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This was not looking good.
It proved impossible to make a positive identification. The only hope was to stumble onto something in the extensive debris field around the wreck. The ROV and its cameras were sent over to videotape the objects lying like trash along a freeway.
Then came a gruesome find. The cameras revealed a human bone protruding from the silt, a visible reminder of those who had gone down with the ship. Although NUMA is not in the artifact-removal business, the team decided to bring up for identification a piece of the ship’s china that was found resting in the silt not far from the bone. Rigging a wire, the ROV operator maneuvered his joystick and managed to hook the wire into the handle of what was soon seen as a soup tureen. Once the tureen was on board and delicately cleaned, the script on the base could be read: H.A.L
This was definitely not Carpathia. But what was this wreck, and how had it come to be here?
With time now run out, Ocean Venture set a course for home, and I went back to the archives.
Research identified the wreck as the Hamburg American Lines ship Isis, a cargo/passenger ship of 4,454 tons built in Hamburg, Germany, and launched in 1922. Newspaper accounts reported that she had gone down in a raging storm on November 8, 1936. Thirty-five died. Only the cabin boy that tied himself under the seat of a lifeboat survived. One can only imagine the horror in the ship’s final moments as a huge wave crushed her superstructure and rolled her upside down before sending her to the bottom.
It might be said that some wreck is better than no wreck at all. But that’s no compensation when we had our hearts set on finding Carpathia.
Return to Go and wish for luckier dice.
For the next try, Graham was joined by John Davis and his film crew from ECO-NOVA, along with master diver Mike Fletcher. Setting out from Penzance for the second attempt, Ocean Venture stopped in the fishing town of Baltimore, Ireland, where Graham and John talked to the local fishermen. Ocean fishermen are a great source for locating shipwrecks. They take great pains to carefully mark hangers or snags on their charts — any objects protruding from the bottom that cause them to tear or lose their expensive nets and trawl gear.
They were kind enough to provide a list of eighteen spots where they had hooked their nets. One of them might be Carpathia. One trawler belonged to a Spanish fisherman who had programmed snags in and around the Carpathia search area. The boat’s new owner was helpful in supplying the GPS coordinates that revealed the exact locations. There was one snag he thought had a high potential, and he suggested we search it first.
But it was not to be. The famous old liner was still not ready to be found. Fate in the form of nasty weather set in, and a near disaster dropped on our doorstop.
When we reached the first prime target, the Ocean Venture’s ROV was dropped into the deep and moved around a wreck that proved to be a large trawler that had sunk in a storm in 1996. If nothing else, our position was right on the money. The fix couldn’t have been more accurate. Then came a break in the umbilical cable, and cold salt water began causing electrical shorts in the delicate wiring. There would be no more underwater images this trip. The cable could not be repaired, only replaced, and there was no spare on board. With disappointment written in everyone’s eyes, the ship turned for port.
There are times I’d like to strangle the guy who wrote, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Not that I haven’t taken his advice on occasion. It’s just that I have this feeling that he never succeeded in anything he ever attempted.
We decided that next time, provided my hand wasn’t tired of writing checks to pay for the madness, it would be pointless to continue search grids because of the vagaries of the sea and weather.
Given the accuracy of the fishermen’s positions, it seemed more expedient and less time-consuming to simply check out each individual hanger. Ru
Graham Jessup fitted out a new ship and headed for the Titanic site to bring up artifacts, but luckily, John Davis of ECO-NOVA, who had involved me in the Sea Hunters documentaries, offered to joint-venture the third Carpathia expedition. John would direct operations, as well as bring along a film crew to videotape the seafloor using a newer and larger ROV — with better capabilities — than the one used previously.
In December, during a lull in the weather and restocked with food, water, and fuel, Ocean Venture, with reliable Gary Goodyear at the helm, set out once again. During the voyage to the search area, the remaining seventeen snag positions provided by the fishermen were plotted into the ship’s computer. The plan was to start at the north end and zigzag down south, hitting the marked snags as they went
The first target was a mystery we still haven’t solved. The sonar readings showed what is most definitely a destroyer, with the aft hundred feet totally missing — almost as if a giant hand had sliced it off with a knife. The stem could not be found on either forward or sidescan sonar. The best guess is that the ship was torpedoed but did not sink right away. The stem pulled free and sank, but the rest of the ship floated long enough to be towed until it sank, too. There were no records of a warship going down in this area. Hopefully, someday we’ll be able to identify her.
The following days passed without a solid strike on which we could hang our hat. Operating twenty-four hours a day, the ship and crew began to show signs of frustration and fatigue. Still, anxiety ran high as Ocean Venture neared the seventeenth and last target in the extreme end of the southern search area.
Then, at last, the gods smiled, and the sonar reading began revealing what looked like a large ship on the bottom. Everyone in the wheelhouse stood in silent anticipation as the target began to increase in size, until Goodyear pointed and said, “There’s your ship.”
Optimism was high, but failure is always standing behind those who look for sunken ships. Despite the advances in equipment technology and computer projections, shipwreck-searching is not an exact science. The lesson of Isis, and at least two other wrecks that NUMA misidentified over twenty years, came back to haunt everyone. Several more passes were made over the remains of the ship far below. The dimensions checked out. So far, so good. Now it was the turn of the robotic vehicle and its cameras to probe the carcass.
While Goodyear’s first mate jockeyed Ocean Venture’s thrusters, fighting the current and waves to keep the ship stabilized above the wreck, the ROV was lowered over the stern. As the deck crane swung it over, the winch slowly played out the umbilical cord, sending the little unma
Now every eye was locked on the monitor, waiting for the ROV to drop through the gloomy void to the bottom. After what seemed a mille
“I think we’re about fifty feet north of her,” said Davis.
“Turning south,” acknowledged Goodyear.
Plankton and sediment swirled like chaff in a windstorm, kicked up by a strong current. Visibility on the seafloor was poor, no more than six or seven feet. It was like looking through a lace curtain on a window as it swayed in the breeze.