Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [24]
From unknown ports, they say, come silently sailing over these sunken isles weird phantom ships bound for harbors that are never reached by the ghostly crews that line the rails of their shadowy craft, dimly seen through the shifting many-colored mists of the sea—perhaps that once sailed from some distant forgotten port to which they never yet returned. Amid the half-lights ‘twixt dark and dawn, weird voices are heard in quaint old sea chants in unremembered tongues, the clatter of ship gear, of slatting yards against creaking masts, and loudly shouted orders backed by blood-curdling deep-sea oaths once familiar to the bearded ghostly crews. At times, from the doomed caravels and galleons rise melancholy laments like the wild wailings heard aforetime near the Isle of the Lost Woman, storm-beaten San Nicolas Island to the leeward.
Into the mid-twentieth century, ghost ships and mortal fisherman were arriving in increasing numbers, often risking their lives to do so, and it’s thus surprising that the Cortes Bank hasn’t claimed more boats or souls than it has. There have, however, been at least a few sinkings and terrifyingly close calls. For instance, in November 1952, an eighty-foot purse seiner, the El Capitan, was cleaved in half by a sister fishing vessel while both worked a giant school of mackerel above the bank in the dead of night. Twelve terrified crewmen leapt into the ocean as the ship foundered, sinking in less than five minutes. All were rescued.
Fate was tempted again in 1957, when a flamboyant diver from Redondo Beach launched the only known major treasure hunting expedition to the Cortes Bank. His name was Mel Fisher.
To a great many, Mel Fisher needs no introduction. He was the son of a California chicken farmer who craved adventure and the spotlight, and early on decided that his future lay along the ocean floor. Newfangled aqualungs were making diving accessible to the masses, and in the mid-1950s Fisher and his wife, Dolores, opened a successful dive shop in Redondo Beach. Fisher became utterly addicted to the hunt, eventually moving to Florida to explore countless wrecks along the periphery of the Gulf Stream. His white whale was the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a treasure ship that had foundered off Florida in 1622.
Some called Fisher a quixotic huckster and a shameless self-promoter with no appreciation for the cultural significance of the graves and live coral he scoured with a huge, seafloor vacuum. Yet Fisher paid a heavy price for his obsession with the Atocha, losing his son Dirk and his daughter-in-law in a 1975 dive off the Florida coast. Ten years to the day after Dirk’s death, Fisher’s team finally found their ship. Eventually, they unearthed more than $400 million in plundered Indian icons, jewelry, and bars of pure gold from the shattered hull of the Atocha—the richest undersea treasure ever discovered.
I once interviewed Fisher around 1989 and discussed the ongoing legal battles he faced in laying claim to the treasure. He was certain that courts would eventually find in his favor. When I asked how he was so sure, he spun his trademark phrase with a twinkle in his eye: “It’s simple. Finders, keepers.”
In 1957, Fisher sought to locate the wreck of the Santa Rosa atop Bishop Rock. He recruited a team that included a diving piano bar singer and a roller- skating instructor. He and his wife showed Los Angeles Times writer Lee Bastajian an array of equipment—an underwater bicycle, a high-tech sled that could detect metals, and an array of underwater cameras. Tantalizingly, Fisher also displayed bronze he claimed to have recovered from the Bank and a chart titled Ye Olde Map of Reported Facts and Tales. Just below a trident-clutching Neptune lay the Santa Rosa.
“Normally 50-foot waves break over the rock,” Fisher told Bastajian. “Thus our departure will await a relative calm—20-foot waves.”
When that “calm” window opened in January 1957, Times editors tapped a young reporter named George Beronius—a novice