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Captain Santos Gomez Leyva of the Armada de Mexico and Dr. Pilar Luna Erregueren a watch as Larry Nordby works on the map of the wreck of Somers aboard the patrol vessel Margarita Maza de Juarez, 1990. James P. Delgado

these berths. Confronted by the small size of Somers, we gain a new perspective on how just a handful of men, suspected of plotting a mutiny, could inspire the near-panic that led to three hasty hangings.

We find more reminders of the crew as we swim forward. Lying on its side is the huge cast-iron galley stove of the brig, its flue still attached. The hinged opening of the stove has fallen away, and when I flash my light into the stove, I can see that the drip pan and range grates are still in place. My light startles a small fish, which darts out of the stove, and I chuckle at the thought of its making a home where once it would have been cooked. A scatter of bottles and a ceramic jug are all that remain of the ship’s provisions, including a bottle with a lead foil cap from “Wells Miller & Provost, 217 Front St., New York.” That New York merchant was the nation’s leading manufacturer of preserved foods and condiments in its day, and finding the bottle is the sort of human connection across time that makes history special. This bottle probably held a popular condiment, a special touch to make a sailor’s meal just a little tastier. I like making discoveries like this.

As we turn to leave, I look down, and my heart stops. There are bones scattered in the wreckage, yellow and mottled. Thirty-two men died on Somers, and the wreck is a war grave. Have we found the remains of some of the crew? We’ve been told to respectfully collect any human remains and return them home for analysis and reburial, so I take a closer look. There are three vertebra and a short, small bone that could be from a radius or ulna. But I can tell that they’re not human. These are from a large hog or a small cow, part of the rations of salted meat packed in barrels and carried as provisions. Somers’s log shows she had nine barrels of what sailors liked to complain was “salt horse” when she sank. This is what’s left of some of it.

As I begin my slow ascent to the surface, stopping to decompress, I think about Somers and the stories locked in her decaying timbers. Powerful events played out on those decks and changed the course of a navy. Our team never loses sight of that tragedy over the next few days as we continue our inspection, complete our chart and finally bid the wreck goodbye.

After our departure from Veracruz, the Armada de Mexico closes the site to all divers and vows to keep a close watch on the site. A return visit by the National Park Service a few years ago found Somers looking much as we had left her, but with more evidence of unauthorized visitors who have taken souvenirs. With the exception of these few illegal divers, Somers rests alone in the eternal darkness. If that broken hull could speak, I’d like to think that, just like Billy Budd, she would ask to be left in the solitude of the sea.

CHAPTER FIVE

TITANIC

ABOVE THE ABYSS

It’s 6:00 a.m., and the first hints of light on the horizon reveal scattered clouds in a gray sky and the flecks of whitecaps on the ocean’s dark surface. I’m aboard the Russian research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh. We’re slowly steaming in a wide circle, barely making headway in the rolling sea. For the last week, we’ve kept the same course, 368 miles southeast of St. John’s, Newfoundland, constantly retracing our wake on this patch of ocean, far from sight of land.

Featureless it may be, but this area of ocean is famous because of what happened here on the late evening and early morning hours of April 14 and 15, 1912. Two and a quarter miles below us, at the bottom of the sea, lies the wreck of Titanic. And in a few hours, I will slowly descend to the ocean floor, sealed in a small deep-sea submersible, to visit the wreck in the freezing, pitch-black, crushing depths.

Ever since Titanic’s shattered hulk was discovered in 1985, only about