Wood off Shipwrecks

Reprinted with permission from Dr Lee Spence

WOOD OFF SHIPWRECKS: People are always asking me whether wood survives on shipwrecks. The answer that I always give them is "it depends" (meaning there is no easy answer). Preservation of wood depends on a wide variety of factors. They range from whether the wood is buried or exposed on the wreck, to what type of woods are involved, and even whether the wood was treated or painted before it was lost.

These two pieces of wood came off the wreck of the Civil War blockade runner Georgiana, and I brought them to surface over 40 years ago. I photographed them (earlier today) to help shown the wide range of natural preservation in wooden artifacts recovered from wrecks (and in this particular case from the same wreck).

The piece on the left is one of the handles from the captain’s wheel or helm of the steamer Georgiana. If you look carefully, you will note that one end of the handle is charred (burnt), while the rest is almost perfect. This matches with contemporary accounts, which say that after the Georgiana was wrecked she was set afire while her decks were awash. This part of the ship's wheel was obviously protected from the fire by the water.

The piece on the right is part of a crate found in the forward cargo hold of the Georgiana. It was of a softer wood and has suffered more damage.

Both pieces had been covered by mud & sand, and were thus protected from damage by sea worms (teredo navalis), which quickly destroy most exposed wood on shipwrecks.

Photo © Copyright 2014 by Dr. E. Lee Spence

You can read more about the Georgiana at http://shipwrecks.com/discovery-of-the-georgiana/

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

A wrong corrected::The real discoverer of the shipwreck Hunley

Reprinted with permission from Dr Lee Spence.

Shipwreck Treasure Expert: Underwater Archaeologist, Dr. E. Lee Spence

The purple area on this map is the general area where Clive Cussler claimed to have discovered the Hunley. It was a bald faced lie, the wreck wasn't even within one mile of that area. Both the State's GPS coordinates and my location (as shown by the "X" on my map furnished to government officials and published in my book well prior to Cussler's alleged discovery) for the wreck are beneath the small red dot shown within the yellow outlined Hunley Protection Zone that was maintained by the Coast Guard during the raising of the Hunley.

A WRONG UNCORRECTED: The 150th anniversary of the Hunley's sinking will be this Monday. It is a significant mile post and I am glad the Hunley and her men will be properly remembered, but, a recent CNN story shows, an important part of the Hunley's story will not be accurately told. Much of the media will be crediting the wrong person (i.e. Clive Cussler) with the wreck's discovery in 1995, even though I found found the wreck a quarter of a century earlier.

Since the Hunley has been described by government officials as the most important underwater archaeological discovery of the 20th century, who found it should and does matter. To me, crediting Cussler is like crediting someone with winning a gold medal in the Olympics when they actually came in last.

I found the wreck in 1970. To protect the wreck from looters, I initially kept the discovery secret (except to the government) while I attempted to get permission to raise it. In 1975 word finally got out about my discovery, and I thereafter gave numerous interviews to the news media. I also wrote about it in various magazine articles and in two books (the first published in 1976 and the second in 1995). I gave its location in both. The second book actually included a map with the wreck's location correctly shown by an "X."

My discovery was later attested to in sworn statements by others (who had no obligation to me but had direct knowledge of the discovery) and, in 1976 the wreck was nominated (by the National Parks Service on the basis of my prior written reports to them) for placement on the National Register of Historic Places. Under the law and government regulations, no shipwreck can be placed on the register unless its location is actually known. The nomination went through the normal review and accrediting process and the wreck of the Hunley was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. At that point my discovery had been tacitly recognized by the federal government.

In 1980 I filed an Admiralty claim against the wreck and posted notice for any parties claiming a legal interest in the wreck to come forward. I was claiming legal ownership of the wreck as the finder of lost and abandoned property. No private individuals responded to claim ownership or prior discovery or any other rights to the wreck. Although both the State and Federal governments were served with notice, neither contested my ownership claim, which was based on my physical discovery of the wreck and the theory that the wreck had been lost and abandoned by its previous owners. In fact, the Federal government took the position that the wreck was not within the court's jurisdiction since the wreck was over three nautical miles from the nearest shore.

The legal position taken by the government was good news to me because the court would have had automatic jurisdiction if the wreck had been owned by the United States government. So, their position effectively endorsed my claim of ownership to the wreck.

Because there were no intervening claimants and because the government was claiming the wreck was outside of the court's jurisdiction, my attorneys advised that we should seek dismissal of the suit as we already effectively won, we had publicized my claim as required by law and neither the government nor private parties had contested my claim of ownership.

For practical reasons, under Admiralty law, the time to contest such claims is very limited. That time had already passed. We therefore took the position that the government's failure to make an adverse claim of ownership was de Facto recognition of my ownership and we had the suit dismissed.

Believing the wreck should be properly raised and conserved, I offered to donate my rights to it to the State, and in 1995, the South Carolina Attorney General's office advised the South Carolina Hunley Commission that my 1970 discovery and my 1980 court action had indeed given me ownership of the wreck, and prepared documents for me to sign assigning my rights to the wreck over to the State. On September 14, 1995, I donated my rights to the wreck with South Carolina Attorney General Charles M. Condon signing for the State. The wreck was then being valued at over $20,000,000 so that was quite a donation.

Only after I donated my ownership rights to the wreck to the State did Clive Cussler, who had previously made public claims that a group funded by him had discovered the Hunley in 18 feet of water over a mile inshore of my location, turn over the GPS coordinates to "his discovery." When a reporter with the News & Courier (now called the Post & Courier) learned from the State archaeologist that the wreck was in 27 feet of water (the depth I had reported), Cussler blandly admitted to a reporter that he had "lied" about the wreck's depth and location "obviously to mislead" (his words, not mine). It would later be determined that his coordinates and my location (as represented by the "X" on my published map) were effectively the same position. The two locations were actually within the length of the salvage barge later used to raise the wreck, and the distance between them was well within the margin of error allowed for the official representation of shipwreck locations on NOAA navigational charts. Despite this, the reporter, who had gotten Cussler to admit that he had lied, later published a book crediting Cussler with the discovery. I am sure the flattering quote by Cussler about the book helped with sales.

Furthermore, although Cussler had publicly claimed credit for the discovery, the expedition that did the work was neither initiated nor directed by him. The expedition was initiated and directed by underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark Newell at the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology & Anthropology (SCIAA). Cussler and his organization were brought in by Newell solely for funding and support purposes. Dr. Newell later gave sworn statements that he used my maps to plan and direct that expedition and he further credited me with finding it in 1970. He took the position that what SCIAA's 1995 Hunley Expedition did was to verify that what I had previously found was actually the Hunley. The real accomplishment of the 1995 expedition was to take the first pictures of the wreck. Taking pictures of the wreck was something that I was unable to do because in 1970 we had no equipment to take such images (due to the limited visibility), and that shortly after the discovery, the Hunley, which had only been partially uncovered by a storm, was completely reburied. It hadn't moved and we had no trouble relocating it, with magnetometers, but it was impossible to take pictures without uncovering it, and that even Dr. Newell agreed we were correct in not doing that.

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Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com

Salvage of Shipwreck Gold May Resume in 2014

Scuba Scoop enjoys Dr Lee Spence's writing on shipwrecks, and is pleased to re-print a portion of this.

Gold of the Central America

The sinking side-wheel steamer Central America of South Carolina in a hurricane in 1857 was one of the worst shipping disasters of the Gold Rush era. Hundreds of people were lost, many of them dying with the treasure they had dug out of the California gold fields. Her cargo also included major gold shipments for various banks, making her one of the richest shipwrecks ever discovered.

Even though tons of gold bullion in bars, nuggets, dust and rare gold coins, possibly worth over a billion dollars, are still thought to be on the wreck of the Central America, the last time anyone was on it was over 20 years ago. That salvage was done by the Columbus America Discovery Group, headed by Tommy Thompson, at a cost of 22 million dollars. The salvaged gold was conservatively valued at over $40,000,000 while other reports placed the value at many times that amount. Now a report filed with Franklin County Common Pleas Court indicates the salvage could resume next summer.

READ MORE::


Thanks to Dr Lee Spence

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Exploring the Civil War’s underwater history

His father’s passion for archaeology and history spurred Lee Spence’s interest in shipwrecks.

“When I was a child my father was in military intelligence. We travelled all over the world and he would point out historic sites. He bought me books. The first one I remember was Robinson Crusoe. I was probably nine years old and that got me hooked, as if I wasn’t hooked enough already

His father had already taught him to put his face in the water, cup his hands above his eyes and blow a bubble into them, so he could see what was on the bottom. Eventually he got a real mask and started finding small treasures. At age 12 he built his first self-contained dive gear. “It almost drowned me. It’s not something I would recommend,” he says of his experiment in build-your-own scuba equipment.

Spence found his first shipwreck before he saw a real set of scuba gear and had been discovering wrecks for four years before he became a certified diver in 1963.

While Spence’s explorations also included ancient ruins, subterranean caves, castles and palaces, it was shipwrecks – particularly Civil War ships sunk off the South Carolina coast – that really intrigued him.

He is probably best known for his discovery in 1970 of the H.L. Hunley, which during the Civil War became the first submarine in history to sink a battleship. “It could go under another vessel and stay down for over an hour.”

But among the scores of named ships and hundreds of unidentified wrecks he has discovered, his favourite is the SS Georgiana, a Civil War blockade runner that was sunk off the Atlantic coast of South Carolina. He started researching it in France because he knew his family would be moving back to Charleston, South Carolina.

“It was the one I got really fascinated with and it taught me more about research than anything else . . . all the things necessary to track information.”

This included researching documents in government libraries, and touching base with sources such as Lloyds of London, various museums, government officials in England and the U.S. and even with the police department in Liverpool because detectives there had investigated the SS Georgiana to determine if it was a war vessel or not.

Newspapers described her as a privateer and reported that the SS Georgiana was faster and stronger than any of the other Confederate cruisers. Still, the ship was sunk on its maiden voyage on March 19, 1863. It was carrying a cargo valued at one million dollars, a fortune by the standards of 150 years ago. The cargo included munitions, medicines and merchandise. The supplies were paid for with cotton and gold from the South.

Federal ships were anchored off the Confederate coast to blockade the ports and intercept and capture vessels bringing supplies to the Confederate states from England and Europe. Spence says the crew of the USS America spotted the SS Georgiana and sent up flares to alert the rest of the fleet. They converged on her a mile off shore near Charleston.

“They came alongside her and, despite her having an iron hull, the rounds were passing through one side of her and out the other. At one point the enemy ships were so close the Georgiana’s crew could hear the orders to fire,” says Spence. “She almost got away but an exploding cannon ball that went off under her stern damaged her propeller.”

No one died on the SS Georgiana because the captain ran her aground close to shore.

The SS Georgiana was officially owned by Charleston entrepreneur George Trenholm, who was fiercely loyal to the South and had decided to dabble in privateering. Privateers were privately owned vessels sanctioned by their government to enforce their laws and capture enemy commerce. Spence says before the Civil War the U.S. was one of the few major countries that did not outlaw privateering. “It had used privateers to successfully fight the British in two wars and had used them against the French and even against the Algerian pirates.”

In investigating the history of the ship, Spence came to believe that Trenholm’s life was the basis of Rhett Butler’s character in Margaret Mitchell’s famed novel, Gone with the Wind. That was later confirmed by several of Mitchell’s relatives. The Charleston shipping magnate had made a fortune by running blockades, and many of the unique events described in her book came directly out of Trenholm’s life.

Despite his extensive work underwater exploring shipwrecks, E. Lee Spence has quite a portfolio of work on dry land. He has a doctorate in marine history and has written about 30 books, one of which is Shipwrecks, Pirates and Privateers: Sunken Treasures of the Upper South Carolina Coast, 1521-1865. His website is http://shipwrecks.com.

Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com

Update July 1, 2013

E. Lee Spence has just been credited with the discovery of the SS United States, which was built during the American Civil War. Spence, along with Brandon Fulwider and Mike Stearns, were the first to dive to the 19th-century steamer found in 16 feet of water off the South Carolina coast. The ship disappeared in 1881 and is part of a cluster of vessels that were lost on Cape Romain’s outer shoal.