Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [40]
As Houtz laid the markers, the Whitney Olsen loomed off to the north, dwarfed by the silhouette of the Jalisco . She was a grand and eerie sight. Her hull was slate gray, but long rusty streaks ran down beneath patches where her rebar bones had been exposed—looking for all the world like dried blood. Toward sunset, Kirkwood joined McMahan aboard Polaris while Houtz remained aboard Rainbow’s End. By nightfall, the Whitney Olsen and Jalisco would begin making the first of many broad, idle-speed circles well to the west of the Bishop Rock buoy.
Back on the mainland, the proceedings were being eyed closely by San Diego Union Tribune reporters, who possessed a radio telephone and a private channel to Bruce McMahan aboard Polaris. “People thought we were just kidding,” McMahan had told them. “If all goes well, we should be starting operations out there in a couple of weeks.”
Jim Houtz claims he doesn’t know when the call came in, but at some point around dinnertime, a radio telephone conversation took place between U.S. Attorney Edwin Miller, Whitney Olsen Captain Cliff Miller, Kirkwood, and McMahan. The message was blunt. The Abalonians were on the U.S. continental shelf, they were in violation of U.S. federal laws, and they were to cease all operations. Captain Miller was to await further instruction. Kirkwood wrote, “I gave Captain Miller the information to relay to the U.S. attorney regarding the people we were in contact with in Washington, and sat back to wait, chewing on my lip.”
In about an hour, the U.S. attorney called back demanding the ship be towed to San Diego. “He then said we were in violation of U.S. laws because we were a hazard to shipping,” wrote Kirkwood. “He commenced reading the law to us, but his voice seemed to falter as he said the words, ‘misdemeanor, punishable by $50.00 fine.’”
As Kirkwood recorded, “The captain, incredulous at the thought that we were a hazard to shipping, asked, ‘On Bishop Rock?’”
Attorney Miller shouted back angrily, “Do you understand me, captain! Tow that boat back or I’ll have your license!”
“I thought I had anticipated every angle,” Kirkwood wrote. “But this was so illogical, I had considered it briefly and dismissed it from my mind months ago. We were on Bishop Rock, itself a great hazard to shipping, to which all the boats that had gone down there were testimony, but it was well protected by buoys put there by the United States and plainly marked on every map in existence. For that matter, I just couldn’t see how the U.S. could have jurisdiction. But I had gambled and been fully aware of the risks. I tried to stifle the resentment I felt for the U.S. attorney and told myself he was just doing his job. He had only cited us with a misdemeanor. I could just ignore it, go ahead with the project, and pay my fines, but that would still be against the law, and that wasn’t the way I wanted to do this.”
But Houtz said that’s not how it went down.
Houtz thinks a conversation then took place between Kirkwood, McMahan, and Captain Miller. U.S. attorney be damned, they were going to scuttle the Jalisco . But the right story had to be told. What if they claimed that Whitney Olsen accidentally scraped Jalisco across an uncharted portion of Bishop Rock after Attorney Miller’s call, and she started taking on water? It would be impossible to tow a sinking ship to San Diego, so to avoid creating a new shipping hazard, they could claim they decided to sink it atop an existing shipping hazard, which conveniently lay right along Jim Houtz’s runway. Captain Miller could keep his license, and the founding fathers could cry forgiveness, not ask permission, collect on a $45,000 insurance policy (or at least have the ship above the water so she could be salvaged), avoid criminal prosecution and a fifty-dollar fine, and still potentially witness the birth of their nation.
It was a brilliant plan. One that, Jim Houtz said, Kirkwood had clearly decided he wasn’t going to