Adventures of a Sea Hunter_ In Search of Famous Shipwrecks - James P. Delgado [21]
That full circle feeling comes back on a later dive that we start aft from Nagato’s bow. As I slip out from under the deck, my eyes catch something ahead in the gloom. Dan and Murphy also see it, and we all swim forward at a fast clip. The entire superstructure of the ship, instead of being crushed like that of Arkansas, is laid out on the white sand. It’s the bridge; it’s the bridge of Nagato, where Admiral Yamamoto heard the radio message that the attack on Pearl Harbor was successful: “Torn, tora, torn!” It’s incredible. Sometimes, science be damned, you just get excited by what you find.
My last dive at Bikini Atoll takes place a decade after the National Park Service survey. With John Brooks, a former NPS colleague, and Len Blix, the assistant dive master at Bikini, I drop down to look at the destroyer Anderson. (Since our 1989–90 survey, Bikini has been opened to the world as a unique dive park for those with the skill and the cash to journey to what has been called the “Mount Everest of wreck diving.”) Anderson is a famous ship that fought in many battles, screening aircraft carriers in some of the greatest sea fights of the Pacific War, including the Coral Sea and Midway. She shelled Japanese shore installations at Tarawa and survived the war only to die beneath the dragon’s breath of the atomic bomb.
Anderson lies on her side in the dark blue gloom. We approach the stern, passing over a rack of depth charges that have tumbled free and lie scattered on the sand. The decks seem undamaged, except for a torpedo-launching rack that has fallen off. The bridge lies open, its hatches blasted off. When I look down into the bridge, the dark interior swarms with hundreds of small fish that have sought shelter inside this sunken warship. Moving forward, I see a subtle reminder of the power of the atom. One of the destroyer’s 5-inch guns has been twisted by the heat of the blast so that it points straight back to the bridge.
As I sail away from Bikini for the last time, I pause to reflect on all that I’ve seen there over the years. The crushed hulls, toppled masts and abandoned test instruments are material records that preserve the shocking reality of Operation Crossroads in a way that can never fully be matched by written accounts, photographs or even films of the tests. This ghost fleet is a powerful and evocative museum in the deep. It is a very relevant museum, too. Operation Crossroads and the nuclear age that followed have had and continue to have a direct effect on the lives of every living being on the planet. The empty bunkers and the abandoned homes of the Bikinians remind us of David Bradley’s 1948 comment that the islanders might not be the last “to be left homeless and impoverished by the inexorable Bomb. They have no choice in the matter, and very little understanding of it. But in this perhaps they are not so different from us all.” As I leave Bikini, I hope that it is a record of the past and not the harbinger of a terrible future.
CHAPTER FOUR
A CURSED SHIP
MUTINY ON THE USS SOMERS: NOVEMBER 26, 1842
On November 26, 1842, Captain Alexander Slidell Mackenzie of Somers adjusted his uniform and stepped forward to the young midshipman. “I learn, Mr. Spencer,” he quietly said, “that you aspire to the command of the Somers.”
Philip Spencer smiled slightly. “Oh, no, sir.”
“Did you not tell Mr. Wales, sir, that you had a project to kill the commander, the officers, and a considerable portion of the crew of this vessel, and convert her into a pirate?” Mackenzie pressed.
“I may have told him so, sir, but it was in joke.”
Mackenzie glared at the boy. “You admit then that you told him so?”
Spencer’s smile vanished. “Yes, sir, but in joke.”
“This, sir, is joking on a forbidden subject,” Mackenzie