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

by Daniel Lenihan

  In June 2000, Dave was also archeological field director for the raising of the Hunley, with Matt Russell and Claire Peachey as his assistants and Brett Seymour as chief underwater photographer, all from SCRU. Bob Neyland from NHC was overall project director, coordinating between the different federal and state agencies involved and the engineering firm contracted to rig the lift. The operation largely followed the recommendations made in our report from the 1996 work that Larry and I, and Chris Amer from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, directed.

  Of perhaps greatest significance for SCRU was the absence of Larry and me at the time of the Hunley raising. Dave, Matt, Brett (and Adriane Askins, whom we had assigned to a different project) were the new faces in SCRU. The young lions we had hired in 1993 to groom for running projects and carrying SCRU into the new millennium had just done an extraordinary job.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  RETURN TO THE TORTUGAS

  From 1993 to 1997, SCRU returned to the Dry Tortugas with a vengeance. We had shied away from large block surveys of underwater resources for the first thirteen years of SCRU’s existence because we simply couldn’t justify the expense for the returns. We went back to the Tortugas in 1985 to video-document known sites in the park. With the help of the Navy and Larry Nordby, we returned in 1990 to map a large metal windjammer site. We did the latter in order to create a plastic underwater trail guide to encourage visitor use of the site, thereby taking pressure off more delicate wrecks.

  But comprehensive survey? No way, that was one job we weren’t going to tackle with expensive, labor-intensive systems that did it half-right. Or worse, with cheap, labor-intensive systems that left us with incomplete information, inappropriate for use in a cumulative scientific data base. It wasn’t only the Tortugas that we were neglecting in this manner. Many other parks ultimately required such inventories. But we were adamant that the place where we would perfect our survey approach would be the place where we had failed so miserably in 1974.

  Since then, we’ve conducted large-area surveys only when there was an established threat, as at Biscayne in 1980, or at Point Reyes in 1982. In that case, the survey block contained the oldest shipwreck on the West Coast, the 1595 San Agustín. Even that project had frustrating results of a different nature. We surveyed Drake’s Bay at Point Reyes in 1982, using the microwave positioning system similar to that described in our work at Biscayne. Before we had a chance to dig for the anomalies located with our magnetometer, a salvage claim was made on the site by a treasure hunter—this plunged the park into ten years of litigation.

  It is my opinion that the man hadn’t a clue where the site was, except for the possible location determined by our survey effort. I had been foolish enough to share information with him because he claimed to be an archeologist not interested in selling antiquities. But that didn’t stop the courts from ponderously entangling the area in a web of legalities that was too time-consuming for us to deal with. Eventually the salvage claim would go away, but we were reinforced in our conviction that surveying large areas for shipwrecks was not a winning proposition unless you had the technology and the legalities totally under control.

  It is important to understand a distinction here. Locating a specific wreck in certain given areas, such as a treasure galleon off the Keys, is magnitudes more simple than conducting a scientific survey of all the submerged lands in an area. In the latter endeavor, one determines where all shipwrecks are and evaluates them scientifically and develops long-range plans to manage them as a resource for the public good. Such a survey also determines where shipwrecks aren’t—this is very important for establishing visitor use patterns, and accommodating public works projects such as dredging, and building park facilities without hurting fragile resources.

  We knew from historic records and common sense that places like Biscayne, Cape Cod, Sandy Hook in New Jersey, Fire Island in New York, Assateague in Virginia, and Padre Island in Texas, all had great potential for historic shipwreck finds. But we chose not to pursue block surveys for new sites until the technology changed enough to make the effort worthwhile. In 1992 the NPS released a special block of money for advancing archeological inventory of park lands, including 10 percent of the $1.5 million fund to be applied to submerged sites.

  It was also about this time that the benefits of the technological advances in Global Positioning Systems (GPS), largely spurred by the Gulf War, started to become available to civilian researchers. Heretofore, we had found global positioning full of promise, but just short of practical in its civilian nonclassified form, for conducting surveys. Part of the problem was that it didn’t update positions fast enough. Also there were places and times of day when there weren’t enough satellites in the heavens to obtain precise enough positions. Lastly, the military was purposely dithering the coded signals so that a potential enemy couldn’t take advantage of U.S. technology to attack U.S. targets.

  The chief tools needed to creditably survey an area for historic wrecks in a manner that is cumulative and complete is a magnetometer that locates iron and a side-scan sonar that images everything extruding from the bottom sediments in a photographic-type printout using sound waves. These tools are only useful, however, if you can re-create the location of the search vessel for the whole time of the survey. The positioning and the interface of positioning with the data from the search tools were the key weaknesses corrected by the marine industry in 1992.

  There were no ready-made packages that configured all of these instruments in the manner we desired. But we had by this time credibility with enough people in the industry to garner support as we began building the maximum shipwreck survey system. We hired geodesist Tim Smith, a new type of employee for SCRU, and we contracted with physicist Steve Shope of U.S. Positioning to help us put together the survey package of our dreams.

  What they came up with made front-page industry news in GPS World, Sea Technology, and Geo Info Systems magazines for several years—an underwater archeological data acquisition platform (ADAP). Given rock-bottom prices from instrument suppliers interested in seeing new applications developed and new survey monies from the Park Service, the new system was operating by 1993 in Biscayne and Dry Tortugas.

  Simply put, the ADAP, when installed on a twenty-five to thirty-foot park patrol boat, made it the near-shore equivalent of a multimillion-dollar hydrographic survey vessel. It could collect magnetic data, depth, and side-scan information and interface it with positional data, accurate to plus or minus two meters, every second. These were real-world positions (actual UTM or Lat Long coordinates) gathered in real-time (as the survey progressed minute to minute, rather than having to be mathematically reconstructed later). An onboard computer stored the data at a rate of 3,600 points an hour. Each precisely positioned point had associated with it magnetic and bathymetric data.

  To top off what was an immensely powerful tool already, Murphy, in association with our young hires, discovered a new application for an existing piece of hardware called a RoxAnn. This instrument is a signal processor that uses sonar returns to classify the nature of the bottom for commercial fishing purposes. In Murphy’s hands, it soon became a powerful survey tool. Sand, coral, rock, mud, or sea grass was noted for every single one of the 3,600 points collected every hour. All of the data were gathered in formats compatible for use in Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

  To comprehend the power of this system, visualize the first superintendent who sat down to look at the post-plot of two days of boat operation at Dry Tortugas. The computer screen displayed a tightly positioned block of seabed a half mile in width and two miles long. At the strike of a key, it color-coded the entire block, showing the presence of coral, grasses, or sand, classifying the bottom beyond the accuracy of any existing hydrographic survey. Another keystroke and bathymetric contour lines covered the block. Then the location of any magnetic anomaly was overlaid on the other data. Within weeks of the original survey, we had input underwater photogr
aphs, drawings, and descriptors of every anomaly in the two square miles.

  “What’s that purple dot there signify, the one next to the stand of turtle grass?”

  “Click on it and see.”

  “Wow, an old anchor. Nice photograph. Any drawings?”

  “Click on the box with the pencil icon.”

  “Wow, measurements and everything. This is incredible!”

  “Yes, FM is what it is.”

  “FM? What’s that mean?”

  “Fairly Magnificent.”

  I put Murphy in charge of the development of this package in 1992, as soon as he returned from the Micronesian sweep, described earlier. Aside from occasional forays to other parks for small projects, Larry burrowed into Fort Jefferson and ran the Tortugas survey like a man possessed. On a visit to the park in 1995, I found him in a converted powder magazine, deep in the fort, cigar in mouth, glass of Stoli’s in hand, tapping away at his computer at two in the morning. Matt Russell, Brett Seymour, Tim Smith, Adriane Askins, and Dave Conlin, the new generation of SCRU, had just retired to their bunks. They were infected by Larry’s enthusiasm and worked tirelessly to hammer that survey system into existence and make it prove its worth with products. And produce it did.

  “Thirty square miles already, man.” Larry put down his vodka and chucked his thumb toward the general direction of the water. “And I mean it’s surveyed to a gnat’s ass.” In Murphy’s technical jargon, that meant they knew everything about that thirty square miles of the Tortugas and knew it precisely.

  This was not entirely a figurative claim. If one were to drop a gnat’s ass in a small medicine vial, seal it, tie the vial to a lead weight, and drop it anyplace in that thirty square miles, we could relocate it in the time it takes a fast patrol boat to get there. This was a far cry from the quality of offshore data that existed in 1974, when we found it impossible to locate again entire shipwrecks plotted by others, or even ourselves, in the maze of coral and sand reef flats.

  The product of their work set a new international standard for shipwreck survey. Its applications are seemingly endless. Foreign governments have become extremely interested in the system. Larry and Matt helped the government of Mexico (INAH) develop an ADAP and trained its personnel to use it.

  When the information, all collected, compatible for geographical information systems (GIS), is shown to me (and Larry will show it endlessly), I find it overwhelming in both its scientific potential and in a personal, emotional sense.

  Seeing those gigabytes of data wash over a computer screen in layers of Technicolor majesty brings a certain closure to a quarter century of commitment. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a very humble accomplishment. But that little piece of the world we chose to take care of is a little bit safer, and that’s enough for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  PEARL 2001: THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

  June 10, 2001. That odor of fuel oil that so imprinted itself in my memory during my first dives in Pearl Harbor is particularly strong this day. We are diving from a Navy launch tied to one of the original quays that held mooring lines from the Arizona the day it was attacked. Though freshly painted, the quay still shows clearly the pockmark strafing scars from Japanese planes, spatters of smaller nicks from the 7.7-mm machine guns, and fist-sized dents from the 20-mm cannon.

  We are seeing the site from a perspective I never had in prior years when we deployed from the floating dock at the Memorial. We are downwind from the prevailing northeast zephyrs, so the oil is being pushed toward us. Before entering, we splash our fins in the water to create an oil-free entry hole through the rainbow film. From there, we proceed to the ship submerged to avoid catching up the viscous fluid in our hair or regulators.

  Dave Conlin accompanies me on the dive, his first on the Arizona. Matt and Brett are deploying from the floating dock, nearby but out of sight. They, however, are veterans at diving the ship in this latest round of research projects. A new superintendent has sought our help much as Gary Cummins did in the early 1980s. Kathy Billings, a park manager with a strong sense of responsibility toward resources under her purview, called me in 1996 to ask, “Why has it been so long since you’ve worked on the Arizona?”

  “It’s been awhile since we’ve been asked.”

  “Consider yourself asked.”

  So here we are. Kathy has herself become an old hand at diving the Arizona. Like Cummins and Bill Dickinson before her, she is definitely of the hands-on persuasion and keeps us hopping with her concerns about what’s happening to the ship.

  This year’s project has become a very high-profile operation. It’s not just that this is the sixtieth commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack. The Disney Corporation decided to do a Hollywood extravaganza and National Geographic came out simultaneously with a television documentary and magazine article. Now the History and Discovery Channels are here working on documentaries of their own. Brett is shooting all the underwater footage to be used in the latter two films and the producers are thrilled with what he’s getting. We regard the hoopla with mixed feelings. It can be a serious distraction, but partnering with media is the most effective way to help us inform the public about what we’re doing and about potential problems with their heritage.

  Dave and I settle down on the stern, and I signal him to watch the place we had first seen oil dribbling up years before. A marble-size globule emerges from the bowels of the ship. Shimmering black, it rocks to and fro gently, stirred by some invisible force. As it makes its way slowly upward, it passes inches from my face mask. Two smaller globs follow, then four or five more, like a covey of lazy quail stirred by a hunter. Oil leaking from the bunkers of Arizona is still sentimentally interpreted as tears of sorrow or as blood seeping from the ship’s wounds. The little black bubbles burst at the surface and spread to form a rainbow sheen—still a favorite target for thousands of cameras clutched in the hands of visitors to the Memorial each day.

  This decades-long display has intrigued me since my first visit in 1983. We are at the “oil hatch” as we called it back then. In 2001, we call it “one of” the oil hatches, since there are a multitude of what was unique eighteen years earlier. Not surprisingly, added to the sentimental interpretations, there are now some less tender associations ascribed to the oil, particularly amongst those sensitive to the fragility of the aquatic environment. Personally, I find physical contact with “Bunker C” distinctly unpleasant. Only liberal applications of baby oil seem effective for removing it from skin or hair. I’m convinced something in the chemical content of this fuel affects my nervous system. I get irrationally irritable when exposed to it for any length of time.

  Our dives these days are largely directed at dealing with the portent of this oil. Be it tears, blood, or petroleum, there’s simply too much of it to ignore. What’s happening to the great steel hulk that we so laboriously mapped and photographed in the early 1980s? What about those 1.5 million gallons of Bunker C, now a viscous sludge, that was present in the ship at the time of the attack? Some obviously dispersed into the water from ruptured bunkers after the huge explosion rent the forward part of the hull. There its presence was captured in film—celluloid memories that have become an American archetype: black-and-white photographs of nineteen-year-old sailors being dragged from the harbor by shipmates, boys and men covered in an evil, black slime.

  Some of the oil, probably a whole lot of it, is still there. It seems to have seeped and oozed along the overheads of the myriad compartments in the ship like lymph through the tissue planes of the body. Its point of origin is the huge and complex array of bunkers or tanks that line both sides of the hull.

  We do know that there are eight sources of oil emerging from the ship where there had been one and that the overall amount is significantly greater at times. We have measured the oil coming from the old source (around two liters per day), but the new leaks are in places where it is too difficult to capture and quantify.

  Somehow in the collective memory of t
he military and as a result of some sort of mystical calculations, there is an estimate of 250,000 gallons of oil still in the ship. How do we know this figure is correct? We don’t. This is the same collective memory that forgot the forward turret was there and that ordnance for the five-inch guns is spread around the deck below the Memorial walkway. We do know that a leak of a thousand gallons released at once into Pearl Harbor would be awful, a couple hundred thousand gallons, unthinkable.

  Larry, Matt, and Dave must now balance preservation with ecology, and it’s a tough problem. Gone are our self-imposed restrictions on entering the vessel. We know the problems we are facing regarding oil, metal corrosion, effect of biological growth on the wreck, and structural integrity—these can’t be answered by focusing on the exterior. These are inside questions.

  Still the Arizona is a shrine where 1,177 men have died and the remains of almost a thousand are still entombed; hence we still avoid penetration by divers. Instead, we send in extensions of our eyes in the form of tiny robots tethered to surface TV screens. Our old friend Emory Kristof has put us in touch with VideoRay, a company that manufactures and leases exceptionally sophisticated little ROVs. They let us know what’s happening inside without us having to enter. It’s also a lot safer—the Arizona has not withstood particularly well the ravages of seawater and time. This use of remotely operated vehicles for penetration ordinarily goes against my instincts as a diver, but here it feels entirely appropriate—one must have a really compelling reason to muck about inside an American icon, and we still don’t think the mission requires it.