Adventures of a Sea Hunter

by James P. Delgado

  The rocket turned out to be the remains of a Canadian-built missile used to test launch a Velvet Glove air-to-air missile, the weapon being considered for use in the Avro Arrow. This remnant of testing at the Picton range, while an indirect link to the Avro Arrow program, was not what we had come looking for. Them’s the breaks in sea hunting. Sometimes you find what you seek, and sometimes you don’t.

  The unexpected treasure is the shipwreck, which turns out to be a completely intact two-masted schooner. She lies nearly upright and the masts rise out of the deck to reach for the surface, just like Vrouw Maria’s. Unlike that fabled Finnish shipwreck, however, this mystery schooner as yet has no name. But we can say, based on the equipment and the way it is built, that it seems to date to just around 1865, and may have sunk within twenty years of its launch. It may even be older, built around 1850 and updated, as some of its fittings are from that earlier time.

  The quarterdeck at the stern served as the roof for a small cabin, probably the captain’s. The sliding hatch that led below is gone, but looking inside, we see the top of a small iron stove and scattered furniture. Close by, the ship’s wooden wheel sits waiting for a helmsman. The cargo hatches gape open, their wooden covers lying off to one side. The schooner was heavily loaded with coal, which indicates that she had loaded the cargo on the American side at Oswego, New York, the principal coal port on the lake in the mid-nineteenth century.

  A forensic look at this intact wreck tells us even more. This ship sank suddenly, probably in a winter storm. Fresh water, driven by the wind, will quickly ice up decks, rigging and masts, weighing down a vessel. The position of the gaffs, boom and mast hoops suggests that the schooner was scudding along the lake on a storm-tossed crossing with very little sail set—“close reefed” in sailor parlance—and perhaps, in a gale or a snowstorm, with very little visibility. The location of the wreck, very close to shore, but turned away from it, suggests that the crew suddenly realized that they were driving onto shore. Not surprisingly, the rudder is angled sharply to starboard, literally stopped in time in the middle of an incomplete turn. Experienced mariners would turn about and head back out to deeper water, perhaps to drop anchor and ride out the storm. The anchors do look as if the crew was in the midst of trying to drop them when the ship sank. The davits for the ship’s boat are empty at the stern, indicating the boat may have been launched; but, in heavy seas, it was probably carried away. Then schooner slipped beneath the waves, leaving the sailors suddenly alone in the cold dark water, struggling until their thick clothing and heavy boots pulled them under.

  We don’t know the name of this ship or when she sank. Perhaps, based on our discoveries, researchers will ultimately learn what it is we found and perhaps just what happened. This wreck and its story will not rewrite history or enlarge our understanding of the past, but they serve to remind us that when we go into tombs, dig in the ground or dive into the sea, what we are really seeking is a connection to everyday people whose experiences and lives make up the rich fabric of history. That’s why we keep on exploring.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

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  ARTICLES

  Belcher, George. “The U.S. Brig Somers: A Shipwreck from the Mexican War,” Underwater Archaeology Proceedings from the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference, Reno, Nevada. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Society for Historical Archaeology, 1988.

  Delgado, James P. “No Longer a Buoyant Ship: Unearthing the Gold Rush Store ship Niantic,” California History 63:4 (winter 1979).

  ———. “What Becomes of the Old Ships? Dismantling the Gold Rush Fleet of San Francisco,” The Pacific Historian 25:4 (winter 1981).

  ———. “A Gold Rush Enterprise: Samuel Ward, Charles Mersch, Adolphe Maillard and the Niantic Store ship,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 44:4 (autumn 1983).

  ———. “Skeleton in the Sand: Documentation of the Environmentally Exposed 1856 Ship King Philip,” in Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference on Historical Archaeology, ed. by Paul F. Johnston. Ann Arbor: Society for Historical Archaeology, 1985.

  ———. “Documentation and Identification of the Two-Masted Schooner Neptune,” Historical Archaeology 20:1 (1986).

  ———. “Documenting the Sunken Remains of USS Saratoga,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 116:10 (October 1990).

  ———. “Recovering the Past of USS Arizona; Symbolism, Myth, and Reality,” Historical Archaeology 26:4 (1992).

  ———. “Operation Crossroads,” American History Illustrated 28:3 (May/June 1993).

  ———. “Rediscovering the Somers,” Naval History 8:2 (March/April 1994).

  ———. “The Brig Isabella: A Hudson’s Bay Company Shipwreck of 1830,” The American Neptune 55:4 (fall 1995).

  ———. “The Lure of the Deep,” Archeology 49:3 (May/June 1996).

  ———. “Bombshell at Bikini,” Naval History 10:4 (July/August 1996).

  ———. “The Bermuda Brig William and Ann: Fur Trading Pioneer on the Northwest Coast of America,” Bermuda Journal of Archaeology and Maritime History VIII (1996).

  ———. “Arctic Ghost,” Equinox, May 1997.

  ———. “Wreck Site of the U.S. Brig Somers,” in Mensun Bound, ed. Excavating of Ships of War. Ostwestry Shropshire, International Maritime Archaeology Series, Anthony Nelson, 1998.

  ———. “Underwater Archaeology at the Dawn of the 21st Century.” Historical Archaeology 34:4 (2000).

  ———
. “Galvanic Ghosts,” Naval History 14:1 (February 2000).

  ———. “Diving on the Titanic,” Archaeology 54:1 (January/February 2001).

  ———. “The Gold-Rush Store Ship Niantic,” Maritime Life & Traditions 13 (spring 2002).

  ———. “Relics of the Kamikaze,” Archaeology 54:1 (January/February 2003).

  Eliot, John E. “Bikini’s Nuclear Graveyard,” National Geographic, June 1992.

  Erskine, Angus B., and Kjell-G. Kjaer. “The Arctic Ship Fox,” Polar Record 33, 185 (1997).

  Keenleyside, Anne, Margaret Bertulli and Henry C. Fricke. “The Final Days of the Franklin Expedition: New Skeletal Evidence,” Arctic 50:1 (March 1997).

  Lenihan, Daniel J. “The Arizona Revisited,” Natural History Magazine 100:11 (November 1991).

  ———. “Bikini Beneath the Waves,” American History Illustrated 28:3 (May/June 1993)

  Murphy, Larry. “Preservation at Pearl Harbor,” APT Bulletin 9:1 (1987).

  Nordby, Larry V. “Modeling Isabella: Behavioral Linkages Between Submerged and Terrestrial Sites” in James P. Delgado, ed., Underwater Archaeology Proceedings from the Society for Historical Archaeology. Reno, Nevada: Society for Historical Archaeology, 1988.

  Pastron, Allen G., and James P. Delgado. “Archaeological Investigations of a Mid-19th Century Shipbreaking Yard, San Francisco, California,” Historical Archaeology 25:1 (1991).

  Solnit, Rebecca. “The Rifts That Unite Us,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 8, 2002.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My dad taught me about life and how to value people for who they are, not what they are.

  Lynn Vermillion, the librarian at the California History Room at the San Jose Public Library, showed me the way to books and files from the first afternoon I asked my father to drop me off at the downtown library.