As a squall obscured the sky off the Mexican coast of Veracruz on 2 June 1986, the magnetometer registered an anomaly in 110 feet of water a mile off Isla Verde. With this reading, San Francisco art dealer and explorer George Belcher had rediscovered the wreck of the brig Somers. Belcher’s team had been surveying these waters—at the request of then-Governor Acosta La- gunes of Veracruz—for historic shipwrecks as part of a project to locate materials for the new state museum in Jalapa. Accompanied by his brother Joel, Belcher descended with scuba gear and landed on a wreck they strongly suspected was the Somers.
Eager to secure protection for the site and to ensure scientific study of the wreck, Belcher contacted archaeologists and government agencies in the United States and Mexico. As a result, the U.S. Navy, the State Department, and the National Park Service—the only federal agency with a working field team of maritime archaeologists—agreed to work cooperatively in seeking a bilateral agreement with Mexico to survey and assess the wreck, which now lay in Mexican territorial waters. Belcher worked with Sandy Marken, President of the In Touch Network of San Francisco, and with both governments, to document his discovery and help interpret the story of the ship. The objective was to combine business and science, without damaging or plundering the wreck for profit, as has occurred so many times in the past.
The In-Touch Network funded a land and underwater film expedition to Veracruz in May 1987. At the same time, shipwreck archaeologist Mitchell Marken, who conducted the first survey of the site, invited me to Veracruz so that I could help confirm the identification, and report to the various other U.S. Government agencies. On 29 May 1987, the team made its first dive on the wreck. Over the next two weeks we took a nondestructive survey and assessment of the Somers, mapping, photographing, and videotaping in the brief 20-minute dives allowed by the depth and the usually poor visibility. A preliminary site plan highlighted several key features of the wreck, and we confirmed the identification. To ensure the integrity of the site, we did not disturb the wreck and her artifacts.
News of the Somers’ rediscovery broke in San Francisco on 10 November 1987. The State Department sent a notice to the Mexican Government on 18 November and made additional contacts in April, May, and June 1988, noting that the United States considers the ship to be its property, a war grave, a significant archaeological site, and property of exceptional significance in U.S. history. Notes and discussions with Mexican officials emphasized a cooperative approach. An international team from both countries, including the National Park Service, the U.S. Navy, Belcher’s group, and Mexico’s lnstituto National de Antropologia e Historia (INAH), completed a non-destructive documentation of the site and proposed a plan for preservation, possible limited excavation, recovery of human remains and their return to the United States, and public display and interpretation of artifacts.
During these negotiations, however, unidentified parties located the ship and looted her, removing the ship’s chronometer, pistols, and other artifacts. But the Mexican government has now ensured surveillance and protection of the wreck.
Cognizant of the ship’s tie to U.S. history and specifically, to Mobile, Alabama—home of the ill-fated brig’s last captain, Raphael Semmes—U.S. Senator Howell Heflin (D-AL) drafted legislation to urge and support the negotiations with Mexico, specifically endorsing work of the Park Service.
On 27 November 1989, meetings between a U.S. delegation and the Mexican government in Mexico City yielded an oral agreement to protect the wreck and to commence study of the site through mutual inspection. The Mexican Navy suggested the first week of July 1990 for the inspection dives. Drawing from the resources of the National Park Service, notably the Submerged Cultural Resources Unit, the U.S. government assembled a four-person team—Larry Nordby, Jerry Livingston, John Brooks, and myself—for the dives.
The U.S. team met in Veracruz on 10 July with their Mexican counterparts from the Armada de Mexico and the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. Captain Santos H. Gomez Leyva, from the Navy General Staff, Navy Secretariat, and Dr. Pilar Luna Brreguerena, Chief of the Institute’s Department of Underwater Archaeology, headed the Mexican delegation. On 3 July, the first day of operations, the Mexican Navy provided the 100-foot patrol boat as a base of operations. As discoverers of the sunken ship, the Belcher brothers accepted the invitation of U.S. officials to direct the two governments to the wreck site.
Dive operations lasted three days. Two dives per day on the 110-foot table meant prolonged exposure to depth and decompression. To minimize risks, all decompression dives included an oxygen system, and four- hour surface intervals between dives were common. Each dive day included 3 5-mm color photography, color videotaping with voice-recorded observations, and mapping of the site using baseline trilateration.
The wreck of the Somers lies on her starboard side—practically on her beam ends—as was the case when the ship capsized and sank on a starboard tack more than 147 years ago. The outline of the bottom of the hull is apparent on the exposed port side and to a small extent at the bow and stem along the starboard side. The port side is almost completely disintegrated, leaving only the keel and floors at the bottom of the hull. The rudder, intact to its second gudgeon and pintle, is canted to starboard. The sharp deadrise of the floors fore and aft evince the knifelike hull form of a Baltimore-clipper type. The presumably more intact starboard hull, buried in the sand and silt bottom, provided the opportunity for a hands-on measurement and recording of a Baltimore-clipper-type hull.
Timbers are partially worm-eaten, with some of them exposed on the starboard side. The hull was reinforced with iron braces and knees, a common practice in steamers and warships of this period that carried heavy guns on their decks. Several straps are intact, including an iron wale or strap at the main deck level. Stubs of straps that apparently connected the ends of the hanging knees protrude to the front of this wale. Masses of drifts, spikes, and other hull fastenings lie along the port side, indicating the consumed upper works of that side of the hull. Copper drifts four or more feet in length at the stern indicate the heavily reinforced construction that tied large timbers of the sternpost to the stemson and crutches. Broken lengths of iron straps also lie in the mass of wreckage inside the port hull. Additional wreckage presumably lies outside the hull, but sand has mounted against and buried the port side floors and the keel. Only the bow and stern are exposed to the depth of the keel as a result of currents scouring the bottom.
A number of fittings and equipment lie inside the area bounded by the port hull lines and the buried reaches of the starboard hull. And these all lie in the approximate space they occupied in the ship when she was intact, indicating a site formation process relatively undisturbed. It allowed the disintegrating vessel to deposit its nonorganic remains on the bottom in discrete patterns that conform to the ship’s original layout. Excavation of the site would doubtless show the artifacts distributed in tight patterns, which would demonstrate the ship’s compartmentalization, as well as stowage of articles to port and starboard.
Major features observed on the bottom inside the wreck include the davits for the port quarter boat, which lie along the port side some 15 feet apart, one davit directly inside the stern. This 20-foot boat was the only one of the Somers’ craft to be launched from the sinking ship, and succeeded in ferrying several men and officers to the safety of nearby Isla Verde. Nine of the brig’s ten 32- pounder carronades were on site, four to port and five to starboard. The port guns, while somewhat tumbled, remain in a more or less straight line, while the five starboard guns remain in a straight line, four with muzzles sticking in the bottom, indicating the exceptional preservation of the ship’s form and layout on this practically undisturbed site.
Probing of the forwardmost port gun and aftermost starboard gun with an iron bar, we encountered a solid metal obstruction two feet inside each carronade’s four-foot bore. This indicates that at least these two, and possibly all of the guns were loaded when the Somers was clearing for action to halt a suspected blockade runner when she was lost. The remains of the carriages still surround each of the nine guns, including the rollers for traversing the carronades; a traverse rail lay next to one portside gun. Photographer Brooks may have seen the tenth 32-pounder off the port bow, but the team could not relocate the weapon he saw during the remainder of the survey.
The ship’s metal pump logs are connected to the bilges, close to the port edge of the surviving hull. Bending to starboard, they break close to a juncture point marked by flanges that indicate the pump log’s passage through the berth deck. The cistern is open, with no other pump machinery readily apparent. Around the pump log are indications of what may be buried shot. When lost, the Somers reportedly carried 500 32-pound shot. Forward of the pump log is the brig’s cast-iron galley stove, lying on its starboard side, with a section of flue pipe with a flange lying immediately off the flue attached to the stove. The hinged flap front of the stove is gone, but the drip pan and range grates remain in place.
Lying immediately aft and partially atop the stove and a 32-pounder is a spider band and other possible rigging fittings for the foremast. Other rigging elements include the jibboom band and martingale, which lie off the bow, to starboard of the stempost, the foreyard jackstay, and the foresail truss. The rigging fittings lie on the bottom in the approximate positions they would have occupied in the ship’s rig, which would be expected if the brig lay over on its starboard side and disintegrated without disturbance. All metal fittings in the rig, from bands to clew-irons, grommets in the sails, and sheaves in the blocks should be present. This indicates the potential to document and reconstruct the rig of this 1846 clipper, providing the first detailed look at clipper rigging from this period. It also illuminates the question of oversparring, a factor some historians have suggested as a dangerous flaw in the Baltimore clipper brigs, particularly the Somers and her sister ship, the Bainbridge.
Off the port bow, lying against the hull, is the iron spindle with two attached trundle heads from the wood and iron ship’s capstan. Square holes for capstan bars, used to raise the anchor, are in the heads. Adjacent to the spindle and buried in the bottom so that only one arm and palm are exposed is the port bower anchor. To starboard, also exposed on the bottom with one arm and palm buried, is the starboard bower, running parallel to the exposed side of the hull. The wooden stock of the anchor is gone, but the form of the stock close to the square of the shank has survived, as have the first stock hoops.
The position of the anchors indicates that they were catted when the brig sank, as would be expected since the court of inquiry into the sinking established that Semmes was about to anchor when he spotted the vessel trying to run the blockade and commenced his fatal chase. The brig’s First Lieutenant, M. J. L. Claiborne, testified that the majority of the port anchor cable was on deck when the brig was lost; this cable (chain) was not visible on site, as might be expected since it would fall free and lie beneath the buried mass of wreckage of the collapsed port side. The position of the capstan next to the anchor would indicate that it was probably pulled down by the falling anchor, particularly if the port cable was being brought up on deck by capstan prior to dropping the anchor. The starboard cable, however, was apparently stowed beneath deck, for rows of the chain lie on the site, running at a slight angle and thinning to a single strand of chain that runs in toward the exposed starboard bower anchor.
Smaller artifacts were noted on the site, notably in the bow, which was the location of many of the ship’s stores. A ceramic jug was in the bow, as were three large vertebrae and a short, small bone, possibly a radius or ulna, that appeared to be either pork (sus scrofula) or beef (bos) bones. The placement of these bones in the bow would indicate stowage of salted meat provisions; court of enquiry testimony established that the Somers had nine barrels of salt pork and beef on board. The vertebrae and radius or ulna bones indicate traditional cuts butchered for use in salt pork and beef. In the after area of the wreck, lying close to the aftermost starboard 32-pounder, were two white-glazed ceramic plates, one an oval, 12-inch platter, the other a slightly smaller round serving plate. No identifying marks were there. Nearby was the base of a black glass, alcoholic beverage bottle, with a high kick-up and pontil scar. A second glass artifact, a clear glass pane set in lead glazing, lies at the stern and may be from skylights into the master cabin or wardroom, or from windows in the transom.
The project was a considerable success. It was the first international underwater archaeological project conducted jointly by two governments outside of the United States, other than two projects with the former Pacific trust territories. The mutual preliminary documentation of the Somers wreck was a clear demonstration of international goodwill and cooperation, particularly since the wreck site represents a ship lost in a war between the two participating nations, a war in which the host nation lost 55% of its national territory. The project was a combined effort, with considerable assets provided by the Mexican Navy and the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The Mexican government provided the skills and services of three high-ranking naval officers and a representative from the Secretary of the Navy’s History staff, as well as the nation’s chief underwater archaeologist and two skilled members of her staff. The Navy also provided a patrol boat, three small craft, and a dedicated crew of professionals that included eight navy divers.
The participants in this study hope it will continue with a detailed mapping survey of the site. With the involvement of private citizens and two governments, this project demonstrates that there is a non-destructive, positive role that private citizens can and should play in shipwreck discovery and study. Not all wrecks would or should transfer into government- conducted projects; rather, the Belcher brothers, their investors in a joint-venture film, and their friends and colleagues rescued a nearly-forgotten but significant piece of history that touches the psyche of two nations, and worked to see it passed on to future generations without damage or loss. The Belchers’ efforts will serve to encourage fast and serious action in the future to protect, preserve, study, and interpret highly significant wrecks.