Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea (56 page)

Gross arrived shortly after six, and Tommy talked to him on the hand-held, explaining how the maneuver would work. Then Tommy gave the radio to Scotty and got into the Zodiac with Tod and Bryan and twelve feet of PVC pipe to hold up the other end of the line away from the ship. As always, the white-tip sharks followed the Zodiac out and circled it, seven-footers, not particularly aggressive but unpredictable and known man-eaters. Tommy had to hold the nylon rope as taut as possible at the top of the PVC pipe while trying to stand up in the
Zodiac, which was rocking in four-foot seas. Bob wondered what would happen to the project now if a little confusion in the swells suddenly tossed Tommy into the ocean and the white-tips had him for a snack. Tommy was concentrating on a more immediate problem: Gross had arrived, but the nylon rope was snarled, and he was trying to swing it in large circles like a jump rope to straighten it out.

Gross had paid out on the grapple and had it twisting in the air one hundred feet behind the Sea Bee. He made one pass off the stern so Scotty could see how the hook was trailing, then he was ready for the pickup, but Tommy waved him off. Gross thought, If we can’t succeed at the other end, we can’t start at this end, and it’s six-thirty right now. That’s the limit. “If it’s not ready,” he told Scotty, “we need to abort.”

Tommy was still standing up in the Zodiac, swinging the nylon rope round and round. Gross yelled at Scotty again, “I’ve gotta leave. Tell Tom I’ll come back tomorrow.” Then he had another thought; he would try to grab it even with the lines tangled, but that would be the only try.

Gross circled one more time and came in low between the stern and the Zodiac, the hook bouncing and twisting in the air a hundred feet behind him. Burlingham held the
Navigator
as still as possible. Bryan kept the Zodiac nudging away from the ship to keep the line taut. Tommy raised the PVC pipe as high as he could.

When the hook hit the rope, everyone on the ship heard the nylon sing, until the weaker fish line popped at either end. Gross was still horizontal, and the package now trailed at the end of a hundred feet of grappling line plus another hundred feet of nylon loop. It drooped toward the water, and suddenly it hit a wave, then another and another. Gross felt a hard tug, the nylon sang again, then it snapped, and the package skipped across the ocean for another quarter of a mile.

Bryan raced the Zodiac up the Sea Bee’s trail, and they found the package still wrapped in duct tape, bobbing on the surface. Gross figured that the next time he would pull up sharply the instant the hook caught the rope. But there would be no next time tonight.

Back in Wilmington, Gross went to bed at 11:00 and set his alarm for 3:00
A.M.
The following morning, he drove to the airport, gassed the Sea Bee, filed a flight plan, and was airborne at 3:52. For the first hour he flew in darkness.

The sea had settled overnight. When Gross arrived at the ship just before six, the Zodiac bobbed in gentle swells, and Tommy was attaching the fish line to the nylon loop and the PVC pipe. During the night, the
Liberty Star
had disappeared from the radar screen on the
Navigator
, but apparently she had turned back immediately, for she reappeared just before midnight. She was now about to nick the northeast corner of the box a mile away.

Gross took one pass at the stern so they could see if his hook trailed properly, then he circled, dropped the Sea Bee low, aimed his nose at the center of the nylon loop, and eased down to no more than ten feet off the water. This time there were no tangles. The hook caught the loop, Gross pulled back on the wheel and was climbing steeply even before the nylon stopped singing. When the fish line broke, he was up, gaining altitude, headed for the beach in a brightening sky. Trailing behind him in a stiff wind was a shipwreck artifact recovered from the ocean floor eight thousand feet below.

It happened fast, and everyone on board watched the performance. For the past four months, all of their efforts had been focused on one thing: recovering an artifact from the
Central America
. Now that artifact was on its way to the courthouse, and a whole lot of stomping and backslapping and yahooing erupted on the back deck of the
Navigator
.

G
ROSS LANDED IN
the Cape Fear River, the bundle bouncing along the surface until he had stopped the Sea Bee. He opened the door, reached out with a boat hook, snagged the nylon loop, retrieved the package, tossed it in the backseat, and took off for Wilmington to gas the plane. Then he left immediately for Norfolk, where Robol met him at the airport.

Tommy had phoned Robol to tell him the artifact was on its way. When the courthouse opened that morning, Robol was at the door with an order for the judge to sign that directed the U.S. marshal to arrest the artifact and the ship it represented as soon as the artifact arrived at the courthouse. He also filed an amended complaint, changing the site from the coordinates at Sidewheel to those at Galaxy.

After Robol met Gross at the airport, he returned to the courthouse in early afternoon. He took the mayonnaise jar, still wrapped in duct tape,
to the U.S. marshal’s office and watched while the marshal unwound the tape, then reached into the jar of Styrofoam peanuts and lifted out the coal with the curious worm tubes stuck to it. The marshal was amused. He said to Robol, “This is the first time I ever arrested a lump of coal.”

That afternoon, the judge reviewed all of the papers, including the arrest warrant and the amended complaint. He wasn’t certain he had jurisdiction over a ship beyond the three-mile limit, but if no one challenged the Columbus-America group and therefore his jurisdiction over the site, then he would never have to address the issue. For now he assumed jurisdiction over the matter and awarded Columbus-America full recovery rights to the site.

A
T TWO O
’
CLOCK
the next morning, the
Liberty Star
reappeared on the
Navigator
’s radar screen, this time less than nine miles out. The mate on the bridge awakened Burlingham, who awakened Tommy, Barry, and Bob, and they all gathered on the bridge to watch the
Liberty Star
creep closer to the box.

Tommy knew that the court had awarded him the ship, but he had no proof of it, because the SAT COM phone was down again, and he could not receive a fax of the orders. “It was going in and out just driving me crazy,” said Tommy. “I needed those papers to convince Burlingham and everybody else on board that they weren’t going to lose their licenses, and that I wasn’t just a wild man.”

When the
Liberty Star
arrived at the northern edge of the box, Burlingham hailed the captain and requested him to stay clear of their work area. Once again the captain said he would neither enter the area nor interfere with the
Navigator
’s operations. Later that afternoon, Robol was finally able to fax the orders to the ship, and Burlingham hailed the
Liberty Star
a second time. He read the statement, quoting portions of the arrest warrant and the judge’s order designating Columbus-America substitute custodian of the ship and all artifacts recovered from the ship. The captain acknowledged a good copy of the message and said nothing more.

The following morning, July 9, the
Liberty Star
turned at the end of another long track line, shifted about a mile, and headed back on a
course that would slice right through the eastern half of the box. The captain radioed Burlingham and read the following statement:

“As of 9:32 EDT today, we are not in receipt or notification of any order or injunction issued by any court of competent jurisdiction that precludes us from surveying the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing included in the filings of yesterday or previous days restricts our right to continue search and survey.”

Obviously, the party on board the
Liberty Star
had talked with its own lawyer. “Accordingly,” continued the captain, “we hereby advise you that we have started a survey transit line, which will pass through the area specified by you, and we request that you do not interfere with our passage along this survey line.

“We will be towing deep-towed hydrographic survey equipment at the end of a thirteen-thousand-foot cable at an altitude of approximately three hundred feet above the seafloor at a speed of approximately 1.6 knots over the ground. We will not be able to execute any sudden changes in track or speed, and the ship’s heading may be substantially different from the track.”

Robol had wanted an injunction ordering others to stay away from the site or face legal sanctions, but judges will not issue an injunction unless someone’s life or property is in imminent peril. This was the imminent intrusion Robol had been waiting for.

Tommy told Craft to launch the vehicle immediately as scheduled. Then he telephoned Robol, and Robol helped them draft an affidavit for the judge: They began with the terse message from the
Liberty Star
, then continued, “The R/V Nicor Navigator is presently engaged in underwater recovery operations with a remotely operated work system deployed at a depth of approximately 9,000 feet on a tether of approximately 11,000 feet. The Nicor Navigator is showing day shapes ball-diamond-ball and is restricted in her ability to maneuver due to these underwater operations.

“At this writing, 11:30
A.M.
EDT, the R/V Liberty Star is at a range of 8,600 yards, bearing 332 degrees true. On her present track, it is estimated that she or her tethered gear will pass within plus or minus 200 yards of the Nicor Navigator or its tethered gear in 150 minutes time.
This constitutes a direct threat and interference with our underwater recovery operations.”

Barry signed it, dated it July 9, 1987, twelve noon, and faxed it to Judge Richard B. Kellam at the courthouse in Norfolk. By one-thirty, Judge Kellam had granted a temporary restraining order for ten days, and Robol had faxed a short statement out to Tommy on the
Navigator
. The
Liberty Star
had been heading toward them for the last three hours and had just entered the box at the northern edge.

Burlingham radioed the captain. “I’ve got something I’d like you to copy.” He read the statement from Judge Kellam, repeated the coordinates for the four corners of the box, and concluded, “You are hereby notified that if you do not leave these coordinates immediately, you and all your principals may be subject to sanctions and penalties for contempt of court.”

They expected to see the
Liberty Star
veer off, but she held her course. Tommy sent a telex copy of the statement to the
Liberty Star
, and still her course remained steady. Burlingham radioed again and said he was sending two men over in the Zodiac to deliver the document, but the captain refused to let them board.

Burlingham already had his stern aimed at the
Liberty Star
. He shifted the
Navigator
into DP mode and sat motionless halfway between the center of the box and the eastern edge. The vehicle remained in the water, and he flew the ball-diamond-ball of a vessel restricted in its ability to maneuver. That put him even with the
Liberty Star
, and under the Rules of the Road if the ships were even, the ship overtaking became the burden vessel. “I made them overtake me,” said Burlingham, “and they can’t cross my stern, because I’m towing.”

As the
Liberty Star
approached, Burlingham started to creep forward ever so slightly, at the same time sidling to the west. The
Liberty Star
altered her course to the west, and Burlingham sidled farther to the west, the
Liberty Star
holding course long enough for the two ships to come within seven hundred meters of each other, less than half a mile, until she veered farther west and Burlingham had pushed her out of the box.

A few minutes later, the captain of the
Liberty Star
radioed Burlingham and read a terse statement that there was no temporary restraining order, because a $100,000 bond had not been posted, and that even
if there were a temporary restraining order, it would have to be served either on their lawyers in Boston or by a federal marshal to them out at sea. Further, read the captain, the representatives aboard the
Nicor Navigator
had made “unfounded claims and veiled threats concerning possible harm to the M/V Liberty Star, its underwater survey equipment and personnel on board.” Therefore, the captain of the
Liberty Star
would no longer honor radio communication from the
Nicor Navigator
, and all further contact between the two ships would be conducted strictly according to the Rules of the Road.

By five o’clock, Robol had secured the $100,000 bond. Tommy told Burlingham to radio the
Liberty Star
and call Dr. William Ryan to the bridge. Ryan had run the sonar survey for Harry John’s X-marks-the-spot search for the
Central America
three years earlier. If Columbia University was involved, Ryan was on board: He headed the university’s Lamont-Doherty deep-water sonar search team. With Ryan listening, Burlingham read another, more detailed, statement.

“We hereby advise you that the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has assumed jurisdiction over the wrecked and abandoned sailing vessel located within the confines of our work area, and a warrant for arrest has been issued under Admiralty Law. Furthermore, Columbus-America Discovery Group has been duly appointed the United States marshal’s substitute custodian. This means that Columbus-America, together with the master of the research vessel Nicor Navigator, is legally empowered to act as substitute custodian for the United States Marshal Service….

“You are hereby admonished to keep your vessel, the Liberty Star, and your sonar, recovery gear, and all other tethered items well clear of our work area. Should you choose to ignore this admonition, we will not hesitate to fully uphold our duty as substitute custodian and to enforce the court’s orders, using all means necessary and proper under admiralty and international law.”