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It goes without saying that I didn’t get much sleep that night.
For the next two days, we combed the site as directed by the psychics. Their visions indicated that the plane had become buried, so I brought along a small magnetometer, but it proved useless. There is so much ferrous geology under Round Lake Hills that the needle on the mag’s dial pegged and stayed there.
Then a plague struck. Just as we were wrapping up the search, the infamous Maine black flies appeared. I thought mosquitoes were bad. They’re trifling compared to black flies. Two things mystify me. One, how such a teeny-weenie insect can cause such an irritating bite. And two, why anyone would go to live in the wilds of Maine where they proliferate and attack. Ray Beck saved everyone a fate worse than death by passing out hats with nets that covered the head and neck.
The resulting search came as a crushing defeat. White Bird was not there. The entire ground was covered twice, inch by inch. Not a shred of an aircraft was found. Swa
I came up with theory number two hundred and thirty-seven. Since the White Bird had dropped its landing gear on takeoff from Paris and pla
In April of 1997, I called on Ralph Wilbanks, and he and Wes Hall towed Diversity up to Machias, where we all stayed at the Machias I
Co
We hauled Diversity over narrow, muddy dirt roads and found a little ramp on Round Lake. Local residents were dumbfounded. They’d never seen a boat that large on any of the lakes in the area and couldn’t believe we had pulled it over back-country roads. The effort didn’t come easy. Ralph had to stop often so the guys could chop off branches that hung over the road.
Every inch of Round Lake was surveyed with both sidescan sonar and magnetometer. Wes dove on two or three interesting targets, but they all turned out to be old logs. The water, strangely enough, was not blue or green, but a dark, rather attractive brown from the ta
We found no trace of White Bird.
The other lakes we pla
We were lucky in meeting Carl Kurz, a local schoolteacher who was also an avid hunter-fisherman and restored rifles and shotguns. He generously offered his Zodiac boat with an outboard motor for our back-country searches.
The rain came down as we tackled Long Lake, which stretched on the other side of the Round Lake Hills. Ralph stayed reasonably dry in his slickers and big red fireman’s hat but grumbled most of the time, while Wes seldom muttered a word. The rest of us wandered around the woods between showers, but mostly sat in the cars.
During di
Over the next few days, we searched two more lakes without success. Still no White Bird, but we had fun despite the continuous rain. Everyone had their fill of Maine lobsters. I saw one store that had lobster on sale for $2.99 a pound. Our morning breakfasts were enjoyable, as we gathered around the table at Helen’s restaurant and pla
Dave Keyes took off early, because he was getting married and wanted a tattoo of his wife’s name.
Craig, Dirk, Co
I yelled. “King, get out here, it’s Cussler.”
Dead silence.
I never knew if he was home or if I was persona non grata.
Fool that I am, I’d have probably volunteered for the rack during the Spanish Inquisition. I brought the gang back for another try in 1998. Except for Co
Ralph and Wes searched the lakes while the rest of us tramped through the jungles of Maine in a futile search for White Bird. And guess what? It rained the whole time. We all came back to the hotel drenched. I’ll bet the manager would have turned the air blue with four-letter words if he’d known that I dried my sneakers in his microwave.
No matter how far we hiked, no matter how deeply we penetrated the wilderness, we always found old stumps of trees that had been cut down. It seemed that everywhere we searched, the lumberjacks had gotten there first.
A fascinating piece of history tells us that when the early colonies were formed in the seventeenth century, Maine was like a prairie. Trees grew only in occasional groves. For almost two hundred years, the land was farmed. But over the decades, farmers began to give up the land for other pursuits, or they moved west. Eventually, the open lands became covered with a giant forest of trees. Today it is so thick that it is difficult to walk through.
I mentioned to Carl that it seemed the entire state of Maine had been lumbered.
He nodded, smiled, and said, “Yes, twice.”
If that is the case, why hasn’t a hunter, a troop of Boy Scouts, or an army of lumberjacks ever stumbled on the remains of an old aircraft and the bones of her pilots? Scores of rumors and accounts of people finding an old engine have floated around for years. All have proven to be dead ends. Personally, I want to hear much more than simple engine sightings. Why haven’t they also found the three huge aluminum fuel tanks that were as tall as a man, the instrument panel, the propeller that measured eighteen feet in diameter, or the dozens of other pieces that made up the aircraft?
If she hadn’t been found after three-quarters of a century, the odds were only worsening with each passing season. Groups of local people spend their Sundays searching the woods. Perhaps one day someone will get lucky and walk into the wreck before they recognize it. In the meantime, the stories still thrive of old-timers sighting odd things in the forest, of mysterious engines dragged out of the wilderness and sold for scrap, of aircraft remains on the side of mountains spotted from the air during World War II. None pans out.