Chapter Eight
Glancing up towards the ocean surface I saw a beautiful blanket of emerald green light. It was bright enough to illuminate all the little particles floating around me, but not enough to light the dark ocean floor below. For that we needed waterproof flashlights. As the rays from the flashlights lit the sandy surface I saw the anchor for the first time and was surprised at how small it was — I was expecting something at least as big as a Volkswagen. Then I noticed the circular grid the team started that morning. It looked like a giant spider web with the anchor caught in the middle. Not far was a reef loaded with marine life, including patches of violet coral, blue-clawed crabs, and plumose anemones.
Before our dive Amanda warned me to not interfere with any of the sea life — especially the anemones. She also made me review hand signals and the four points a diver must always keep in mind — depth, air, time, and area. I half expected she’d pull a Tornado and make me write DATA on my hand, but she didn’t. But that’s when I learned that the fun and carefree Amanda was all business when it came to diving.
“Don’t feel bad, Peggy. I do this with all my dive partners. You don’t want to be fifty feet under water and be confused over the safety details or what your partner’s trying to communicate to you.”
With everyone now all paired off, Captain Hunter gave us the signal to fan out from the anchor and do a visual search of the area. As each team swam away in different directions I hoped Amanda and I would be the ones to find the ship first — not that it was a race, but it would probably annoy Dr. Sanchez. We knew that the ship couldn’t be too far but visibility was poor that afternoon and we couldn’t see more than ten feet ahead … which was why I practically hung on to Amanda’s flippers. There was no way I wanted to get lost down there!
As we swam slowly along Amanda stopped frequently to jot notes on her waterproof permatrace paper. At first I didn’t see anything too noteworthy, but then I realized that what appeared at first to be only small mounds covered in sea plants could very well be man-made objects — otherwise why would Amanda plot them on her grid? I had the urge to brush away the silt and sea weeds to see if they really were artifacts, but I knew better than to disturb the site. Eddy always told me that artifacts in situ could tell an archaeologist a lot. I was pretty sure that rule applied to underwater archaeology too.
Before swimming away from each artifact Amanda signaled for me to me push in the small markers with orange ribbon tied to them. Later, when the team came back to do a full-scale excavation those little markers would help her to locate the artifacts again. When I shoved in that first marker I felt like Neil Armstrong planting the American flag on the moon.
We came to a place that looked like an underwater secret garden with five stone steeples, each decorated with a kelp fringe and coral growing in between. The huge stones looked like church spires reaching up towards the ocean’s surface. As we stared up at them Amanda turned to me — but before she could give me a sign I knew what she was thinking. I took her permatrace pad and pencil and wrote in block letters: THE HIDDEN ROCKS THAT SANK INTREPID. She nodded and I could see inside her mask that her eyes were wide with excitement. She gave me the thumbs-up sign and then jotted the coordinates on her waterproof pad. We were swimming around the outside of the rock pinnacles when I looked down at my watch and then my gauge — we only had ten minutes left before we would have to surface. Amanda noticed too.
We were about to turn around and swim back towards the anchor when I noticed an unusual shape a short way from the pinnacles. I signed to Amanda that I wanted to check it out. I thought she might say no, but then she noticed it too. We swam over to look closer at the cross-like feature that was as thick and long as a telephone pole. Like everything else we’d seen, it was covered in fine silt, and plants and tiny fish had claimed it as home. I could feel my heart rate quicken as we swam the length of it — here and there peeking from out of the silt were pieces of thick rope, pulleys, and metal parts. Then there it was … a box-like hull resting silently on its side. It was both amazing and scary and while I was definitely excited to see it I also felt solemn — the way I did on Remembrance Day while standing at the cenotaph with Uncle Stewart.
Amanda gave me an underwater high-five. I don’t know if her heart raced like mine, but I knew all this excitement was costing us oxygen. She tapped her watch — the signal that our time was up. I could tell that she didn’t want to leave any more than I did, but neither of us was so foolish as to ignore the gauge on our oxygen tanks. We swam back towards the anchor where the others had reassembled. Then in pairs we made the ascent to the ocean surface. As soon as we reached the surface we both pulled our mouth pieces out and were shouting “Yahoo” and splashing around like little kids. When it became clear what we were so excited about everyone else started to cheer and high-five too.
That night we celebrated — pan-fried fish and chips with tartar sauce, plus Marnie whipped up one of those chocolate fudge cakes in a box for dessert. We sat around the galley table for hours and I listened as the crew told stories about other underwater excavations they’d been on. Even Dr. Sanchez had some interesting things to tell about a Spanish galleon he’d worked on in the Sea of Cortez. But what I enjoyed the most was listening to Captain Hunter tell about his work on the Mary Rose — the sixteenth-century British battleship that now sat in a museum that was built especially for it.
“You know, one of the most amazing things we found among the 19,000 artifacts collected from that wreck was a glass jar. When we opened it — five hundred years later — we could still smell the menthol inside,” said the captain. “And as for the human remains — well, not only did the thick silt preserve the structure of the Mary Rose and all she contained, but the men trapped on board when she sank.” I realize other kids might find it morbid to hear all the icky details of the six skeletons they found clustered around the cannon on the main deck of the Mary Rose — but not me. I wanted to know every bone deep fact!
“Human bones can tell a lot about a person’s life,” continued the captain. “The remains we found on the Mary Rose, for instance, showed us they were big, strong men used to heavy work — like loading and firing a two-tonne bronze gun. And being a soldier on a sixteenth-century battleship was no place for the old — which was why most of the remains found were of men under the age of thirty. One was a thirteen-year-old boy.” The same age as me, I thought. “I love this work because it opens a window to the past and reveals a very human story about what life was like back then — the strain and injuries they endured, their poor diets. And the artifacts are revealing too — like in the master carpenter’s chest we found a sundial, a book, and a backgammon set — a sign of wealth for that time.”
“Do you think the Intrepid will have some good stories to tell us too?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it, Peggy.”
I knew sooner or later I had to tell Captain Hunter about spilling the beans to the reporter, but I just couldn’t seem to find the right moment. Then suddenly everyone was toddling off to bed to rest up for the big dive the next day. Now that we had located a ship, the next step was to confirm that it was in fact the Intrepid. And that was definitely something I didn’t want to miss.
After everyone had turned in for the night I lay on my bunk with Captain Whittaker’s journal. I had only a few pages left to read and I was anxious to get to the end.
June 24th, 1812
Mister Lockhart is a scoundrel and has catastrophically botched negotiations with Chief Noomki by promising weapons and ammunition. When I learned about the deal I went ashore to explain to the chief that the weaponry we have is destined for elsewhere. He mistook my intentions as an attempt to drive up the bargain. By all that I have seen these Kwakwaka’wakw people