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But back to the search.
The days began to run together as we sca
It might be time to address a statement I always hear: “I’d love to go with you.”
No, you wouldn’t — at least ninety-nine percent of you. The idea most people have of a search is a series of fine days of sport diving interspersed with finding a wreck and reaping untold glory. The reality is hour after hour of being tossed about in small boats, listening to the increasing squawk of a balky electronic instrument, combined with lack of sleep and having to wash your underwear in a motel-room sink. Then you rise in the morning and do it all again. I would guess diving is less than five percent of the equation.
This reminds me of a story a friend named Jedd Ladd told me in Colorado. Jedd had been at Woodstock, and I asked him about the experience. “Don’t believe all the hype about fun and free love,” he said. “It was a muddy mess, with no food and lots of rain. I lived in a tent that leaked, and the toilets were a hole in the dirt.”
“Wow,” I said.
“The music was great, though,” he said.
The same thing applies here. The work is monotonous, but you have a chance to make history. We always say in NUMA that if it were easy, someone would have already done it. Persistence is the key, repetition the norm. Dirk and I dug in — day after day we sca
About ten days into the search, we were talking to Da
“You want to talk to Biuku?” Da
“What?” said Dirk.
“Biuku is still alive,” Da
“Let’s go,” Dirk said.
“Living history,” I said. “Call him up and see if we can visit.”
“He doesn’t have a telephone,” Da
The next morning, Dirk, Da
A woman clutching a baby in her arms sat on the porch of a home, puffing on a corncob pipe.
“One of Biuku’s daughters,” Da
In pidgin, he inquired as to Biuku’s whereabouts and learned he was down at Munda. One of his children was sick, and that was the nearest hospital. We set off for Munda, another forty-five minutes by boat, and splashed ashore. The night before, I had talked with Dirk about what we could give as a gift. This was the man who had rescued one of our presidents, and for the most part the act had gone u
Biuku is small, a shade over five feet tall and slightly stooped from his seventy-eight years. Da
I took the binoculars out of the case.
“Da
Da
“Ah,” he said, “spyglasses.”
Then we got ready to leave and began to say our good-byes. We started to walk away, then Biuku called to Da
“I have a special room in my mind for you, Da
Obviously, the gifts had gone over well.
The expedition was winding to a close, and we were both begi
We began to analyze what we had accomplished. We’d done what we’d set out to do — find where the wreck was not — and in the process we had managed to cover all the shallow water in the high-probability areas. All the waters surrounding Nauru, Olasana, and Plum Pudding Islands, as well as a large block to the north, had been sca
It was time to take our leave and head home. We climbed aboard the turboprop, thoroughly exhausted and welcoming civilization. After a couple of nights in Surfer’s Paradise to decompress, we jumped on a flight for the United States via New Zealand.
A few days after I got back to Fort Lauderdale, I spoke to Clive on the telephone.
“Well,” he said, “what do you think?”
I’d been saving a line to use for years — it comes from the movie Jaws.
“I think we’re going to need a bigger boat,” I said.
“So, you two know where it’s not?” Clive asked.
“Yep,” I said, “and we have a pretty good idea where it is.”
So stay tuned — NUMA will be back.
PART FOURTEEN
I America’s Leonardo da Vinci
America’s Leonardo da Vinci
1792, 2001
Though we don’t often find what we search for, it is satisfying to bring closure to a piece of history that has been surrounded in mystery. One such project was the hunt for Samuel Morey’s boat, Aunt Sally.
Legends persisted for almost two centuries of a boat sunk in the waters of Lake Morey in Fairlee, Vermont, about a mile west of the Co
What we do know is that Samuel Morey was a true genius whose name and accomplishments are known to very few today. Born in 1763, he became a prolific inventor, whose experiments with light, heat, and steam were half a century ahead of his time. Though it is well recorded that James Watt invented the steam engine, Morey is considered the first to put a steam engine in a boat.