Adventures of a Sea Hunter (14 page)

In September, John Davis of Eco-Nova headed for England to visit the wreck we all hoped was that
of Carpathia.
Nine days later, John and his team set out in the teeth of a storm. Working under difficult conditions, they were able to deploy a remotely operated vehicle with a camera to dive down to the wreck and capture four hours of video. With the
precious footage in hand, John flew to Halifax, to meet with the rest of the team.

John, Mike, Clive and I all gather in the theater of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, after hours, as the guests of its director, Michael Moore. The large-screen television in front of us the center of attention as John Davis takes the videotape out of his bag (he has already made a copy in case something goes wrong) and pops it into the machine. I’m ready, leaning forward, with photos of
Carpathia
and the ship’s plans spread out before me. After more than two decades of shipwreck hunting, diving and research, I’m still as excited as a child at Christmas by a new discovery. So is everyone else.

We watch as the
ROV
moves across a mottled sand and gravel bottom. Then, suddenly, coming out of the dark gloom, we see a propeller. It is covered with encrustations of marine life, but the outline is clear: three blades, one buried in the sand, attached to a shaft that is braced by a strut that comes out of the hull. So far so good—it’s the right shape, has the right number of blades and is off-center, showing that it is one of two propellers that should be on either side of the rudder.

The
ROV
swings around, looking up at the hull that curves out from the keel. Then it turns, and we see the rudder, still attached to the sternpost. As John freezes the video frame, we study the ship’s plans and match the rudder—its shape, fastenings and size—to them. Just beyond the rudder, we spot the second propeller. As I watch the screen, I think of how fast those propellers were spinning in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912—faster than they ever had either before or after—on that heroic dash to aid
Titanic. Carpathia’s
engineers and captain pushed her so hard that the hull rattled and shook—“she was excited as we were,” said one engine-room hand.

The
ROV
climbs the stern, which has a very distinctive shape. There is no mistaking it, and the curving lines before us match what until now we had seen only on black-and-white photos taken in a bygone age. Moments like this remind all of us how privileged we are to relive history, as stories
and faded photographs come to life. The
ROV
is on the deck now, and a pair of davits for a lifeboat comes into view. They are in the right place to help confirm that this is
Carpathia
, but even as I note that technical fact, my mind is back at
Titanic
, looking at her empty davits.

Our first disappointment comes when the
ROV
encounters a mass of wreckage where the superstructure once was. We were hoping the superstructure was not damaged, but it is gone. The
ROV
passes over an intact bronze porthole lying on the deck, its glass unbroken. After marine organisms consumed the wood that held this porthole in place, then it fell free to lie where we see it. We go back and forth as the robot traverses the deck, revealing fallen bulkheads and electrical wire, broken glass and ship’s hardware.
Carpathia’s
deckhouses and bridge have collapsed, and I think of those plaques and awards, now buried beneath tons of rusting steel.

The
ROV
moves off the deck and follows the hull, whose steel plates are torn and mangled, but it is hard to say if the damage came from the torpedoes that struck the ship or from the red-hot boilers exploding as the cold sea flooded them. Gradually, it becomes clear that we’re looking at damage from a torpedo that struck
Carpathia
on the starboard side. The
ROV
does not completely survey the port side, but another hole, perhaps from the first torpedo hit, shows up near the area of the vanished bridge. It’s a sad moment as we inspect these wounds of a long-ago war.

When the
ROV’S
lights pick out a row of portholes along the hull, I am struck again by a voice from the past, recalling Lawrence Beesley’s description of watching from one of
Titanic’s
lifeboats as the lights blazing from
Carpathia’s
portholes signaled that help had at last arrived. The
ROV
climbs back to the deck and passes the steam winches
of Carpathia’s
forward cargo cranes—there is no doubt now, as we look at their position next to the No. 1 cargo hold, that this is
Carpathia.
But forward of the hold, the bow is in bad shape, and it is clear that the liner’s final plunge was bow first—like
Titanic’s.
But instead of falling thousands of feet into the depths,
Carpathia
sank in water shallower than her own length: the 558-foot ship went down in 514 feet of water.
Her bow hit the bottom—hard—before her stern left the surface. It is ironic to see that
Carpathia
, while not torn in two like
Titanic
, is in worse shape than the liner she had once rushed to help.

The videotape is nearing the end now, and as we gaze into the murk, John Davis points out the most interesting discovery of all. There, lying on the bottom near the hull, half buried in the sand, is the ship’s bell. It is a riveting sight. We strain our eyes to see if we can make out if the name is there, but marine growth has covered the bell’s surface. More details are filled in:
Carpathia’s
fallen stack lies off her starboard side, with the ship’s brass whistles lying flat in the sand nearby, and debris blown out of the hull by the blasts is scattered over the seabed. Later, a group of British technical divers descend to the wreck and find some of the ship’s dishes, which they say have the Cunard crest on them.

To confirm that this is
Carpathia
, I look for ten exact matches between the wreck and the ship’s plans. Not only is this ship the right size but her decks are laid out exactly like those on
Carpathia’s
plans. The position of the deck gear, the single stack, the twin screws at the stern, are also identical—and then there’s the torpedo damage and the fact that the ship sank bow first. The excitement of the discovery and confirmation that this other important part
of Titanic’s
story has come to light is on all our minds as the tape ends.

In the morning, we will announce the news of the discovery, and once again
Carpathia’s
name will flash through the airwaves and appear on the front page. My hope, as I look at the fleeting images from the bottom of the sea, is that people in the modern, fast-paced world we now live in will remember the tragedy that led to
Carpathia’s
fame and the special mettle of her officers and crew who, despite the dangers, acted in the best traditions of the sea. In the days that follow, we are not disappointed.
Carpathia
again dominates the world’s stage, if only briefly, as we prepare for more sea hunting.

Reynoud Lorentz and his ship
Vrouw Maria
were in serious trouble. The ship was stuck fast on a rock, and from where Lorentz stood near the stern, he could hear water pouring into the hold. Everywhere he looked, he saw more rocks surrounding the ship like giant teeth waiting to devour her.
Vrouw Maria
was already badly damaged, and the violent surf threatened to overwhelm the efforts of the crew, who strained at the pumps to try to keep the flooding down. Panicked, the men shouted up at Lorentz, demanding that he give the order to abandon ship. Better to save their own lives than the cargo, they argued. Lorentz did not want to leave his cargo behind, particularly not
this
cargo. The narrow stack of crates in the hold, loaded quietly on the dock in Amsterdam, was far too precious. But, in the end, he conceded that it was time to go.

The voyage that was now foundering along with
Vrouw Maria
had begun on August 12, 1771, as workers began to load her with cargo for St. Petersburg. On September 5, as a strong southwest wind filled the sails,
Vrouw Maria
raised anchor and headed out to sea, “in the name of God,” as Lorentz wrote in the logbook. Heavy winds and stormy weather battered the tiny ship as she made her way up the North Sea, passing Jutland in a driving rainstorm. Finally, on the morning of September 23,
Vrouw Maria
anchored off the Danish port of Elsinore, where all ships running through Danish waters had to stop and pay customs duty.

The records of the custom house list
Vrouw Maria’s
cargo as sugar, “Brazil wood,” cotton, cambric, calico, linen, zinc, cheese, paper, indigo, mercury, butter and other items—a nondescript array that would hopefully fetch a good price in the Russian winter capital. No mention was made of the ship’s “special cargo,” a shipment for the Russian Imperial Court. Its presence on
Vrouw Maria
may have been a secret, or, as Finnish historian Christian Ahlstro m has noted, because royal shipments were usually exempt from customs duties, it simply may have not been listed by the Danish authorities.

Heading up the Baltic towards the Gulf of Finland,
Vrouw Maria
sailed into a storm on the September 30. For the next three days, the ship beat through heavy seas and rain. Lorentz did not realize that
Vrouw Maria
, drifting in the storm, was off course. Then, on the evening of October 3, the ship hit a submerged rock. The collision brought
Vrouw Maria
to a sudden stop, and Lorentz wrote in the ship’s log that “at first we thought that we would sink when a high wave lifted us.” As she drifted along, the ship hit another rock: “We struck hard and lost our rudder and part of the stern.” Leaking badly,
Vrouw Maria
drifted off again, and the crew anchored her. Every man took a turn at the pumps to try and get rid of the water that was rapidly filling the ship. They pumped all night, but by the early morning, the storm was still blowing and the crew was exhausted. “Since we could not continue pumping and save the ship and its cargo,” said Lorentz, he gave order to abandon ship.

Crowded into a small dinghy, the crew rowed over to a small island, not much bigger than a rock, and spent a cold night. When help arrived the next morning, Lorentz and his men learned that they were stranded off the southern coast of Finland in the Turko Archipelago, a maze of twenty thousand islets, islands and rocks. The ship, surprisingly, was still afloat, though there was little chance of saving her as the decks were close to the water. But some of the cargo might be saved, so Lorentz ordered the crew back to
Vrouw Maria.
For the next three days, they worked the pumps to keep the rising water in the hold from
swamping the ship. The sugar cargo was certainly ruined; when Lorentz tasted the water pouring out of the pumps as the men labored, it was sweet. His dismay deepened when each stroke of the pumps brought up gouts of coffee beans. The crates, bundles, bags and boxes in the flooded hold were banging and bumping around, and breaking up.

Lorentz’s luck held long enough for the crew to open the hatches and start pulling out the top layer of cargo. Taking their knives in hand, the sailors also cut down
Vrouw Maria’s
sails and some of her rigging, salvaging everything they could before the ship slipped into the deep. Finally, on October 9, as they rowed to the ship after spending the night ashore, they found the sea was empty. In the night, alone in the darkness,
Vrouw Maria
had finally sunk. There was no trace of the ship, not a scrap of floating debris, to mark her passing.

Count Nikita Panin, Russia’s foreign minister, sat at his desk, signing a confidential letter to the Swedish government. His letter asked the Swedes, who controlled the Turko Archipelago, to assist the Russians in an “unusual” matter.
Vrouw Maria’s
secret shipment had included not only silver, snuffboxes and art for members of the Imperial Court but also, Panin explained, “several crates with valuable paintings belonging to Her Imperial Majesty the Empress.”

Empress Catherine the Great was in the midst of assembling one of Europe’s greatest collections of art and treasure for her small Hermitage (or retreat) in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. She had married Peter, grandson of Peter the Great and heir to Russia’s throne, when she was sixteen. But Catherine soon grew disaffected with her husband, who was said to be weak-minded, indecisive and not conjugally interested in his passionate Prussian princess. After Peter was crowned tsar in 1761, his unpopularity grew. Catherine plotted with a group of nobles and army officers led by her lover, Count Grigory Orlov, to depose the tsar. When their coup toppled Peter from his throne in 1762, Catherine seized power. Her reign was a time of sweeping change in Russia. The empress, like
her predecessor Peter the Great, was interested in modernizing and westernizing the nation, which was still a feudal state. Among her accomplishments was the introduction of smallpox vaccine to Russia in 1768. Under Catherine, the Russian court became a center for European culture. The empress invited prominent intellectuals to St. Petersburg, encouraged public building projects, and was a patron of the arts and literature both in Russia and abroad. An admirer of the French philosopher Voltaire, Catherine regularly corresponded with him. When Voltaire died in 1778, Catherine purchased his entire seven-thousand volume library and had it shipped to St. Petersburg.