It proved impossible to make a positive identification. The only hope was to stumble onto something in the extensive debris field around the wreck. The ROV and its cameras were sent over to videotape the objects lying like trash along a freeway.
Then came a gruesome find. The cameras revealed a human bone protruding from the silt, a visible reminder of those who had gone down with the ship. Although NUMA is not in the artifact-removal business, the team decided to bring up for identification a piece of the ship’s china that was found resting in the silt not far from the bone. Rigging a wire, the ROV operator maneuvered his joystick and managed to hook the wire into the handle of what was soon seen as a soup tureen. Once the tureen was on board and delicately cleaned, the script on the base could be read: H.A.L
This was definitely not Carpathia. But what was this wreck, and how had it come to be here?
With time now run out, Ocean Venture set a course for home, and I went back to the archives.
Research identified the wreck as the Hamburg American Lines ship Isis, a cargo/passenger ship of 4,454 tons built in Hamburg, Germany, and launched in 1922. Newspaper accounts reported that she had gone down in a raging storm on November 8, 1936. Thirty-five died. Only the cabin boy that tied himself under the seat of a lifeboat survived. One can only imagine the horror in the ship’s final moments as a huge wave crushed her superstructure and rolled her upside down before sending her to the bottom.
It might be said that some wreck is better than no wreck at all. But that’s no compensation when we had our hearts set on finding Carpathia.
Return to Go and wish for luckier dice.
For the next try, Graham was joined by John Davis and his film crew from ECO-NOVA, along with master diver Mike Fletcher. Setting out from Penzance for the second attempt, Ocean Venture stopped in the fishing town of Baltimore, Ireland, where Graham and John talked to the local fishermen. Ocean fishermen are a great source for locating shipwrecks. They take great pains to carefully mark hangers or snags on their charts — any objects protruding from the bottom that cause them to tear or lose their expensive nets and trawl gear.
They were kind enough to provide a list of eighteen spots where they had hooked their nets. One of them might be Carpathia. One trawler belonged to a Spanish fisherman who had programmed snags in and around the Carpathia search area. The boat’s new owner was helpful in supplying the GPS coordinates that revealed the exact locations. There was one snag he thought had a high potential, and he suggested we search it first.
But it was not to be. The famous old liner was still not ready to be found. Fate in the form of nasty weather set in, and a near disaster dropped on our doorstop.
When we reached the first prime target, the Ocean Venture’s ROV was dropped into the deep and moved around a wreck that proved to be a large trawler that had sunk in a storm in 1996. If nothing else, our position was right on the money. The fix couldn’t have been more accurate. Then came a break in the umbilical cable, and cold salt water began causing electrical shorts in the delicate wiring. There would be no more underwater images this trip. The cable could not be repaired, only replaced, and there was no spare on board. With disappointment written in everyone’s eyes, the ship turned for port.
There are times I’d like to strangle the guy who wrote, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Not that I haven’t taken his advice on occasion. It’s just that I have this feeling that he never succeeded in anything he ever attempted.
We decided that next time, provided my hand wasn’t tired of writing checks to pay for the madness, it would be pointless to continue search grids because of the vagaries of the sea and weather.
Given the accuracy of the fishermen’s positions, it seemed more expedient and less time-consuming to simply check out each individual hanger. Running search lanes was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, one straw at a time. But now the stormy season was coming on. We would have to hang tough before making another effort.
Graham Jessup fitted out a new ship and headed for the Titanic site to bring up artifacts, but luckily, John Davis of ECO-NOVA, who had involved me in the Sea Hunters documentaries, offered to joint-venture the third Carpathia expedition. John would direct operations, as well as bring along a film crew to videotape the seafloor using a newer and larger ROV — with better capabilities — than the one used previously.
In December, during a lull in the weather and restocked with food, water, and fuel, Ocean Venture, with reliable Gary Goodyear at the helm, set out once again. During the voyage to the search area, the remaining seventeen snag positions provided by the fishermen were plotted into the ship’s computer. The plan was to start at the north end and zigzag down south, hitting the marked snags as they went
The first target was a mystery we still haven’t solved. The sonar readings showed what is most definitely a destroyer, with the aft hundred feet totally missing — almost as if a giant hand had sliced it off with a knife. The stem could not be found on either forward or sidescan sonar. The best guess is that the ship was torpedoed but did not sink right away. The stem pulled free and sank, but the rest of the ship floated long enough to be towed until it sank, too. There were no records of a warship going down in this area. Hopefully, someday we’ll be able to identify her.
The following days passed without a solid strike on which we could hang our hat. Operating twenty-four hours a day, the ship and crew began to show signs of frustration and fatigue. Still, anxiety ran high as Ocean Venture neared the seventeenth and last target in the extreme end of the southern search area.
Then, at last, the gods smiled, and the sonar reading began revealing what looked like a large ship on the bottom. Everyone in the wheelhouse stood in silent anticipation as the target began to increase in size, until Goodyear pointed and said, “There’s your ship.”
Optimism was high, but failure is always standing behind those who look for sunken ships. Despite the advances in equipment technology and computer projections, shipwreck-searching is not an exact science. The lesson of Isis, and at least two other wrecks that NUMA misidentified over twenty years, came back to haunt everyone. Several more passes were made over the remains of the ship far below. The dimensions checked out. So far, so good. Now it was the turn of the robotic vehicle and its cameras to probe the carcass.
While Goodyear’s first mate jockeyed Ocean Venture’s thrusters, fighting the current and waves to keep the ship stabilized above the wreck, the ROV was lowered over the stern. As the deck crane swung it over, the winch slowly played out the umbilical cord, sending the little unmanned craft into a sea turned gray from the dark, menacing clouds above. Inside the wheelhouse, Goodyear sat in front of a video monitor with a remote-control unit perched in his lap, moving the joysticks and switches that maneuvered the underwater vehicle’s motors and cameras.
Now every eye was locked on the monitor, waiting for the ROV to drop through the gloomy void to the bottom. After what seemed a millennium, we could see the drab, sunless silt spread across the sea bottom.
“I think we’re about fifty feet north of her,” said Davis.
“Turning south,” acknowledged Goodyear.
Plankton and sediment swirled like chaff in a windstorm, kicked up by a strong current. Visibility on the seafloor was poor, no more than six or seven feet. It was like looking through a lace curtain on a window as it swayed in the breeze.
Then a huge, dark shape began to loom in the murk before materializing into the hull of the ship. Unlike Isis, which had turned turtle on its descent, this wreck was sitting upright. She looked for all the world like a haunted castle or, better yet, the ominous house that belonged to Norman Bates and his mother in Psycho. Her black paint no longer showed, and her steel hull and remaining bulkheads had long been covered with marine incrustations and silt.
“Come around to the stem so we can count the prop blades,” said Davis.
“Heading toward the stern,” replied Goodyear, as he manipulated
the ROV controls.
Large openings in the hull appeared, their steel borders disjointed and jagged, with debris spilling out from them.
“Could be where the torpedoes struck,” observed Fletcher.
Soon, a massive rudder and bronze propellers came into view.
“She’s got three blades,” Davis noted excitedly.
“The number of spindles holding the rudder look right,” added Goodyear.
“She’s got to be Carpathia,” Fletcher said, in growing excitement.
“What’s that lying in the sand off to the side of the hull?” Davis said, pointing.
Everyone stared intently at the monitor’s screen and the object half-buried in the silt.
“By God, a ship’s bell,” muttered Goodyear. “It’s Carpathia’s bell!”
He zoomed in with the ROV’s cameras, but the raised letters identifying the ship were too encrusted to read. The ravages of time and sea life had laid a blanket over them. Unable to make a positive identification from the bell or the bow proved irritating to the men in the wheelhouse.
The ROV rose from the bottom and moved along the dead hull, past rows of portholes, some still with glass in them, past the hatches through which Tetanic’s survivors had entered that cold dawn six years before Carpathia went down. The Ocean Venture’s crew could almost envision the slightly more than seven hundred people — pitifully few men, heartbroken wives, fatherless children — who had either climbed the ladders or been hoisted aboard Carpathia’s decks.
Dozens of trawl nets were entangled in the wreckage, making Goodyear’s job very tricky indeed. The upper superstructure and funnel were gone, collapsed into a great tangle of shattered wreckage. A huge conger eel came out of a jumbled mess to stare at the intruder to its domain. The ROV sailed over the forecastle, focusing on the deck winches, finding the fallen forward mast.
Suddenly, the cable became snagged, wedged in the twisted metal on the main deck.
It seemed as though, after eighty years in black solitude, Carpathia didn’t want to be left alone again. With a sensitive touch, Goodyear feathered the joysticks on the remote, retracing the ROV’s path until the umbilical cord finally pulled free. With a sigh of relief, he brought up the ROV and the first images of Carpathia since 1918.
With nothing more to be accomplished, the weary but exhilarated crew reluctantly stowed the ROV and the sonar and magnetometer gear and set a course back to Penzance, England. The disappointment over the Isis hung heavily on their minds. The big question was whether they had truly discovered Carpathia, or some other ship of the same design.
The absolute proof came in Halifax a few weeks later, when the renowned marine archaeologist James Delgado sat down and systematically compared the video images with the original blueprints of Carpathia. The rudder, the propellers, the sternpost, the position of the portholes all matched. Delgado made the final pronouncement.
“Carpathia has been found!”
Thanks to the crew of the Ocean Venture and John Davis, the search is over. Here at last was the ship forever tied to that fateful day in April 1912. I can’t help but wonder who will be the next to see her bones. She has no treasure on board, certainly not in the usual sense. However, in the glass case in the purser’s office are the many medals, cups, plaques, and mementos commemorating her gallant role in rescuing the Titanic survivors. But I doubt they can be recovered, so deep are they within the collapsed superstructure. Carpathia’s trophies will probably rest with her forever.
She lies in five hundred feet of water about three miles from the original Carpathia coordinates and a hundred and twenty miles off Fastnet, Ireland. Somehow, it almost seems fitting that she joined the White Star liner in the depths of the cruel sea.
NUMA and ECO-NOVA are proud to have recaptured a celebrated piece of history. Carpathia left us all with an inspiring legend that will be cherished by all who love the sea and her rich history.
PART ELEVEN
L’Oiseau Blanc
I
The White Bird 1927
“Seems like it’s a fifty-fifty proposition,” Charles Nungesser noted.
“And how do you figure that?” François Coli asked.
The men were standing on the packed dirt at La Bourget Airfield outside Paris. Nungesser was a handsome man with a rakish air. His chin sported a scar from one of his many crashes during World War I, but his eyes still burned with an intensity that showed no fear. Coli was more compact, with a jaded air about him. His upper lip was covered with a bushy black mustache. A black patch covered the eye he had lost in the Great War, and his cheeks were becoming jowls. Coli’s double chin was resting on a silk flight scarf.
“Either we take off in this fuel-laden beast,” Nungesser said, “or we crash.”
“Flip of the coin,” Coli said.
“Soar into greatness,” Nungesser said, “or burn into history.”
“You make it sound so fun,” Coli said wearily.
To attempt the risky Paris — to — New York flight, Nungesser and Coli were inspired by glory, not money. The money due the winner of the Orteig Prize had awaited a claimant since 1919. Raymond Orteig, owner of the fashionable Brevoort and Lafayette Hotels in Paris, offered $25,000 to the first airplane that completed a Paris — to — New York or New York — to — Paris nonstop flight. While $25,000 was not an inconsequential sum, the acclaim that would be garnered by the winners was priceless.
Whoever won the Orteig Prize would be the world’s most famous living person.
* * *
The prior year, fellow Frenchman Rene Fonck, the leading Allied fighter pilot in World War I, made an attempt. The flight had ended in disaster. Fonck’s Sikorsky S-35 crashed on takeoff from Roosevelt Field in New York with a crew of four. Fonck and his copilot lived, but the radio operator and the mechanic aboard perished in the flames.
Commander Richard Byrd, famed for his exploration of the North Pole, assembled a crack team to make an attempt. A modified Fokker trimotor, similar to the plane Byrd had used for his North Pole journey, was selected. On April 16, Anthony Fokker, Byrd, pilot Floyd Bennett, and a radio man crashed while landing on a final test flight. No one was killed, but three of the four aboard were injured.
Ten days later, another group mounted an effort. With sponsorship from a U.S. group of war veterans named the American Legion, Lieutenant Commander Noel Davis bought a Key-stone Aircraft Corporation Pathfinder. When performing the final tests at Langley Field in Virginia, the Pathfinder went down, killing both Davis and his copilot, Stanton Wooster.
Next to tempt fate was Clarence Chamberlin in a Wright-Bellanca WB-2. Chamberlin and copilot Bert Acosta tested the plane, named Columbia, by staying aloft for a little over fifty-one hours, a new world’s record and more than enough time to reach Paris. On one of their last test flights, they lost their left wheel after takeoff. Chamberlin managed to land, but the damage to the plane would require time to fix.
* * *
At the same time, in San Diego, at the Ryan Aircraft Company, a former mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh was waiting for a low-pressure area to lift over the Rockies so he could fly east to make a solo attempt. He was sitting on a wooden folding chair in the hangar next to his plane, Spirit of St. Louis, studying the current weather reports, when the news reached him that Nungesser and Coli would soon take off from Paris.
The date was May 8, 1927.
* * *
“Monsieur,” the mechanic said quietly, “the time is here.”
It was 3 A.M., the darkest part of night. Nungesser and Coli were lying on wooden pallets covered by thick horsehair mattresses in a comer of the hangar at La Bourget Airfield. Nungesser was clutching his favorite war medal; Coli had removed his eye patch. They awoke immediately. Nungesser reached for the steaming cup of Viennese coffee the mechanic offered, while Coli sat upright and stared at the plane that would carry them into the history books.
L’Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird) was a French-built Levasseur PL-8. The whit
e biplane had detachable wheels that would be jettisoned after takeoff and a watertight belly made of treated plywood that allowed it to land on water like a seaplane. Powered by a sophisticated water-cooled, twelve-cylinder Lorraine-Dietrich engine that produced 450 horsepower, spinning a massive propeller designed to fold away for landing, the plane had the smooth good looks of a dove in flight.
“She’s a beautiful mistress,” Coli said, as he pulled the eye patch over his socket.
“So much more so,” Nungesser said, “with the emblem attached.”
Coli simply smiled.
Nungesser’s ego was exceeded only by his flying ability. When he had insisted on attaching his personal emblem, Coli had readily agreed. The emblem was a black heart with drawings of twin candelabra holding lighted candles pointing toward the round humps at the top. Between the candles was a drawing of a casket with a cross on the top. Below that was the ancient skull-and-crossbones symbol. The emblem was positioned directly below and slightly to the rear of the open cockpit where Nungesser would fly the plane.
Coli rose from the mattress and pulled on his leather flight suit. “We should make ready,” he said. “The president will be here soon.”
“He’ll wait,” Nungesser said, as he leisurely sipped his coffee.
* * *
Outside the hangar, the sky was dotted with millions of stars. A rare wind flowing east washed across the ground, and if they were lucky it would carry White Bird across the Atlantic. André Melain was not staring at the stars or worrying about the wind. Instead, he was carefully smoothing the packed-dirt, two-mile-long runway with a small diesel tractor that featured a crude spotlight hooked to the battery. Placing the tractor in neutral, he climbed from the seat, then lifted some twigs from the dirt. After placing them in a metal box at the rear of the tractor, he climbed back aboard and resumed his meticulous work.
* * *
The President of France, Gaston Doumergue, had heard the rumors that Chamberlin had taken off in the now-repaired Columbia. After waiting to receive word from the French ambassador in New York City that the report was erroneous, he set off for the airfield.
The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks Page 30