbill, before a wave hit Francis Ann broadside and threw them both against the bulkhead.

  Then one of the lines connecting them to Maryland parted. It whipped over the pilothouse like an angry snake and snapped against the windshield. Francis Ann was pulled to port as the weight shifted and Mallick struggled to keep her from facing abeam to the mounting waves. Grabbing an ax mounted on the wall, he handed it to Terbill.

  “Cut that bitch loose,” he shouted, “or we’re going in.”

  Terbill raced to the stem deck and raised the ax over his head. Then he swung with all the force he possessed. The blade parted the line and embedded itself in the gunwale. In the fog, no one witnessed Maryland go under.

  II

  Coke Isn’t Necessarily a Soft Drink 1994, 2000

  In 1987, Bob Fleming, my old friend and researcher, sent me a report from the Army Corps of Engineers on the sinking and later demolition of a barge called the Maryland. At first I failed to see the significance of a lost barge, but then he called me on the phone and explained that Maryland was the ill-fated excursion steamboat General Slocum that had burned in New York’s East River in the summer of 1904 with horrible loss of life.

  Sometime after the burned-out hulk had grounded on Brother’s Island in the East River, she was raised and towed to a shipyard. With her hull still sound below the waterline, General Slocum was sold for $70,000 by the Knickerbocker Steamship Company for use as a coal barge and renamed Maryland.

  Six years later, while hauling a cargo of furnace coke and being pulled by the tug Asher J. Hudson from Camden to Newark, New Jersey, her hull began to leak. With a gale blowing and seas rising, the tug captain, Robert Moon, knew Maryland could not stay afloat. He removed his crew from the barge and cut her loose.

  For the final time, General Slocum/Maryland slipped into the sea.

  Upon hearing of her sinking, Maryland’s owner, Peter Hagen, celebrated. Not only would marine insurance cover the loss, but he was glad she was off his hands. In his mind, the vessel was cursed. She was always tied up for repairs, and before she made her last trip he was forced to add to her expense by replacing her rudder.

  “Ill fortune always followed the Slocum,” said Hagen. “She was always getting into trouble. I’m glad she’s gone.”

  The 1912 annual report of the Chief of Engineers of the Army Corps stated:

  The wreck of barge “Maryland” lying sunk in Atlantic Ocean off Corson’s Inlet, N.J. Under date at December 15, 1911, an allotment of $75.00 was made for an examination of the wreck for its removal. On January 29, 1912, a further allotment of $150 was made. The wreck was originally the steamer “Slocum,” which was burned to the water’s edge and sank in New York Harbor a number of years ago. An examination showed the wreck to be lying about 1 mile offshore, in the path of frequent coast traffic. It was a wooden hull vessel, 210 feet long, 37 feet wide and 13 feet deep. It was wrecked during a storm and sank December 4, 1911, while in tow in route from Philadelphia to New York. After due advertisement an emergency contract was made with Eugene Boehm, of Atlantic City, the lowest bidder at $1,442. Work was begun February 12 and completed February 18, 1912. The wreck was broken up with dynamite. Upon completion of the operations the late site was carefully swept over an area of about 500 square feet and found to be clear of wreckage.

  Another Corps report stated that the wreck was standing fifteen feet off the bottom in a water depth of twenty-four feet — thus the concern over her endangering other passing ships.

  * * *

  Finding General Slocum, a.k.a. Maryland, sounded like a piece of cake, right? The initial thinking was that the wreck would lie exposed on the bottom and that a sidescan sonar would have a relatively easy time locating it. Thus, all we had to do was merely sail a mile off Corson’s Inlet, cruise around for twenty minutes, and shout “Eureka!” Right?

  Ho, ho, ho.

  In September of 1994, Ralph Wilbanks and Wes Hall had finished a survey job in New York, so I asked them to try for General Slocum on their way home to the Carolinas. They launched Ralph’s survey boat Diversity and spent two days mowing the lawn outside Corson’s Inlet with a sidescan sonar.

  A thorough search of the seafloor turned up nothing. The sonar read only a flat sandy bottom.

  Now it was time to get back to the archival research. Different pieces of information began filtering in. One mention of the wreck put it two miles off the Ludlum Beach Lifeguard Station. Divers up and down the Jersey coast claimed to have dived on Maryland, but they all described intact remains that looked to them like a barge.

  Two different targets were provided by Gene Patterson of Atlantic Divers at Egg Harbor Township. One turned out to be an old steamship, and another was probably the anchor and chain of the wreck, since the anomaly was spread out in the same vicinity. Gene also offered another target, but it was more than five miles off Corson’s Inlet.

  Steve Nagiweiz, executive director of the Explorers Club, sent a set of coordinates he thought was General Slocum. Steve’s target was also too far off the inlet to be the wreck. Both Gene’s and Steve’s wrecks were found at a water depth between forty and fifty feet. According to the Army Corps’s indicated depth of twenty-four feet off Corson’s Inlet, they were both too deep.

  Local divers who were interviewed all said they were expecting the remains of the wreck to be intact and have the appearance of a barge. None was aware of the Army Corps reports, nor did it occur to them that the wreck might be buried.

  * * *

  In late September of 2000, Ralph and Shea McLean set up headquarters in Sea Isle, New Jersey, for the second attempt to find General Slocum/Maryland. Not taking any chances, they expanded the search grid from the old Ludlum Beach Lighthouse beyond Corson’s Inlet. They began a mile and a half from the shore and worked in, running search lanes parallel to the beach. Ralph expected that the target, when they passed over it, would have the characteristics of a shattered wreck with scattered remains. This would be in keeping with the Army Corps account of the General Slocum/Maryland being blasted nearly level to the seabed.

  The search now turned to targets that did not protrude or reach to the surface. It stood to reason that, if the barge was flattened by explosives as a menace to navigation, there was a better-than-even chance she had worked her way into the bottom silt.

  The survey was conducted by towing the sensor of a Geo-metrics cesium magnetometer. Ralph was looking for a magnetic signature that would indicate iron hardware and pins in the original hull. There would be no huge mass, because the engine and boilers had been removed after the tragic fire. The clincher would be the fragments of the coke she was carrying when she sank.

  Several small targets were located, but none had the criteria that fit the barge. Eventually, one magnetic anomaly looked promising. Just to be certain, Ralph and Shea continued running their hundred-foot search lanes until they were satisfied there were no other targets that matched the predicted signature. Satisfied that their main target filled the bill, they spent the next three days dredging in the sand; exposing large timbers, many splintered as if ripped apart, and many scattered fragments that resembled coke.

  The last day was spent in performing a magnetic contour of the site. This contour process gave them a rough measurement of the wreckage that worked out to 217 feet by 38 feet, nearly the same known dimensions of General Slocum after she was refitted as the barge Maryland. The site was three miles north of the Ludlum Beach Lighthouse and one mile off Corson’s Inlet, right where the Army Corps of Engineers said it wo
uld be.

  After returning to Charleston, Ralph took the pieces of what he’d recovered and believed was coke to a gemologist and four professors from the local college. They all agreed that it was indeed coke.

  The curtain was drawn on the final act of General Slocum. It was almost as if she’d served penance for that horrible holocaust on a warm summer day in June 1904. Perhaps it was fitting that the once-beautiful ship, the pride of the New York excursion lines, with her glory days far behind her, became a stripped-down barge that was banished to roam the seas for another six years, carrying residue from steel furnaces.

  She is still remembered in New York City when descendants of the victims gather at the memorial services held on the anniversary of the disaster at the Trinity Lutheran Church in Middle Village, Queens. Sixty-one victims are buried in the nearby church cemetery near a beautiful twenty-foot-high memorial statue.

  At the last service, two of the only known survivors still living were present.

  PART NINE

  S.S. Waratah

  I

  Disappearing Act 1909

  “There is a strange feeling afoot,” Captain Joshua Ilbery said. “Vibrations in the winds.”

  The date was July 23, 1909. Waratah was less than an hour from her scheduled stop in Durban, and the trip had not been without incident. As soon as the ship left London on her maiden voyage to Australia via South Africa, Ilbery had noticed her tendency to roll to starboard. The first such twitch had happened on maiden day in the English Channel off Guernsey. It had been a clear day, with fair seas and winds from the west. A series of three waves, each larger than the last, borne from an underwater disturbance far out in the Atlantic Ocean, had rocked the ship. The waves were nothing really — eight-, ten-, and twelve-foot rollers against seas of six — but Waratah had immediately reacted with displeasure. Like a punch-drunk fighter, she had bobbed far to starboard as though she were going to drop. Then, as the waves passed, she shrugged off the seas and settled into a rolling pitching that lasted for close to a quarter hour. Ilbery had thought that the incident was a result of improper loading in the cargo hold and ordered the stores balanced, but the stability was not improved.

  “Strange feelings on Waratah?” Second Officer Charles Cheatum joked. “Will wonders never cease.”

  Ilbery turned to Cheatum and smiled. If nothing else, his right-hand man had tried to maintain his spirits on the long journey. When Waratah had shuttered off the Azores on the way south, Cheatum had commented that they must have struck a whale. Off Cape Hope, it was a rogue wave. Far in the Indian Ocean, two days from Sydney, the ship had suddenly shook as if she were going to come apart. Cheatum had joked that it was a sudden gust of gravity.

  Even so, for all the strange occurrences, Waratah was still steaming.

  From Sydney, the ship had called on Melbourne, then Adelaide. There she was reloaded with cargo and passengers for the return to London. All told, the voyage had lasted for eighteen months and should show a profit for the owners of Waratah, the Lund Blue Anchor Line. Profit or not, this would be Ilbery’s last voyage as captain of the vessel. He would be turning over the ship to Cheatum as soon as they reached London. Ilbery believed he had cheated fate one too many times.

  * * *

  Claud Sawyer was in the grips of another nightmare. The apparition had returned. In one hand, the wraith held a medieval sword, in the other hand a bloodstained sheet.

  “Away,” Sawyer screamed in his sleep, awakening himself.

  Sitting upright in his berth, he struggled to calm himself. Swiveling in the berth, he placed his bare feet on the deck, then reached across to a small table. Grasping a hand towel, he dried the icy sweat from his brow, then sipped from a half-full glass of water. Rising to his feet, he took a few steps to the brass porthole and stared through the circle.

  “Land,” he said to himself, staring at the cliffs near the port of Durban. “God, I miss you so.”

  Reaching for his shirt and pants, he quickly dressed and walked toward the door to the outer deck. Once he opened the door, he stared back at his berth. An outline of his body in sweat, thick torso and twin lines where his legs had lain, was evident on the cotton-padded berth cushion. The design resembled the bloody outline on the sheet clutched by the apparition. Sawyer grabbed his single suitcase and hurried from his cabin. He would watch the docking from deck. Durban was to be his final stop.

  * * *

  Captain Charles Deroot stared at the approaching ship from the pilothouse of his tugboat Transkei.

  “Ugly spud,” he said to his deckhand.

  “Lines like a bread box on a gravy boat,” the deckhand agreed.

  The tides were pulling Transkei out to sea. DeRoot pushed his throttles forward to remain on station, then resumed his viewing. Some ships have a grace and elegance you can see from afar. The ship coming into view had all the style of a square dancer with a clubfoot. DeRoot knew the history of Waratah—it was a hobby of his to know the pedigree of the ships he serviced — and this vessel was far from a thoroughbred.

  Built by the British firm Barclay, Curle & Company as a sistership to Geelong, she came into being under two dark clouds. The first strike was the most basic, her design. Geelong had proven to suffer stability problems, and the construction specifications for Waratah were drafted to address that problem. To cover themselves, the builders had inserted two words, if possible, into the contract. Apparently, it was not. The ships had a flawed design, and there was little that could be done to correct the problem.

  The second strike was her very name. Of the three other ships since 1848 to be named Waratah, all had so far vanished or wrecked. Most men of the sea are superstitious, and DeRoot was no different. A cursed name atop a bad design was an omen he could not ignore.

  “Backing down,” DeRoot shouted to the deckhands, as he spun Transkei around and checked the transmissions in reverse.

  All was in order, so he stared back to Waratah.

  * * *

  Nearly five hundred feet in length, with a displacement of 9,339 tons, Waratah was a large vessel for her day. Her hull was jet black, now showing some streaks of rust from the year and a half she had been at sea. Her upper decks were a pale yellow. The ship’s single funnel, which vented the smoke from the steam boilers that fed power to the twin screws, was painted a two-color scheme of black at the base, a middle band of white, then black again at the top. Twin masts pierced the air — one on the forward deck, the other aft — but the masts did little to subtract from the vessel’s squat appearance.

  In DeRoot’s view, Waratah was an ugly duckling dancing on the sea.

  * * *

  “Slow and signal the pilot boat,” Ilbery ordered Cheatum.

  Cheatum turned to the signalman, who semaphored the instructions to a nearby boat.

  A few minutes later, the pilot boat came alongside and dropped off the pilot, who climbed a stairway to the main deck, then walked across to the pilothouse stairway. Climbing the stairs, he stopped at the door to the wheelhouse and knocked.

  “Durban pilots,” he said loudly.

  “Permission to enter,” Ilbery said, motioning for the door to be opened.

  The pilot entered the pilothouse and walked over to Ilbery with his hand outstretched. “Peter Vandermeer,” he said. “I’ll be taking you inside.”

  “Welcome aboard Waratah, Captain Vandermeer,” Ilbery said.

  “Thank you, Captain. Anything I should know,” Vandermeer asked, “before we start inside?”

  “She’s a little sluggish,” Ilbery noted.

  “Full of cargo, eh,” Vandermeer said pleasantly.

  “Not really,” Ilbery said quietly, “just a sluggish gal.”

  Vandermeer stared at Ilbery. It was slightly odd for a captain to speak any ill of his command — perhaps Ilbery was just jesting. “So noted,” he said.

  “Pilot’s in command,” Ilbery said loudly, handing the command to Vandermeer.

  Twenty minutes later, with help from
the tug Transkei, Vandermeer steered Waratah up to the dock. By then, he knew exactly what Ilbery had meant.

  Vandermeer had piloted canoes with more stability.

  * * *

  Claud Sawyer stood on the deck near the gangplank and willed it to lower. He stepped from one foot to the other as if the deck were on fire. He kept switching the suitcase from hand to hand. Just then, Waratah’s steam whistle pierced the air, signaling that they were secure. Five minutes later, the gangplank was lowered. Sawyer muscled his way to the front of the line. As soon as the chain was withdrawn, he ran down the gangplank to the dock. Moving off to the side, he kneeled down and kissed the wooden dock. Six feet away, a sandy-haired lad on a bicycle sat watching.

  “Mister,” he said, “you’re still on the dock and over water. If you want to kiss land — it’s about twenty feet over there,” he said, pointing his finger.

  Sawyer looked up and smiled. Then he grabbed his suitcase, walked over to land, and kneeled down again. He stayed on the ground a full ten minutes.

  * * *

  Captain Ilbery stared at the manifest. Wheat from the farms to the north. Tallow and hides from the vast cattle ranches in the interior of South Africa. Lead concentrates on their way to Capetown for processing. And more passengers, some bound for Capetown, others going through to London, 211 in total.

  It was the massive shipment of raw lead that bothered Ilbery.

  The weight would be concentrated in a small area, and with the shipments already on board from Australia, there would be no way for the porters to secure the load exactly amidship. Any way you sliced it, Waratah had proved unstable. The addition of more weight, to either side, was something of concern. The weather was another.

  Ilbery had steamed these waters enough years to know the signs. The Indian Ocean was a deceptive mistress. Days like today, with clear blue sides and an ocean of flat-slabbed waves surging to shore like a screen door flapping in the wind, hid a dark secret. Offshore, some disturbance was creating the surging tides. Ilbery knew that next the waves would begin to fragment and turn choppy. Sometime soon, it might turn ugly.