Adventures of a Sea Hunter_ In Search of Famous Shipwrecks - James P. Delgado [70]
With Mike Fletcher and his son Warren, I drop down into the sea, swimming past twisted armor plate and the broken engines of Vizcaya. We swim along the hull, punctured here and there by shellfire and the rocks where the burning hulk settled. Looming up in the milky sea, washed by the surging of the surf that breaks overhead, is the bulk of one of the cruiser’s turrets, its u-inch Hontoria cannon still in place but resting on its side in the sand. With Mike, I drop down to the narrow gap that the gun passes through. The men at these guns died at their posts, heavy shells raining down and setting off the powder inside as they raced to load and fire. Oquendo’s survivors said that a 350-pound charge of powder exploded from a hit on a turret and flashed through it, killing the gun crew laboring inside before erupting in a sheet of flame that ripped off the head of a nearby officer. Similar scenes of horror played out on Vizcaya.
I shrug out of my dive vest and tank, and shove them through a narrow gap in the armor. Then, kicking and squeezing, I work my body into the turret. It is still and dark, as it should be—this is a tomb. Mike follows, and we strap our gear back on and carefully float in the enclosed space, filming it. We’re probably the first living people to be in here in more than a hundred years, and we quietly and respectfully document the turret, disturbing its peace only with our lights and air bubbles in order to share the story of what happened here with the world.
Our last dive on Cervera’s fleet is the cruiser Cristobal Colon, scuttled at the end of the battle by its crew. After opening the seacocks, they ran Colon up on the beach and abandoned ship as the Americans approached. Eager to salvage the newly built warship, the U.S. Navy tried to tow Colon off the rocks but, flooded and open to the sea, the cruiser sank in 100 feet of water. The sea is clear and calm, and as we descend down into the deep, the wreck of Colon is laid out before us, with gear on the decks and railings on ladders leading into the darkness of the cruiser’s hull. Flicking on our lights, we cannot resist the siren call of the secrets within the hull. We drift into a magazine half filled with mud and open to the seabed outside thanks to a large hole blasted through the side. Sticking out of the mud are rows of shells, still live and deadly a century after Colon’s demise. Passing out of the hole, we follow the hull, now festooned with marine life and growth that make the steel hulk a beautiful artificial reef, a haven to countless fish. The warm, sunlit waters have granted new life to Cristobal Colon and helped lay to rest some of her ghosts. As we surface, we agree that the time has come to find the elusive wreck of Merrimac.
SEARCHING FOR USS MERRIMAC
Our boat pushes past the fortress of El Morro, following the track of Merrimac’s final run. Richmond Hobson published a book about the mission in 1899, and with it in hand, we’re following the course he plotted in its pages to where the wreck should lie. Discussions with our Cuban hosts have given us hope. There is indeed a wreck near the spot, but it is a battered hulk that harbor authorities blasted around 1976 to clear the shipping channel. Now it may just be a pile of debris that we will have a difficult time proving was the famous collier. Getting permission to dive in this forbidden zone has also proved challenging, but the Cuban