Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo (6 page)

Duhout was the pilot of
L’Aimable
when she ran aground. Those who stayed behind blamed him for the expedition’s failure. Because of that fact it was strange that La Salle allowed him to go along on the trip to Canada. The truth was that the settlers who would remain at Fort Saint Louis didn’t want him around—Duhout had been acting increasingly strange as time passed.

La Salle figured that if he led Duhout to Canada he could wash his hands of him.

But Duhout’s mind was fast fading into madness. He was beset by paranoia and voices in his head—evil thoughts that floated on the wind. At first, Duhout believed La Salle was talking about him behind his back. Within a few days, he thought La Salle was plotting to trade him to the Indians as a slave. By the time they reached the Trinity River, Duhout was sure La Salle was planning to kill him, so he moved first. He killed La Salle and left his body by the river.

The man who had set out to claim a continent died alone and disillusioned. His grave has yet to be found.

Within months of La Salle’s death, Indians attacked Fort Saint Louis. Weakened by disease, the settlers could barely put up a fight, and they were slaughtered. The French plans for a settlement in the New World had been savagely crushed by weather, distance, and discord. When it was all said and done, only a dozen people had survived.

La Salle was a visionary, but, like so many other explorers, his vanity got the best of him. And yet his place in American history is secure. Only Lewis and Clark covered more territory than the aristocrat from France.

II

Out of Reach
1998-1999

HOW I WAS BEGUILED INTO LOOKING FOR
L’AIMABLE

(pronounced “la amaablea”) is still a mystery to me. In my mind it was not a ship that held great interest. It had great historical significance, to be sure, but there was little romance or tragedy tied to it. Besides, NUMA had never searched for a ship that had been lost for three hundred years. However, like a trout that hasn’t eaten all winter, I took the bait, rounded up a team, and began studying the historical records on La Salle’s fatal expedition.

It all began when Wayne Gronquist, then-president of NUMA, met with Barto Arnold, who was then-director of the Underwater Archeological Research Section of the Texas Antiquities Commission. Arnold had achieved a remarkable accomplishment in recovering La Salle’s smallest ship,
Joly,
which had grounded inside Matagorda Bay and had been abandoned. Building a cofferdam around the wreck, Arnold and his team recovered hundreds of artifacts from La Salle’s doomed 1685 expedition.

Arnold had conducted a magnetic survey of the area in 1978 and had hoped to initiate a major investigation of the myriad targets he had found. Texas Antiquities did have the funds and came to NUMA. Barnum was right: There’s a sucker born every minute. Caught in an unguarded moment, I succumbed and offered to fund the survey and expedition, never dreaming it would take months and a boatload of currency.

The services of World Geoscience Inc., of Houston, were enlisted for an in-depth aerial magnetic survey using technology that was unavailable to Arnold twenty years earlier. The plan was to conduct a follow-up project to excavate and identify the magnetic anomalies located from the air.

Good old steadfast Ralph Wilbanks, a respected marine surveyor and valued trustee of NUMA, along with marine archaeologist Wes Hall, were called in to execute the survey. Ralph and Wes are the two men who discovered the Confederate submarine
Hunley
in 1995.

The historical data was accumulated and analyzed by respected historian Gary McKee. Douglas Wheeler, a NUMA trustee and a dedicated shipwreck hunter, generously provided funding for the first survey. Doug’s only return on his investment was a remarkable painting of
L’Aimable,
by marine artist Richard DeRosset, that hangs in his office.

Contemporary reports on La Salle’s ill-fated expedition were studied. The journals of Henri Joutel described a detailed account of the loss of
L‘Aimable.
Minet, La Salle’s chief navigator, drew contemporary charts that accurately illustrated Cavallo Pass as it appeared in 1685 and indicated the position of the wreck. Minet’s charts show the wreck of
L’Aimable
lying on the eastern side of the old channel. The only predicament was that Minet seemed to have trouble measuring distances over water. He had a tendency to overestimate, a common error made by people judging distance over water by eye. Still, it isn’t often that you can be lucky enough to find an eyewitness account that puts you in the ballpark.

The area to be investigated was determined at 4.81 nautical miles north to south and 2.12 nautical miles east to west, more than covering the documented wreck site. By making transparencies of Minet’s charts to scale and then overlaying them with modem charts and aerial photographs, we could see that the shorelines had changed considerably over three hundred years. The southern tip of Matagorda Island has eroded significantly, up to a thousand feet, whereas the Matagorda Peninsula’s erosion has not been as extreme. Though Minet’s channel width seems too wide, it would be logical to assume that he simply misgauged the distance, since most charts from between 1750 and 1965 do not vary by more than a hundred yards.

The major frustrations we faced were the changes in the channel that had occurred over the last thirty-five years. In 1965, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers opened a new shipping channel through the Matagorda Peninsula to the Intracoastal Waterway a few miles northeast of Cavallo Pass. The new channel changed the dynamics of the water flow out of the bay and altered the pass dramatically. These changes made it difficult to make exact comparisons between the modem charts and the older ones.

If we had come along before 1965, our job would have been much simpler. After the new channel was dredged, the original thirty-foot-deep channel began to “sand in.” This transformation deeply buried most of the shipwrecks in our search grid, making it all the more difficult to reach them.

In February 1998, Ralph and Wes began the first survey, using Ralph’s reliable twenty-five-foot Parker he had named
Diversity
. Naturally, the rest of us refer to it as Perversity. No more practical boat ever sailed the water in search of shipwrecks, but luxury yacht comfort she ain’t. If you’ll pardon a dry description of the technical equipment, the boat carried two marine cesium magnetometers, a handheld proton procession magnetometer, a NAVSTAR differentially corrected global positioning system (GPS), Coastal Oceanographics navigation and data-collecting software, and a small induction dredge.

The search team operated out of Port O‘Connor, Texas, a town of friendly, warm people but not much else. There is a gas station, a nice motel, Josie’s Mexican Restaurant—run by the wonderful Elosia Newsome—and 560 bait shacks. There is no main street. Next to Port O’Connor, Mayberry was a metropolis. I don’t possess much insight into people’s souls, so I am still baffled as to why Ralph bought a house there. I suppose one reason is that the local citizens think the world of Ralph and look upon him as the best thing to hit the town since grits.

Diversity
left the port in the month of February. Each anomaly that was detected during the aerial surveys was located from the water surface as directed by the navigation computer software operating in conjunction with the differential global positioning system. Once the target was confirmed by the magnetometer, it was marked with a buoy. Next, the divers went over the side and examined the bottom. If the target was buried, the diver used a handheld proton to pinpoint the exact spot. Then a thin metal probe or water-jet probe was used to find out how deep the target was buried. Once the dimensions and depth were established, the induction dredge was lowered and the sand blown away, as a crater was dug over the target. Once an artifact or a wreck was revealed, a study was made to date it. A boiler meant a nineteenth- or twentieth-century wreck. Same with the remains of paddle wheels from an old steamship. Capstans, bronze propellers, deck winches, various pieces of ship’s machinery, and anchors along with their chains were uncovered. Fascinating discoveries, but no blue ribbon or trophy.

A shipwreck was soon discovered and marked as Target 4. It was routinely marked with a buoy, and the divers deployed to investigate the site. Two artifacts were found exposed and recovered for investigation. They appeared to be badly encrusted firearms, a flintlock pistol, and a flintlock musket.

Hopes were high that
L‘Aimable
had been found, as Ralph sent the artifacts to the conservation laboratory at Texas A&M for preservation and identification. Sadly, our hopes were dashed when an X ray evaluation revealed them to be from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. While of historical importance, they were not from
L’Aimable.

Thus ended phase one.

I have been in contact with the Texas Antiquities Commission and Texas A&M University about the possibility of archaeology students excavating the artifacts on the wreck as a school project. Though I have offered to fund the effort, as of this writing I’ve yet to hear anything.

In September of the same year, Ralph set out again and launched phase two, lasting most of the fall and into the winter. Bad weather caused countless delays. I can’t imagine the jolly times they must have had in Port O’Connor while waiting days and weeks for the weather to clear. I heard that one of their pastimes was going down to the nearest bait shack and counting worms.

I flew into San Antonio and had a pleasant two-hundred-mile drive to Port O‘Connor for the next phase of the search. I met Ralph at the motel and had dinner at Josie’s, where the meals are real belly-busters.

We set out the next day with a relatively calm sea and clear skies. I have always felt as though I was coming home when I stepped aboard
Diversity.
She is as rugged as they come, as well as stable and fast, her 250-horsepower Yamaha shoving her through the waves.
Diversity
and I have a love-hate relationship. I never fail to bang my shins on her many flanges, sharp edges, and pointed knobs, causing me to bleed all over Ralph’s clean deck. Ralph always has a cooler of beer and soda pop, along with strange munchies from food manufacturers no one has ever heard of, such as Magnolia’s Spicy Pickled Okra and Carl’s Crunchy Pig Parts.

Wes Hall was working on another survey on the East Coast, so Mel Bell and Steve Howard, two very efficient and affable guys, filled in as dive crew for the second phase. Several targets were marked and probed before the dredge was unleashed, and we dug through the silt to see what turned up. Still no
L’Aimable.

One evening during the operation, the leading citizens of Port O’Connor threw a barbecue party in our honor. A fun time was had by all, and I found it interesting to hear about the hefty amount of funding that was to be raised to aid in the recovery and preservation of any artifacts that would be put on display at a facility in town. I keep looking, but I haven’t found a check yet. Help did come, however, in the form of contacts for additional equipment, which proved invaluable.

Target 2 appeared that it might be
L’Aimable.
She had the right magnetometer readings and after being probed was found to lie twelve feet under the sand, definitely an old wreck and a likely prospect. She could not be revealed just yet, since the dredge aboard
Diversity
was not up to the job of blowing a twelve-foot-deep crater. I had to return home because of writing commitments. Ralph received the generous assistance of Steve Hoyt and Bill Pierson of the Texas Historical Commission (THC), who brought their boat,
Anomaly,
a state marine survey boat with reverse prop-wash thrusters that could blow a larger hole through the sand. Not much progress could be made, due to poor weather conditions, and it was decided to cease operations until the weather improved.

Phase three began in June of 1999, as the sea turned fairly smooth. A veritable fleet set out for Target 2. Besides Ralph and his
Diversity
team, there was the Texas Historical Commission crew and its survey boat
Anomaly,
and a new arrival, the sixty-five-foot
Chip XI
, owned by the Ocean Corporation of Houston, a school for commercial divers. This boat was more than well equipped to reach through the silt to investigate the target. Jerry Ford, chief dive instructor for OC, brought along a team of dedicated students who volunteered to work the project on their own time.

Over the next several days, Target 2 was partially exposed. She was indeed a very old shipwreck. A cannonball was recovered, and then the divers exposed a cannon. I was immediately phoned and asked to provide the necessary financial support to conserve it. I was more than willing to comply, and the THC agreed to permit the recovery. But, while this was going on, the weather turned bad again, and the recovery was postponed for three weeks to await clearer seas. Unfortunately, as usually happens, the crater containing the cannon filled in with sand.

When the climate became congenial once again, Diversity and
Anomaly
returned to the scene of the wreck, then blew another huge hole until the cannon was exposed for the second time since it had sunk into the seafloor. Then it was raised from its twelve-foot-deep hole with lift bags and laid on the surface of the bottom.

The next day, Chief Kevin Walker graciously offered the Coast Guard’s assistance, and he arrived at the site on a fifty-five-foot buoy tender. The crane used to lift buoys was activated, and the cannon was raised into the sun for the first time in more than two hundred years and lowered onto the deck. From the site, it was then carried to the Coast Guard base in Port O’Connor and immersed in shallow water for temporary preservation until it could be transported, along with the cannonball, to Texas A&M University for conservation.

James Jobling of the conservation lab eventually identified what turned out to be a British navy twenty-four-pounder carronade and dated it from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Several months later, Jobling called and said that he and A&M had never received the check for $3,000, the cost of preserving the cannon. I checked with Wayne Gronquist, who assured me that the elite of Port O‘Connor would take care of it. Another three months and Jobling had yet to be paid, so I sent him a check. My next call was to Steve Hoyt at the Texas Historical Commission. Even though the state had jurisdiction regarding the final placement of the cannon, I politely asked that it go anywhere but Port O’Connor, since all had run and hid when it came time to pay the bill. The last I heard, it was still in the conservation lab.

MISSED AGAIN.

But not entirely.

When the legendary pirate Jean Laffite was ordered out of Galveston in 1821, he engaged in a few piratical operations that angered not only the Americans but the British as well. Combined naval units of both countries chased him down the coast of Texas, pressing him hard. Reaching Cavallo Pass, his fleet of pirate ships was chased by five British frigates and several American armed sloops. His band of pirates was in a desperate situation. Throwing caution to the wind, during a violent storm he ordered his fleet to run over the bar at the entrance to the Pass, into the inner channel. With fortitude and luck, Laffite made it into Matagorda Bay with all his ships intact. The British frigates tried to follow him in, but two grounded and were lost.

Laffite, so the story goes, having achieved a short reprieve, divided up the booty among his pirate crews, burned his ships, and vanished. Rumors put him in South Carolina, where he married Emma Mortimer of Charleston, who knew him as successful merchant Jean Lafflin. After several years in the South, he and his wife moved to St. Louis, where it is said he manufactured gunpowder. On his deathbed he confessed to his wife that he was Jean Laffite the pirate, and was buried in Alton, Illinois, sometime in 1854.