Atlantic Target Video

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I'VE GOT A LOVELY BUNCH OF COCONUTS: THREE MILES DOWN
By Don Walsh

"I've got a loverly bunch of coconuts
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 historical shipwrecks? Perhaps not much, but it seems to fit this case. Here's the story of a wreck site and its peculiar cargo. Furthermore, this is story is offered as a work in progress rather than a rigorously researched historical report. The intent is to show how current technological and operational capabilities are used for marine archaeology in the deep ocean.

The story 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 during 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 got out as seawater flooded in. A Navy helicopter hovering overhead had attached a lift line but as the capsule filled it got too heavy. 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, Trieste already been twice as deep. But there was no practical way to bring it to the dive site and maintain it there. NASA was turned down and no other salvage attempts were made until Newport put together his private expedition 30 years later.

After many days of sonar searching in water depths of more than three miles, Newport had developed a set of several promising seafloor targets. But his time and money were running out. After analyzing the sonar images the probabilities of where the capsule may have landed he selected a half dozen for his first close look. Now an unmanned remotely operated vehicle (ROV) was launched to inspect the most likely targets. Luck was with him; the first one sighted by the little submersible 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 area. One in particular was intriguing. It was not in the search area but just outside it. As the ship-towed sonar platform made its turns at the each end of one of the search swaths (much like mowing your lawn with overlapping paths) there was this interesting target. It appeared to be sitting upright on the seafloor. Furthermore, its shape suggested an older ship. Consulting with other experts knowledgeable on old wrecks, they agreed that this might be one. However without any photographic imagery all Newport had was an intelligent guess.

More important, this target was along the track taken by Spanish ships enroute from Cuba to Spain. They would assemble in convoys at Havana and then head north with the Gulf Stream until making landfall at Bermuda. With this as their last terrestrial navigation point they would sail east towards the Azores and onwards to Spain. Could this be one of those ships? One that was lost in heavy weather? No one had every 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 got together with Michael McDowell, an Australian entrepreneur and adventurer who is the CEO of a company called Deep Ocean Expeditions (DOE). DOE regularly charters the Russian research ship Akademik Mistivlav Keldysh and its two Mir submersibles of offer tourist dives to famous places on the seafloor of the world ocean. At 6,500 tons, it 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 WWII German battleship Bismarck as well as 2000 year old vessels lying off Marseilles, France. In addition, there had been an 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. However the tragic loss of the Russian Navy submarine Kursk required that Keldysh and its two submersibles go to that site. There the Mirs made 10 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 would supervise the identification and mapping of the site; collection of artifacts, and conservation of items brought up. From Spokane, Washington came lawyer and investor Guy Zajonc who would be 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 would document expedition activities and results. On the Russian side, Keldysh has 13 Russian oceanographers on board to do oceanographic research at the site. And finally, the author was aboard as an observer.

The "Atlantic Sands Expedition 2001" team assembled in Bermuda on the 27th of 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. Keldysh positioned over Newport's coordinates and four acoustic beacons were sent to the seafloor. Each was positioned on a corner of a square surrounding the coordinates. These units would provide navigational references while the submersibles were on the bottom. Water depth here was just about 16,000 feet.

On day three the first dive took place. Mir 1 was launched first with Mir 2 following about an hour later. Estimated dive time would be 12-14 hours, giving about 5 hours of bottom time at the wreck, if it were there... Mike, Curt, Jim and Guy were the four divers along with the two Russian pilots Anatoly Sagalevitch and Genya Chernaiev.

Now the waiting began. While the rest of the team was at lunch, word came in that Mir 1 was on the bottom. Mir 2 landed 50 minutes later. It had taken them three hours to go the three miles. The subs began their coordinated search patterns. No contact was made with the target at the initial coordinates. After five fruitless hours it appeared that there was no target here. Then just when it was time to leave the bottom, Mir 1 got a strong sonar target. Quickly they moved towards it; battery power was getting low and 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. Moving 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 90 feet long and 22 feet wide. A stub of a mast was located well aft indicating that 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 job 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.

Mir 2 was notified of the find and asked to come to the wreck. Unfortunately their battery power was too low and they had to leave for the surface. The crew in this submersible had seen nothing on their entire dive. It was frustrating for those three people.

Perhaps the most amazing find was the ship's principal cargo: coconuts! Clearly, this was no Spanish galleon... The cargo hold, which was about two thirds of the ship's length, was covered by a layer of coconuts. Since they are buoyant, most of them must have floated away when the vessel sank. Those remaining would have been trapped under the main deck and carried into the depths. Ballast rocks could be seen underneath the layer of coconuts.

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 was evidently where the captain/owner kept the more 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 several 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, US mainland and perhaps Bermuda.

Mir 1 recovered a few of the coins and some of the dishes on this first dive. They also took a lot of high definition TV (HDTV) footage. Nice thing about the digital format is that you can get high quality still and/or moving images from the same source.

Both subs were back on board late that first night. But the day was not yet ended. Now the team had to review several hours of imagery from Mir 1. A strategy was worked out 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 sub 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, a large number of artifacts could be recovered since the wreckage was basically confined to a small area. The two Mirs brought up more than 1,300 silver coins from the "cash box". These were Spanish "reals" minted in Mexico City. About 500 of the coins were eight reals or "piece of eight", with the balance being in varying denominations down to a half-real piece. They were in were in very good shape although iron oxide deposits obscured much of the detail due to 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 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 the Americans. In fact they were legal in the US until the late 1850's.

Other important finds were two octant (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. Perhaps this was 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.

On the third and final dive many more 'diagnostic' artifacts were collected. But the 'star of the show' was a small gold snuff box, makers marks indicating it was made in Paris, with 13 gold coins in it. These coins were mostly Portuguese Escudos, minted in Rio de Janeiro, with a couple of French and Spanish coins added in. Again, these were widely used 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 was 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 there were 100 artifacts recovered not including the 1,315 coins. This catalog was put on a CD disk while we were on board Keldysh.

After diving operations 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 which traded between US, 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 no fabulous treasure ship, this little cargo vessel provided a good cross-section of early 19th Century maritime trade in this region. That it carried two octants meant that it navigated out of the sight of land. And considering where it sank, it probably traded between the Caribbean, Bermuda and to the southeast coast of the US. The best guess is that it was dismasted and sank in heavy weather while enroute 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.

And if you 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. Also, when the conservation process is completed, the investors in Atlantic Sands will have to decide what to do with the artifacts. Hopefully the collection will remain intact and be put on display for public education about a small cross-section of America's 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. There are literally millions of shipwrecks on the floor of the World Ocean. They can be found, investigated and artifacts recovered. The limiting factor in these deep sea explorations today is cost not operational capability.

Dr. Don Walsh is neither marine archaeologist nor treasure hunter. He has spent the past four decades involved with design, manufacture and operation of submersible systems. A retired naval officer (submarines) he was designated US Navy deep submersible pilot #1 in the early 1970's. During 2001, in addition to Atlantic Sands, he has participated in diving operations at the Battleship Bismarck (16,000 feet) and RMS Titanic (12,500 feet). On the 20th of July he had lunch on board Titanic when Mir 2 landed on the bridge so the sub crew could eat their box lunches.