Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [165]
2. “‘Joe Palooka’ wins $50 Million Purse” by Mitchell Smyth, Toronto Star, August 30, 1987, showed Kirkwood selling a golf course on Kauai for $50 million. “Now that he’s leaving the Hawaiian hideaway,” Smyth wrote, “Kirkwood is a little sad…‘I have a mile of beach here—it’s considered the prettiest mile of beach on the Hawaiian islands.’ But there’ll always be his golf to keep him happy. The game is also the basis for his deep belief in fair play and consideration for others. ‘It’s a game where if you cheat you are only cheating yourself. What better rule to live by?’”
3. Eventually I found that Abalonian Bruce McMahan still existed. Web sites exist for several organizations, including a hedge fund, a supercar company, and a philanthropy (http://www.brucemcmahan biography.com/). Emails and phone calls to a PR firm for McMahan yielded promises that calls would be returned, but none ever were. Then I stumbled upon a lead feature (Kelly Cramer, “Daddy’s Girl,” Village Voice, September 26, 2006). Cramer reported on court records indicating that in 2005, McMahan settled a lawsuit brought by a daughter born out of wedlock. The suit had claimed psychological damages in the wake of an alleged affair and even a wedding between McMahan and his daughter. True or not, Jim Houtz put it best when he said, “That’s probably why you didn’t hear from him.”
4. Photos of the shipwreck were taken by Daniel Bresler, who had been hired by Kirkwood and then sold them to the Associated Press. I reached his son by phone in Los Angeles who told me his father’s own story—including life as a marine combat photographer.
5. Among the other sources:
A. Staff, “New Nation May Rise 120 Miles From Coast,” Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1966.
B. Harold Keen, “Promoters of Abalone Ship Plan May Face Federal Prosecution,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1966.
C. “New Island Plan Pushed by Kirkwood,” Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1966.
D. Bill Duncan, “The Grand Plan for Building an Island Paradise off our Coastline,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, December 18, 1966.
E. Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, “Republics of the Reefs: Nation-Building on the Continental Shelf and in the World’s Oceans,” California Western Journal of International Law 25, no. 1 (Fall, 1994): 104–05.
6. Ben Sherwood’s The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life (New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2009) provides remarkable, hair-raising insights into the minds and genes of survivors of all manner of deadly things.
7. Rob Bender’s Web site http://concreteships.org is fascinating. You can still see the hulks of Jalisco’s nearly indestructible sister ships lined up as a floating breakwater off Powell River in British Columbia and forming the Kiptopeke Breakwater in Lower Chesapeake Bay, Virginia.
8. At least one public record showed a Joe Kirkwood in San Diego who matched the age of Joe Kirkwood Jr. as passing away in 1995. This seems to jibe with a rumor Houtz heard. Yet Kirkwood’s Wikipedia page shows no date of death. Kirkwood would now be ninety-one, so of course, it’s possible he’s still alive. If so, I hope to one day meet him.
CHAPTER 5
1. Ramapo fascinated me from the first time I read Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. Thanks to Bill Sharp for sharing his copy of “Great Sea Waves” by R.P. Whitemarsh, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 60, no. 8 (August, 1934). The story cites motion picture footage shot from Ramapo. I would appreciate any leads.
2. R.P. Whitemarsh’s family contact was made possible through a biography provided by James Allen Knechtmann, at the Naval History and Heritage Command. This led to contact with great-niece Angie Gregos-Swaroop and her mother (and R.P.’s niece) Nancy Whitemarsh Gregos, who provided me with photos and contact information for both James Whitemarsh (R.P.’s nephew) and R.P.’s daughter, Francis “Taffy” Wells.
3. A fascinating analysis of the sinking of the Japanese midget sub by the USS Ward, a PT boat under Whitemarsh’s command, “The Search for the World War II Japanese Midget Submarine