Adventures of a Sea Hunter: In Search of Famous Shipwrecks

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This is for my mother, who had to tolerate human bones and stone tools in her bathtub as I learned about the past as a teenage archeologist. And for making her cry as a middle-aged archeologist who dives in dangerous places because, as she points out, I’ll always be her little boy.

This is also for Ann, who keeps the home fires burning while juggling a career and an often missing-in-action archeologist.

And last, for Beau, my faithful feline companion during many an evening’s writing marathon. It’s not the same without him.

Ships and their crews have been sailing off into oblivion since the dawn of recorded history. Through the millennia, more than a million ships have sunk or gone missing, along with untold numbers of their crews. A million ships is an impressive statistic not believed by most landsmen. Yet, to call the seven seas a vast cemetery is an understatement.

During the ages, storms have wreaked havoc on entire fleets, some consisting of more than a thousand ships, that were torn apart and hurled to the bottom. The first tragedy may have taken place when one of our Cro-Magnon ancestors happily discovered he could float on water atop a log, at least until he fell off and drowned. From that time forward, huge ships, small boats and men have vanished in an unending surge beneath the waves into dark watery depths that have yet to resurrect their dead.

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