All a standing in a line
There stands me wife
The idol of me life
Singing
Roll a bowl
A penny a pitch
What does this old English music-hall song have to do with historic shipwrecks? Perhaps not much, but it seems to fit this story of a wreck site and its peculiar cargo. Furthermore, this story is offered as a work-in-progress rather than a rigorously researched historical report, the intent being to show how current technological and operational capabilities are used for marine archaeology in the deep ocean.
It began in mid-1999. Underwater engineer and explorer Curt Newport was at sea searching for Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell Seven capsule. It had sunk in 1961 after NASA's third manned space mission. After Grissom's capsule splashed down about 200 miles east of the Bahamas, for some reason the hatch blew off. With considerable difficulty Grissom escaped as seawater flooded in. A Navy helicopter hovering overhead had attached a lift line, but as the capsule filled it got too heavy, and it was jettisoned in nearly 16,000 feet of water.
NASA immediately asked the Navy to use its Bathyscaph Trieste manned submersible to recover the capsule. Water depth was not a problem, the Trieste already having been twice as deep. But there was no practical way to bring her to the dive site and maintain her there. NASA was turned down and no other salvage attempts were made until Newport put together his private expedition 38 years later.
After many days of sonar searching in depths of more than three miles, Newport had developed a set of several promising seafloor targets. But time and money were running out. After analyzing the sonar images of where the capsule may have landed, he selected a half-dozen for his first close look. He then launched an unmanned remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to inspect the most likely targets. Luck was with him; the first one sighted was Liberty Bell Seven. The capsule was recovered at 16,043 feet on a return visit to the site. This became one of the deepest artifact recoveries on record.
During the search, Newport saw several other interesting targets in the same vicinity. As the ship-towed sonar platform made its turns at each end of one of the search swaths (much like mowing the lawn, with overlapping paths), one target just outside the search area was particularly intriguing. It appeared to be sitting upright on the seafloor. Furthermore, its shape suggested an older ship. Newport and other experts knowledgeable on old wrecks agreed this might be one. With no photographic imagery, however, all Newport had was an intelligent guess.
More important, this target was along one of the tracks taken by Spanish ships en route from Cuba to Spain. They would assemble in convoys at Havana, then head north with the Gulf Stream until they made landfall at Bermuda. With this as their last terrestrial navigation point they would sail east toward the Azores and onward to Spain. Could this be one of those ships? One lost in heavy weather? No one ever had found a galleon in deep water, but statistically some of them had to be out there.
Newport had to go there. In early 2000 he teamed with Michael McDowell, an Australian entrepreneur, adventurer, and CEO of a company called Deep Ocean Expeditions (DOE). Regularly, DOE charters the Russian research ship Akademik Mistivlav Keldysh and her two Mir submersibles, offering tourist adventure dives to well-known places on the seafloor of the world ocean. At 6,500 tons, she is the world's largest oceanographic vessel, while the Mirs are capable of diving with three people to depths as great as 20,000 feet. This depth capability meant that they could reach 98% of the seafloor worldwide.
Since its founding in 1988, DOE had been taking people to shipwrecks such as RMS Titanic and the World War II German battleship Bismarck, as well as 2,000-year-old vessels lying off Marseilles, France. In addition, DOE operated a 1999 expedition to the Rainbow hydrothermal vents on the Atlantic seafloor near the Azores. McDowell had the resources and imagination to work with Newport to investigate the intriguing Atlantic target.
Given the name "Atlantic Sands," the expedition was to take place in August 2000. The tragic loss of the Russian Navy submarine Kursk, however, required that the Keldysh and her two submersibles go to that site. There, the Mirs made ten dives to investigate and photograph the scene of the disaster.
Atlantic Sands was rescheduled for June-July, 2001. In addition to Mike McDowell and Kurt Newport, a key member of the project team was Florida-based marine archaeologist James Sinclair. He supervised the identification and mapping of the site; collection of artifacts and conservation of items recovered. From Spokane, Washington, came lawyer and investor Guy Zajonc, who served as expedition coordinator. Computer game developer Richard Garriott from Texas was another investor who had previous diving experience with the Mirs. David Concannon, a lawyer with experience in deep ocean shipwreck legal issues, was along to provide advice. In 2000 he had made three artifact recovery dives on RMS Titanic. A Germany-based television crew documented expedition activities and results. On the Russian side, the Keldysh had 13 Russian oceanographers on board to do oceanographic research at the site. And finally, I was on board as an observer.
The "Atlantic Sands Expedition 2001" team assembled in Bermuda on 27 June, sailing for the site the next day. Transit time was about two days. Blake Abyssal Plain was the destination, with the target site being more than 200 miles east of Abaco Island, Bahamas. The Keldysh positioned over Newport's coordinates, and four acoustic beacons went to the seafloor. Each was positioned on a corner of a square surrounding the coordinates. These units provided navigational references while the submersibles were on the bottom. Water depth there was just about 16,000 feet.
On day three, Mir 1 was launched first, with Mir 2 following about an hour later. Estimated dive time was 12 to 14 hours, giving about 5 hours of bottom time at the wreck—if it was there. Mike, Curt, Jim, and Guy were the four divers, along with the two Russian pilots, Anatoly Sagalevitch and Genya Chernaiev.
Then the waiting began. While the rest of the team was at lunch, word came that the Mir 1 was on the bottom. The Mir 2 landed 50 minutes later. It had taken three hours to go the three miles. The submersibles began their coordinated search patterns and made no contact with the target at the initial coordinates. After five fruitless hours, it appeared no target was there. Then, just when it was time to leave the bottom, the Mir 1 team got a strong sonar target. They moved quickly; battery power was getting low, so they would not have much time to investigate.
First, they found what appeared to be pieces of a sailing vessel's rigging along with some shaped wooden parts, perhaps remains of a mast or spars. As the Mir 1 moved beyond this point, a strong sonar target appeared on the submersible's sonar. Then a shape emerged from the darkness. It was the hull of a small sailing vessel about 95 feet long and 25 feet wide. A stub of a mast was well aft, indicating this had been a two-masted vessel. The forward mast was gone, but they could see a place where it had been mounted. If the foremast had gone over the side in heavy weather, it could have remained attached to the hull by some of the rigging. That was probably what was first seen a short distance from the hull.
Wood-eating worms had done their jobs well. The main deck and deckhouse were gone, while most of the hull planking and frames were extremely deteriorated. What saved some of the wood was the copper sheathing that was nailed to the underwater part of the hull. While intended to keep the worms away while the ship was afloat, the toxic leaching from the copper plates continued to do its work and protect nearby wood.
The Mir 1 team then summoned the other submersible to the wreck. Unfortunately, the Mir-2's battery power was too low, forcing her to the surface. The crew in the Mir 2 had seen nothing on their 11-hour dive, which was frustrating for those three people.
Perhaps the most amazing find was the ship's principal cargo. The cargo hold, which was about two thirds of the hull's length, was paved with a layer of coconuts! Most had floated away when the vessel sank. Those remaining had been trapped under the main deck. Eventually, they became waterlogged and remained in place. Beneath the coconuts was a layer of ballast rocks. Clearly, this was no Spanish galleon.
Forward along the hull, and sitting in the midst of the coconuts, was a rather large collection of bottles, mostly of the type used for liquor or beer. This cargo was either stowed below or in a part of the deckhouse topside.
Moving aft, the Mir 1 crew saw the remains of three below-deck compartments at the stern. The middle one evidently was where the captain/owner kept the most valuable items. Of particular interest was a large pile of silver coins, which had been contained in a wooden box. This was the "cash box" for buying and selling cargoes.
Also in this compartment were miscellaneous dishes, glasses, and tableware, which were stowed in a fashion that suggested they were cargo and not for on-board use. Other small household items were found in this area. Clearly this was some sort of small cargo ship that traded between the islands, the mainland, and perhaps Bermuda.
The Mir 1 recovered a few of the coins and some of the dishes on this first dive. The crew also took a large amount of high-definition television (HDTV) footage. The nice thing about the digital format is that the same source yields high-quality still and/or moving images.
Both submersibles were back on board late that first night. But the day was not yet over. The team had to review several hours of imagery from the Mir 1. Then the expedition participants worked out a strategy for the next two days of dives on the wreck. Primary focus would be on the stern area and its large collection of artifacts. Because only one submersible could work there at a time, the other would investigate the forward end of the vessel and the seafloor in the immediate vicinity.
During the next dive day, the submersibles could recover a large number of artifacts, since the wreckage basically was confined to a small area. The two Mirs brought up more than 1,300 silver coins, Spanish "reals" minted in Mexico City. About 500 of the coins were eight reals or "pieces of eight," with the balance being in varying denominations down to a half-real piece. They were in very good shape, although iron oxide deposits obscured much of the detail because of long exposure to seawater. The newest coin was 1810, so the shipwreck could be dated as being no older than this. These Spanish coins were not out of place on this ship. In the early 1800's these were true 'coin of the realm' in this part of the world. Everyone used them—Spanish, French, Dutch, British and Americans. In fact, they were legal in the United States until the late 1850s.
Other important finds were two octants (used before the sextant was developed) navigating instruments, a wood-encased spyglass, and two flintlock pistols. A compass was also found, but when the sub's mechanical arm lifted it, the entire thing crumbled. One octant was marked with the name of a company in London, "Spencer, Browning & Rust," which apparently manufactured this type of instrument from 1790 to 1840. One of the pistols had the "broad arrow" mark on its barrel, indicating ownership (at one time) by the British Crown. Could this have been a British ship? There was no clear identification of a possible ship's name other than a part of a wooden box that said, "Roxbury." Was this a company, partial address, or the ship's name? We could not tell.
The crews collected many more "diagnostic" artifacts on the third and final dive. But the star of the show was a small gold snuff box—maker's marks indicating it was made in Paris—with 13 gold coins in it, mostly Portuguese Escudos minted in Rio de Janeiro with a couple of French and Spanish coins added in. Again, these were used widely throughout this region as a standard currency. It was reasonable to expect a few gold coins in the wreck, since they would have been the equivalent of $100 (or greater bills). They would have been used for larger payments.
The gold coins were wrapped in a bit of newspaper which the conservation team carefully unfolded and read. It was a fragment of "classified ads" from Jamaica, dated 1809. It offered for sale slaves and two plantations. This had to be a British shipwreck.
Sadly, I did not make any of the dives, but I did have the pleasure of handling and photographing all the artifacts using my digital camera. This was done under the supervision of Jim Sinclair to create a photographic record of each item (other than individual coins), its size, and catalog number. By the end of the expedition, 100 artifacts had been recovered, not including the 1,315 coins. This catalog went onto a compact disk while we were on board the Keldysh.
After diving operations were completed, the ship returned to Bermuda. There, noted underwater explorer and marine archaeologist Teddy Tucker came aboard to view the imagery and artifacts. From the shape of the hull, as defined by the copper sheathing, he guessed it was an American-built brig or brigantine that traded between U.S., Caribbean, and Bermudan ports. Since there was nothing found that identified the vessel by name or owner, he indicated that one can only make educated guesses.
While she was no fabulous treasure ship, this little cargo vessel provided a good cross-section of early-19th-Century maritime trade in this region. That she carried two octants meant that she navigated out of the sight of land. And considering where she sank, she probably traded between the Caribbean, Bermuda, and to the southeast coast of the United States. The best guess is that she was dismasted and sank in heavy weather while en route to Bermuda sometime in 1810.
It was an exciting, though not profitable, find; the deepest historic shipwreck ever investigated in situ by a marine archaeologist. And of course, this is the deepest collection of artifacts ever recovered from the ocean floor.
For those who like spooky things, this might have been one of the earliest victims of the Bermuda Triangle.
The collection of artifacts is now undergoing conservation and study at the South Florida Museum of Natural History under the direction of Jim Sinclair. A scientific report will be written on his findings. When the conservation process is completed, the investors in Atlantic Sands will have to decide what to do with the artifacts. It is hoped the collection will remain intact and be put on display for public education about a small cross-section of maritime heritage.
Atlantic Sands was not a well-publicized investigation of a famous shipwreck, nor did it produce a fame-making quantity of "treasure." Instead, it represented the vast majority of the millions of shipwrecks littering the floor of the world ocean—ordinary working vessels hauling goods and people from one point to another.
But perhaps the most important outcome of this expedition is a demonstration of what modern undersea technology is capable of doing. Literally millions of shipwrecks are on the ocean floor. They can be found, studied, and artifacts recovered. The limiting factor in these deep-sea explorations today is cost, not operational capability.