Submerged: Adventures of America's Most Elite Underwater Archeology Team

by Daniel Lenihan

  Although I needed, and regularly used, reading glasses, I didn’t cotton to the idea of a bifocal dive mask. In most cases I could see my gauges well enough, once I played a little light on them. The fact that I could see things better far than near was about to cause one of the stranger and more frustrating diving problems I have encountered.

  On my decompression computer, I could tell the numbers were there, but they wouldn’t come into focus. We had done prep dives before going to France in a New Mexico lake, where I used the exact same equipment profile eight times in 220 feet of water. The only difference was that I had used a less powerful dive light during the workup dives back home. The latter allowed me to shine a low-intensity beam on the console so I could distinguish the depth reading on the liquid-crystal display—my far-sightedness wasn’t as severe when I could get some illumination on the subject.

  Unfortunately, the movie light I was carrying on this dive to help John secure video footage was extremely bright. In addition, we had jury-rigged a diffuser on the lamp head so it would provide an even, bright light everywhere the powerful flood beam touched—no dead spots when I needed one. When I trained any part of the beam on the meter, it totally wiped out the image on the display. This was a most curious problem—if I held the meter up in the ambient light, I had to get it so close to my face to read it that the numbers blurred. If I shined the light on it, the darned image disappeared for other reasons.

  This was particularly bothersome because every minute was extremely precious on this dive. I had to learn as much as I could about the site, knowing I only had, at most, a half dozen opportunities lasting about fifteen minutes a piece to do so. Everything was going quite well except I had no idea how many minutes had passed. At two-hundred feet deep, elapsed time is not one of those things about which one can afford to be lackadaisical.

  I continued making observations and lighting features for John, but I started to lose my concentration because I knew we must be getting close to our maximum bottom time. Since John was busy with the camera, it really was supposed to be me who carefully monitored the duration of the dive. The narcosis was not debilitating, but a person simply isn’t thinking quite as clearly with that much nitrogen massaging his frontal lobes. I had to figure a way to alert John to this problem.

  Finally I banged him in the elbow with my light. When he turned toward me, I held my gauge up. He stared at it carefully, then back at me, a question mark written all over his face. There was nothing indicated on my readouts that was particularly noteworthy. I put the movie light between my legs and pointed again to my gauge, raised my right hand in an okay signal and extended each finger as if counting. I was trying to ask him if we were within time limits and perhaps get him to flash me with his fingers the number of minutes that had passed. He gave me a very emphatic okay signal in return and started kicking over to the next object to be filmed. I knew from the enthusiastic way he returned my signal that he completely misunderstood it.

  John is a “shooter.” He shoots film and is good at it. Shooters don’t like to leave a place as long as there’s film and light. His return okay signal didn’t mean “Yes, we’re still okay on time.” He thought I should be able to see that. It meant, “Right on, I agree, all systems are cooking, so let’s push this dive to the very limit of our safety margin.” I followed, resigned to the fact that John had better be tracking time because I sure as heck couldn’t.

  As we continued the dive, I dealt with the fact I couldn’t read my gauges by pointing toward the timer John was wearing every thirty to sixty seconds. He must have thought I was suffering a bout of early senility, but I preferred that to his thinking I was carefully monitoring our time. This let me concentrate on the wreck. I kept training the light on features—ones that I wanted John to video for archeological purposes or ones he had picked for pure visual effect.

  Finally, John glanced down at his gauges, then back at me and shrugged. I knew what that meant; we were at our limit for the dive, and he was reluctantly suggesting we leave. I gave him a thumbs-up signal to start heading for the ascent line. Now we had to face that gruesome surfacing protocol. The magic was over for the day, the rest would be work. We respected the ASAM divers, but we all (John, Larry, and I) had one quibble with their approach to the operation. They had a curious way of staging decompression. It involved running pure oxygen down through hoses from the dinghies to a depth of seven meters (good), and having four divers breathe from a flimsy manifold with hardly anything to hold onto (not good).

  When everyone arrived at the decompression stage, we were greeted by a hose near our ascent line that led to a manifold. The manifold had an array of four regulator mouthpieces dangling from a contraption that resembled the spokes in a wheel. Each diver placed one in his mouth and commenced to take in pure oxygen, which, for reasons discussed earlier, is much better than air for decompression. Herein was the problem—there was nothing substantial to grasp for stability. So we hung on by our teeth while the current extended us out like flags flapping in the breeze. Then, when we were all in this uncomfortable position, the head of the dive team signaled the small boat operator above. He cast loose from the mooring, and the boat began drifting about the same rate as the divers, still dangling below by our mouths.

  This was good because we were no longer flapping and straining our dental work. The down side was we were now decompressing twenty-five feet below a rubber boat, still hanging by our teeth (albeit with less strain), as we coursed with the current through the English Channel. If we let go for some reason and lost the stage, we couldn’t surface until we had finished decompressing from air left in our tanks. By that time, we might be halfway to Ireland. Again, these fellows were quite competent and we felt that when in Cherbourg, do as the Cherbourgians do. However, this procedure made it feel like we were paying penance at the end of each fascinating dive on the Alabama for the privilege of being on the bottom. It was worth the price.

  What a marvelous wreck site this was. During the first dive and the four others I had on the Alabama (with a magnifying lens glued inside my face mask), it spoke to me quite clearly . It was very different from the overpowering grip of the Arizona in Pearl Harbor. Although twenty-six men had died on this vessel, there wasn’t the crushing effect of knowing you were swimming among the remains of a thousand young men who had died hardly knowing what had happened to them. This ship had a seasoned crew of marauders and a skipper with a lot of panache, gallantly taking on another ship in the equivalent of a duel on land. This wasn’t a tragedy; it was the scene of a fair fight with two willing sluggers. One lay vanquished around us on the bottom—I felt the presence of battle, not faceless annihilation.

  On my last dive to the site, I was the only archeologist present when the dredge skillfully manufactured by the fellows at ASAM finally started working properly. I was lucky to be present when the first real excavation commenced on the site after years of preparation and removal of surface artifacts. Within seconds, the silt level beneath the wire grid installed by the French for precise recording of artifact distribution began to lower. Gradually, artifacts started to emerge from the sediment. There were copper coins with the denomination of forty (probably from a Brazilian port of call) and numerous delicate pieces of porcelain. I was drafted by the lead French diver to make choices, as an archeologist rather than as an observer. I pointed to a sample of material in the grid that I believed would give Max the most information while incurring the least conservation headaches. To say that coins and expensive china emerging from the sediments leaves me unfazed would be silly; this was my most memorable dive on the ship, and also the most revealing. Having just scratched the surface in one small area of a huge field of wreckage, I could say with confidence this site would be extraordinarily rich, not in coins and bullion, but in history. A thousand ideas began rushing through my head: questions regarding the battle and general questions about commerce raiders in an anthropological sense—all questions that could eventually be answered on this
site. There are times when I envy those who can focus their energies on excavation. On occasion, I resent just a bit the urgency of SCRU’s mission to locate and protect history underwater, which often precludes our becoming encumbered with major digging operations.

  The items we removed from the Alabama are now preserved and being prepared for public display . Another piece of larger porcelain found on an earlier dive was to become a major conservation challenge for the French: a commode. An amazingly ornate ship’s toilet, the inside of the bowl was beautifully painted, seeming more like punch bowl than a toilet bowl. It was a multi-composite object—porcelain, copper, and iron plumbing attached plus layered wood—that would present special problems to conservators of ancient artifacts.

  But this object was successfully stabilized and, I understand, is presently on display in a French museum. The group also successfully accomplished the removal and preservation of the large naval gun, the Blakely that we had seen on our first dive. Slowly but surely, the remains of a ship and a spectacular event in maritime history are returning to the light of day.

  At this point, the Alabama is still being slowly excavated by French and U.S. divers. Work has progressed slowly with the vagaries of funding, politics, and turnover in archeologists. More important, it is being done correctly. This is not a site subject to the whims of the chance explorer; it is a major piece of the international cultural heritage.

  More time on the bottom isn’t going to hurt the Alabama significantly, but rushing the job will. This is one of those things best left to the ponderous processes of government agencies. Preserving what is removed from the site involves both an immediate and then an indefinite commitment to funding. It’s owned by the public, and it will take public will to provide the resources to support its excavation and preservation. So let the wheels of preservation turn slowly, as long as they turn surely.

  Meanwhile, I sometimes stare at a cheap calendar print of two ships doing battle tacked up in my study. It’s by that Manet fellow, and it takes me back to a place in France. A place where I learned just a little more about touching the past—and, as I adjust my glasses writing these words, just a little more about myself.

  And what of the irrepressible Raphael Semmes? The master of the Somers, captain of the Alabama, the heart of controversy internationally, the hero of the Confederacy, who was, with great effort, rescued and spirited back through Mexico and then Texas to take up residence in Mobile and live his remaining days basking in the admiration of his neighbors? The man who couldn’t be caught or killed by the concerted efforts of the U.S. Navy nor suffer postwar prosecution by those who still considered him a pirate in the reunited nation? Raphael Semmes met his demise at the age of sixty-eight from the ravages of a shrimp dinner. He died near Mobile in 1877, of ptomaine poisoning.

  Three years after our work on the Alabama, we became involved with another vessel that has become an icon of Confederate naval history. In 1996, again at the behest of the Naval Historical Center, I held a dredge to the muck covering the cylindrical predecessor of the modern submarine, the HL Hunley on the bottom of Charleston Harbor. It’s a strange individual who can uncover the past and not think about what it must have been like. Imagine these men, sitting side by side with their mates, staring in semi-darkness at the cold, hard texture of iron boiler plating just inches from their faces; their eyes burning from perspiration; their breathing labored from sharing an iron tube of coffin-like dimensions with eight others. The aches in their arms from muscling the crankshaft through another rotation had become a friend—at least a touchstone to some reality—some truth beyond fear and the sound of water swishing past the iron skin.

  These men were volunteers, not galley slaves. One can only assume the thought of being a hero to the Confederate States of America motivated them to serve as the fleshly engine of the Hunley. What is particularly revealing about their level of commitment is that they took this mission in full knowledge that two entire crews had drowned during trial runs.

  From the resounding “thunk,” they were aware they had succeeded in leaving the spar torpedo in the wooden hull of a ship. Then they reversed arm motion and cranked wildly , attempting to back far enough away that the detonator cord could be pulled. The sounds of their labored breathing was joined by the loud pings of musket balls careening off the Hunley’s hatches, only a few inches under the surface. Then the shock wave of the detonation slammed them into the metal skin of their sub.

  These men had carried out the first successful attack by a submarine on an enemy ship. The USS Housatonic buckled from the explosion of the torpedo left in her side and sank to the bottom of Charleston’s outer harbor. The Hunley was never heard from until 131 years later, when Ralph Wilbanks, Harry Pecorelli, and Wes Hall, a team of archeologists from NUMA (National Underwater and Marine Agency) financed by novelist Clive Cussler, located the prototype sub, a prize for which they had searched long and hard. Cussler’s decision to share Hunley with the American public without concern for personal reward stands as one of the more honorable dispositions of a significant find by a private organization in maritime archeological history . The NHC and the state of South Carolina requested the help of the SCRU team to confirm the find, assess its condition, and recommend options for treatment, including whether or not an attempt should be made to raise it.

  From the boat to arms’ length from the thirty-foot-deep bottom, you could actually see several feet, enough to tell there were other divers, even identify them. On the very bottom, the silty sand seemed homogenous, with no indication of anything buried in the area. We began digging, following only blind faith in our sensing instruments. Once the dredge had begun pumping, it was darker than the inside of a cow and all progress was by feel.

  The dredge was a standard injection-type device. Water from a surface pump forced water drafted from the ocean back down a fire hose at high pressure. The water passed through an elbow joint, creating suction in a four-inch-diameter inlet nozzle the diver held in his hand. First on the dredge head, I lay flat with the exhaust hose played out behind me and the iron elbow rumbling and bouncing in my hand as I held it near a marker we had placed in an area defined by our magnetometer hits.

  For some reason, a slurry of jellyfish two feet thick covered the bottom like the dregs of a strange Charleston Harbor soup. The vulnerable points on our bodies were the areas not covered by wet suit and hood: exposed lower cheeks and lips, particularly the lips. Even liberal applications of Vaseline, or pantyhose face masks were of little avail against the jellyfish. Even if dismembered by the dredge, their nematocysts kept stinging us. Each diver felt like they had been kissing the exhaust pipe of a car for an hour after their dive. One of our people, particularly sensitive to the jellyfish nematocysts would sport swollen lips to bed each night. They’d be normal after waking, at least till the first morning dive. From Fran, on the other end of the phone in Santa Fe, no questions, just one beat of silence and an extended “Okaaay” in response to our frantic request for next-day air delivery of a dozen pair of panty hose and an industrial-size jar of Vaseline—clearly, she didn’t want to know.

  Currents were high, visibility low, and jellyfish thick. Upside down in the test hole, the dredge tended to suck up my gauge console and even pull the regulator out of jellyfish-numbed mouths. Through it all I felt a combination of emotions that has become standard with me: a blend of “Why am I here?” and “Damn, what a privilege it is to be here.” Once the hassles associated with getting into the water and dragging a dredge head to the site are over, once I’ve adjusted to the cold and accepted the jellyfish as just part of the ambient discomfort quotient, once I’ve ascertained that the sucky-up nozzle is performing and have forcefully reclaimed my own gear appendages it has indiscriminately vacuumed—then comes the point I get to absorb the fact that I’m truly traveling through time.

  The metal object I clanked against moments before, and was laboriously uncovering, was an undisputed icon of American history. The encrusted iron
tube was a treasure beyond gold or silver—a direct link with the past. I stopped the dredge when I felt my faceplate rap against the sub’s snorkel box. Hoping I could see it, I held a million-candlepower light next to my head—I saw very bright silt and a faint glimpse of black metal.

  “You crazy bastards! You marvelous, magnificent fools! You did it, did you know that? Are you still in there? I’d give most of what I own to treat you all to a beer and hear your story.” There are times when this job is not only exciting, it’s downright metaphysical.

  We uncovered and documented, then backfilled the Hunley in 1996. Our recommendations were to lift the vessel intact in its bed of sediments and remove it to a conservation tank or lab for detailed examination and preservation.

  At this writing, the Hunley has been in a lab in Charleston for a year. Although its recovery was very much a SCRU story, it is one with which I had minimal personal involvement and would best be told by those who did. In 1999, Dave Conlin and Brett Seymour from SCRU, working with NHC head of archeology Bob Neyland, finished surveying the area around the Hunley, including the site of the Housatonic. As Dave maintains: “These aren’t two sites, they are all part of one battlefield,” and that’s how he treated it archeologically.

  Dave’s archeological analysis of the remains of the Housatonic stands as a testament to what can be done by a team dedicated to heritage preservation rather than artifact harvesting for profit. Most of the Union warship lies under meters of mud in zero visibility water in open ocean conditions with high currents. After a month of diving he was able to compile a 250-page scientific report that precisely delineated the size and shape of the site, confirmed its identity, determined the state of preservation of the artifacts, and obtained samples for museum display. In doing all this he disturbed only 4 percent of the surface area of the site and removed the equivalent of two grocery bags full of artifacts. This surgical intrusion into an important shipwreck in difficult conditions perpetuates the respectful manner in which SCRU has handled history under the sea for a quarter century.