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Then a huge, dark shape began to loom in the murk before materializing into the hull of the ship. Unlike Isis, which had turned turtle on its descent, this wreck was sitting upright. She looked for all the world like a haunted castle or, better yet, the ominous house that belonged to Norman Bates and his mother in Psycho. Her black paint no longer showed, and her steel hull and remaining bulkheads had long been covered with marine incrustations and silt.
“Come around to the stem so we can count the prop blades,” said Davis.
“Heading toward the stern,” replied Goodyear, as he manipulated the ROV controls.
Large openings in the hull appeared, their steel borders disjointed and jagged, with debris spilling out from them.
“Could be where the torpedoes struck,” observed Fletcher.
Soon, a massive rudder and bronze propellers came into view.
“She’s got three blades,” Davis noted excitedly.
“The number of spindles holding the rudder look right,” added Goodyear.
“She’s got to be Carpathia,” Fletcher said, in growing excitement.
“What’s that lying in the sand off to the side of the hull?” Davis said, pointing.
Everyone stared intently at the monitor’s screen and the object half-buried in the silt.
“By God, a ship’s bell,” muttered Goodyear. “It’s Carpathia’s bell!”
He zoomed in with the ROV’s cameras, but the raised letters identifying the ship were too encrusted to read. The ravages of time and sea life had laid a blanket over them. Unable to make a positive identification from the bell or the bow proved irritating to the men in the wheelhouse.
The ROV rose from the bottom and moved along the dead hull, past rows of portholes, some still with glass in them, past the hatches through which Tetanic’s survivors had entered that cold dawn six years before Carpathia went down. The Ocean Venture’s crew could almost envision the slightly more than seven hundred people — pitifully few men, heartbroken wives, fatherless children — who had either climbed the ladders or been hoisted aboard Carpathia’s decks.
Dozens of trawl nets were entangled in the wreckage, making Goodyear’s job very tricky indeed. The upper superstructure and fu
Suddenly, the cable became snagged, wedged in the twisted metal on the main deck.
It seemed as though, after eighty years in black solitude, Carpathia didn’t want to be left alone again. With a sensitive touch, Goodyear feathered the joysticks on the remote, retracing the ROV’s path until the umbilical cord finally pulled free. With a sigh of relief, he brought up the ROV and the first images of Carpathia since 1918.
With nothing more to be accomplished, the weary but exhilarated crew reluctantly stowed the ROV and the sonar and magnetometer gear and set a course back to Penzance, England. The disappointment over the Isis hung heavily on their minds. The big question was whether they had truly discovered Carpathia, or some other ship of the same design.
The absolute proof came in Halifax a few weeks later, when the renowned marine archaeologist James Delgado sat down and systematically compared the video images with the original blueprints of Carpathia. The rudder, the propellers, the sternpost, the position of the portholes all matched. Delgado made the final pronouncement.
“Carpathia has been found!”
Thanks to the crew of the Ocean Venture and John Davis, the search is over. Here at last was the ship forever tied to that fateful day in April 1912. I can’t help but wonder who will be the next to see her bones. She has no treasure on board, certainly not in the usual sense. However, in the glass case in the purser’s office are the many medals, cups, plaques, and mementos commemorating her gallant role in rescuing the Titanic survivors. But I doubt they can be recovered, so deep are they within the collapsed superstructure. Carpathia’s trophies will probably rest with her forever.
She lies in five hundred feet of water about three miles from the original Carpathia coordinates and a hundred and twenty miles off Fastnet, Ireland. Somehow, it almost seems fitting that she joined the White Star liner in the depths of the cruel sea.
NUMA and ECO-NOVA are proud to have recaptured a celebrated piece of history. Carpathia left us all with an inspiring legend that will be cherished by all who love the sea and her rich history.
PART ELEVEN
L’Oiseau Blanc
I
The White Bird 1927
“Seems like it’s a fifty-fifty proposition,” Charles Nungesser noted.
“And how do you figure that?” François Coli asked.
The men were standing on the packed dirt at La Bourget Airfield outside Paris. Nungesser was a handsome man with a rakish air. His chin sported a scar from one of his many crashes during World War I, but his eyes still burned with an intensity that showed no fear. Coli was more compact, with a jaded air about him. His upper lip was covered with a bushy black mustache. A black patch covered the eye he had lost in the Great War, and his cheeks were becoming jowls. Coli’s double chin was resting on a silk flight scarf.
“Either we take off in this fuel-laden beast,” Nungesser said, “or we crash.”
“Flip of the coin,” Coli said.
“Soar into greatness,” Nungesser said, “or burn into history.”
“You make it sound so fun,” Coli said wearily.
To attempt the risky Paris — to — New York flight, Nungesser and Coli were inspired by glory, not money. The money due the wi
Whoever won the Orteig Prize would be the world’s most famous living person.
The prior year, fellow Frenchman Rene Fonck, the leading Allied fighter pilot in World War I, made an attempt. The flight had ended in disaster. Fonck’s Sikorsky S-35 crashed on takeoff from Roosevelt Field in New York with a crew of four. Fonck and his copilot lived, but the radio operator and the mechanic aboard perished in the flames.
Commander Richard Byrd, famed for his exploration of the North Pole, assembled a crack team to make an attempt. A modified Fokker trimotor, similar to the plane Byrd had used for his North Pole journey, was selected. On April 16, Anthony Fokker, Byrd, pilot Floyd Be
Ten days later, another group mounted an effort. With sponsorship from a U.S. group of war veterans named the American Legion, Lieutenant Commander Noel Davis bought a Key-stone Aircraft Corporation Pathfinder. When performing the final tests at Langley Field in Virginia, the Pathfinder went down, killing both Davis and his copilot, Stanton Wooster.
Next to tempt fate was Clarence Chamberlin in a Wright-Bellanca WB-2. Chamberlin and copilot Bert Acosta tested the plane, named Columbia, by staying aloft for a little over fifty-one hours, a new world’s record and more than enough time to reach Paris. On one of their last test flights, they lost their left wheel after takeoff. Chamberlin managed to land, but the damage to the plane would require time to fix.