Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Today's the Day

If you read the paperback version of The Navigator, by Clive Cussler and Paul Kemprecos, on pg 257, Chapter 25 begins:

"Today's the day," Paul Trout said with steely determination.

He's talking about winning a fishing competition with his wife, but the sentence is also an in-joke. "Today's the day" is what treasure hunter Mel Fisher said every day for a decade before he and his team found the Atocha.

Several posts ago, I made mention of Art McKee, the "grandfather of treasure hunters". He's the one who started it all, back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, after World War II.

The book I was referencing was Sunken Treasure: Six Who Found Fortunes, by Robert F. Burgess, first published in 1988. It's an annoying book, for me, because while Burgess tells the stories of these men's famous finds, he doesn't give any dates (except the ancient ones) so its impossible to compile a decent chronology of when they found their treasures.

The men covered are:

Art McKee, The treasure hunter's treasure hunter
Kip Wagner: Beachcomber's reward
Robert Marx: Incorrigible adventurer
Burt D. Webber: High tech adventurter
Barry Clifford: Pirate Hunter
Melvin Fisher: Today's the day

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