List of ships sought by Clive Cussler's NUMA

Since I'm starting this blog by sharing the stories Clive Cussler tells in his two books, The Sea Hunters and The Sea Hunters II, I thought I'd share the list Cussler made and published in his first book. Eventually, all the stories of those ships, and much more will be told here at Volcano Seven.

CSS Hunley - 1st sub in history to sink a warship
USS Housatoniv - First warship to be sunk by a submarine
USS Cumberland - first warship to be defeated and sunk by an ironclad
CSS Florida - scuttled near Newport News, VA
Sultana - side-paddle-wheel steamboat, 1865
Invincible - first flagship of the REpublic of Texas
Zavala - thought to be the first armed steamship in North America
Lexington - side paddle steamboat, sunk in 1840
USS Akron - US Navy rigid airship (dirigible) 1933
USS Carondelet - Union Navy ironclad. Sank in the Ohio River in 1873
USS Weehawken - Sank in a storm outside Charleston, South Carolina in 1864.
USS Patapsco - Struck a Confederate mine and sank in the channel off Fort Moultrie in 1865.
USS Keokuk - A citadel ironclade (two non-revolving turrets). Sank off Charleston in 1863.
CSS Arkansas - Burned by her crew off Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1862
CSS Manassas - Burned and sank in the Mississippi River during the Battle of New Orleand, in 1862

In Search of the USS Cumberland

The Merrimack being converted into the Virginia, a life-sized model at the Monitor Center at the Mariners Museum.

In Clive Cussler's book, The Sea Hunters, he made his search for both the USS Cumberland and the CSS Florida at the same time, because they had sunk within a mile of each other in Hampton Roads.

In April 1980, Cussler decided to make his search. There was no point in searching for the Congress, she had been raised in September 1865, towed to the Norfolk Navy Yard, and from there, sold and broken up.

Cussler worked with researchers Bob Fleming and Dr Chester Bradley, who was an authority on the sinking of the Cumberland, Florida and Congress. "Salvage accounts, eyewitness reports, correspomdence and newspaper articles were assembled and studied."

John Sands, then curator of the Newport News Mariners' Museum, provided Cussler's team with copies of watercolors and sketches by contemoprary artists showing Cumberland's masts protruding from the river between two piers, about 300 yards from shore.

Cussler had his ballpark. He applied to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission for a permit to investigate underwater historic property. John Broadwater, head of the Underwater Archaeology Section, provided a team of state archeologists to participate in the dive. A British Advanced Underwater Team assisted also.

Their workboat was the Sakonit, her skipper, Danny Wilson.

This first expedition ended shortly. The recruited divers had expected a full-scale expedition, which Cussler had never intented. He was just "scouting" areas to be searched at a later time.

Cussler and his regular team (Walt Schob and Bill Shea) returned to the area in July 1982.

Four of the archeologists from the Commonwealth of Virginia, James Knickerbocker, Sam Margolin, Dick Swete and Mike Warner, had recently resigned and formed their own organization: Underwater Archaeological Joint Ventures. (UAJV).

Once again permits were obtained. The two ships were found.

But Cussler and his team did not rejoice for long.

They had brought up artifacts from both sites, which they worked to preserve. Then, the Navy and the Norfolk Navy Museum demanded that the artifacts be turned over to them. Cussler wanted to fight them in court, but ultimately did not do so.

According to Cussler, the artifacts are now at the Naval Museum, where it is claimed that a Navy Seal team recovered them.


The life-size replica of the EXTERIOR of the Monitor. You can't go inside it!

USS Cumberland

The USS Cumberland was the first ship sunk by the CSS Virginia (Merrimack), in Hampton Roads, Virginia off the coast of Newport News. Just a year or so later, the Confederate ironclad CSS Arkansas was scuttled and burned and came to rest about a mile away.

Clive Cussler tells the story of the sinking of both ships in his book, The Sea Hunters. The Cumberland, with a crew of 326 men, was in the sheltered harbor of Hampton Roads, just off the southern coast of Newport News, on March 8, 1862. The wooden ships in the harbor were aware that the Confederates had been working on an ironclad at the Norfolk Shipyard (just as the Confederates knew that the Union was working on an ironclad of their own).

The Virginia was under the command of Franklin Buchanan, a Union officer who had resigned his commission when he expected that his state, Maryland, would secede. When it did not, he tried to get his commission back, but was rebuffed, and so went over to the Confederate side anyway. On that day, the Virginia had the freedom of the water. With its engines, it could literally run rings around the stationary wooden ships, many of which ran aground in an effort to escape. She attacked the Cumberland first, firing with cannon and then ramming her (losing its ram in the process). 120 men died in the subsequent carnage.

After burning the Congress, the Virginia drew off, intending to finish off the rest of the ships the next day. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) the USS Monitor arrived that very night, and was waiting for the Virginia the next day. The two ships fought to a standstill.

Two weeks after the battle, a salvage diver dived on the Cumberland, finding her lying in 66 feet of water at a 45 degree angle. He determined that she was too badly damaged to be raised. After the 1870s, the ship was forgotten.

Wreck Diving magazine, ToC for #20

Wreck Diving is a quarterly magazine, about, obviously, wreck diving. It is a quarterly publication. Just picked up the latest issue. $7.95 per issue, one year subscription $24.95. Magazine is 4 to 5 years old, all issues except #4 are available for purchase from their mag or from their website. And they have some cool T-shirts on offer as well!

I'll share synopses of an article a day here, but here's the complete Table of Contents for issue #20.

Book Reviews:
1. Jacques Cousteau - The Sea King
2. Deco for Divers
3. Scubasigns: Guide to All Diving Hand Signals

Articles:
1. The Subterranean World of the Transylvania
2. The HMS Swordfish
3. The Short, Unhappy Life of Duane Precious (killed aboard the Monarch, 1934)
4. Diving for Gold in the Chestatee River
5. How To Find Your Very Own Treasure, pt 2
6. Conde de Tolosa
7. The Story of the Spanish Warship, La Galga

Republic of Texas Navy Ship Zavala

The Zavala


An illustration at Clive Cussler's NUMA website. This doesn't look like a paddlewheeler to me, and it has three masts rather than two...

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Clive Cussler covers the fate of this ship in his book The Sea Hunters, and it is also available online at hisNuma website.

Cussler, the creator of Dirk Pitt, created a new duo - Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala, for a new series of books, "co-written" by Paul Kemprecos. (I'd say Cussler lends his name, Kemprecos does the writing, but that's just my opinion.) It's interesting that Cussler should honor the Zavala in this way.

In any event, here's the history of the Zavala from Wikipedia:

The Texan schooner Zavala was a Texas Navy ship in Texas' second Navy after the Texas Revolution. She was the first steamship-of-war in North America.

The Texas Navy was officially formed in January 1836, with the purchase of four schooners: Invincible, Brutus, Independence, and Liberty. These ships, under the command of Commodore Charles Hawkins, helped Texas win independence by preventing a Mexican blockade of the Texas coast, seizing Mexican ships carrying reinforcements and supplies to its army, and sending their cargoes to the Texas volunteer army. Nevertheless, Mexico refused to recognize Texas as an independent country. By the middle of 1837, all of the ships had been lost at sea, run aground, captured, or sold. With no ships to impede a possible invasion by Mexico, Texas was vulnerable to attack.

In 1838, President Mirabeau B. Lamar responded to this threat by forming a second Texas Navy. Unlike Sam Houston, Lamar was an ardent supporter of the Texas Navy and saw the urgent need for its continuation. The second Texas Navy was placed under the command of Commodore Edwin Ward Moore, an Alexandria Academy graduate who was recruited from the United States Navy.[2] One of the ships of this second navy was the Zavala.

History of the Zavala
The Zavala was built in 1836 as a passenger steamship named the Charleston serving the Philadelphia-Charleston route. In 1838, when Lamar began rebuilding the Texan fleet, the navy purchased the Charleston for $120,000 and renamed it Zavala in honor of Lorenzo de Zavala, the first Vice President of the Republic of Texas.

Capt. A. C. Hinton was her first commander in the Texas Navy. Capt. John T. K. Lothrop took command of the Zavala on 4 March 1840 and led her on her only campaign. After the successful Texas revolt, other parts of Mexico had rebelled against the regime of Santa Ana, including the Yucatan peninsula. President Lamar was determined to assist the rebels in their struggle with Mexico City. So, on 24 June 1840, the Zavala accompanied by Commodore Moore's flagship, the sloop-of-war Austin, and three armed schooners, slipped out of Galveston Bay and turned south across the Gulf to the Bay of Campeche near the Yucatan Peninsula.

During the cruise off the Yucatan, Zavala never engaged the enemy directly, but she proved invaluable in the only action that the flotilla saw. on 20 November 1840, the steamship towed Moore's flagship, Austin and the schooner San Bernard 90 miles up the San Juan Bautista River to Villahermosa, the seat of government control in the state of Tabasco. There the small flotilla pointed their guns at the city and then sent troops into the seemingly deserted capital. Commodore Moore encountered a man bearing a white flag on a tree branch, and when he ascertained that this was the Mayor, the Texas commodore demanded $25,000 or he would level the town. The Mayor asked if silver would be acceptable, and upon receiving an affirmative reply, delivered the ransom. The commodore set sail with his booty and used the money to repair and outfit his ships.

Return to Galveston and the end
Returning to her homeport in Galveston, Zavala encountered a terrible storm and ran out of coal, forcing the crew to burn anything they could put their hands on to avoid losing her in the storm.[4]

Badly damaged, Zavala was laid up in Galveston harbor awaiting repairs, which due to the state of the Republic's finances were not forthcoming. With the election of Sam Houston in 1841, the navy was no longer a priority and Zavala was allowed to deteriorate. In May 1842, she was in such poor condition that Zavala was eventually scuttled to prevent her sinking and in 1844 she was broken up and sold for scrap.

The wreck
Clive Cussler, founder of NUMA, located the hull of the Zavala (archeological site 41GV95) beneath a parking lot in the former Bean's Wharf area of the harbor in 1986. Clive doesn't mention that she was broken up and sold for scrap:

After her one and only cruise as a warship, Zavala was laid up and allowed to deteriorate. Refusing to spend another dollar on the Texas Navy, newly elected President SAm Houston ignored pleas to save the finiest vessel in the fleet. Unattended, she began to leak so badly that she was run aground to keep her from sinking. She was then stripped and abandoned. In time she became a rotting hulk at the upper end of the harbor's mud flats, settling deeper into the marsh until only the tops of her boilers and one of her two smokestacks remained in view.

By 1870, what was once the finest and most technically advanced ship in the Republic of Texas Navy had completely disappeared under the ooze and was forgotten.

Cussler found the Zavala by conducting research, of course. Two books had been written on the subject of the Navy. Cussler was helped by a team of Texans who smoothed the way.

Cussler searched historical documents and found a

drawing that [portrayed] the capture of USS Harriet Lane, a Union warship boarded by the Confederates during the battle for Galveston during the Civil WAr. In the foreground of the pen-and-ink drawing, a triangular pier jutted into the harbor with several soldiers guarding a series of buildings perched above the pilings. The pier was labeled BEAN'S WHARF. In back of the structures, a black pipe protruded from the water. The artist identified this as athe Zavala.

Cussler then looked up Bean's Wharf in the Galveston Directory of 1856. He was able to trace the evolution of the wharf throughout the decades, assembled a search team, and found the site of the ship to be underneath a parking lot for use of workers at a nearby grain elevator.

The Steamboat Lexington (1840)

Clive Cussler, in his 1996 book The Sea Hunters, covers in a series of essays his search for lost ships, and even a lost locomotive.


Each of the essays has the same formula. First, a fictionalized account of how the craft in question was lost (he writes it as if it were a story, inventing dialog and emotions, but the facts of what happened - that are known -are true. Then he jumps forward a hundred years or so, and tells the story of how he, and his organization NUMA (named after his fictional organization, but usually just him and a few friends) seek after the lost craft, and whether or not they find it.

The Sea Hunters features:

The Steamboat Lexington (lost in 1840)
The Republic of Texas Navy Ship Zavala (1842)
USS Cumberland and CSS Florida (1862, 1864)
CSS Arkansas (1862)
USS Carondelet (1862)
Confederate Submarine Hunley (1864)
Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek (1878)
HMS Pathfinder, U-21 and U-20 (1914, 1915)
Troop transport Leopoldville (1944)

The steamboat Lexington was lost on January 13, 1840. It had set out from New York for Stonington, Connecticut, where passengers transferred onto a railroad to continue their journey to Boston.

The pilot of the Lexington was Captain Stephen Manchester (the pilot is the man who sails the ship out into open water), the captain of the Lexington was George Child.

It was night, it was winter, it was four degrees above zero. There were 115 passengers aboard the ship. Shortly after 7.30 pm, the boat caught on fire, because cotton bales were stacked too near the smokestack, it was assumed. The ship's rudder was disabled, it was impossible to steer...to beach her on Long Island, some four miles away.

Lifeboats were launched....or rather attempted. The passengers didn't wait for the crew to help them (at least according to Cussler) the overloaded boats dropped into the Sound and capsized.

It took a little over four hours for the ship to burn itself out.

Ships from shore try to reach the vessel, but contrary winds prevent them. Captain William Tirrell of the sloop Imrovement will be vilified for not even trying to help.

Only four of the 115 people aboard the ship survived, the rest succumbed to hypothermia or drowning.

In April 1983, Clive Cussler went looking for the remains of the ship. Although there had been eyewitnesses to the fire and eventual sinking, they all placed the ship at different locations - some said it had been off Eatons Neck Point, others said it had been in the middle of the Sound off Crane Neck Point.

However, when Cussler started looking for, he was told there were stories that the ship had been raised. However, he searched insurance records which disproved the story.

Cussler studied the tales of the eyewitnesses and "placed his faith" in the story of the Old Field lighthouse keeper, who reported seeing the flames die out about four miles north of the Point and slightly to the west.

Cussler put together an expedition that searched a grid of four square miles in that approximate area.

And Cussler, and the crew of the boat he had chartered, found the Lexington. However, no one came forward to underwrite a recovery project, so the Lexington still remains at the bottom of the Sound.

According to Wikipedia (which does not mention it was Cussler who found the ship):

Today, the Lexington sits in 140 feet of water, broken into three sections. There is allegedly still gold and silver that has not been recovered. Adolphus S. Harnden of the Boston and New York Express Package Car Office had reportedly been carrying $18,000 in gold and silver coins and $80,000 in paper money at the time of the sinking. The silver recovered in 1842 is all that has been found to date.

Currier and Ives made a lithograph of the ship on fire, from an eyewitness's account. It would be their first major-selling print.

Manifesto

This blog will document the lost treasures of the world - and the people who seek to find them.

The treasure can be anything - monetary such as lost gold mines, to stolen jewelry, to missing art, to aircraft and ships that have disappeared.

We'll also cover fictional lost treasures, such as those invented by Clive Cussler in his Dirk Pitt series of novels, and so on.