Expeditions | Clive Cussler Numa Adventures & Shipwrecks

Akron

Akron Search for the Navy Zeppelin Akron that crashed during a storm 27 miles off Beach Haven, New Jersey, April of 1933. July, 1986. The story of the Akron and her naval sister rigid airships the Macon and forerunner the Shenandoah grip the imagination. Once I began researching the early airships and their often tragic endings, I became hooked. The Shenandoah’s crash site in Noble County, Ohio, is well known and marked by a memorial. The Macon went down in deep water off Point Sur, California, in 1937. And so the Akron became NUMA’s prime target, especially since she...

Mississippi River

Mississippi River Locations of the Shipwrecks Found During the Mississippi River Expedition Manassas Her suspected hulk (It was not dug up to be absolutely certain) lies a half a mile above the Boothville High School on the southwest bank of the river. Note: a mag survey done later by Texas A & M University shows her to be almost completely under the levee. It’s best to look during low water. There is a flat reef-like barrier edged with a small rock breakwater that extends into the river from the base of the levee about fifteen feet. If you walk...

North Sea & English Channel

North Sea & English Channel The North Sea and English Channel hunt for the WWI battle of Jutland shipwrecks, the U-20, which sank the Lusitania; the WWII troopship, Leopoldville; and the CSS Alabama. May/June, 1984. This was NUMA’s most ambitious project yet. With Bob Fleming’s able help on the research along with the cooperative people at the British Admiralty and Danish Fisheries, I put together an expedition to search for nearly thirty ships. Talk about a ‘cockeyed optimist’. I charted our faithful boat and crew from the ’79 Bonhomme Richard expedition. Good old Jimmy Flett returned as skipper, along...

Bonhomme Richard

Bonhomme Richard August, 1978 – First Attempt I became hooked on this one after reading a paragraph out of Peter Throckmorton’s book, “Diving for Treasure.” He wrote that a Sidney Wignall of Wales, Britain, ‘found what is almost certainly the wreck of the Bonhomme Richard.’ This was news to me, so I contacted my publisher in London who tracked down Wignall. We began corresponding. His side scan survey off Flamborough Head, where it was supposed the Richard sank after her epic battle with the British frigate Serapis, showed three shipwrecks which he swore had to include Jones’ ship. We...

The Ironclads

The Ironclads The expedition to find the Confederate Ironclads Manassas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. November 1981. For a shoestring operation this proved to be one of our most successful operations. Walt Schob and I flew down to New Orleans, picked up Erick Schonstedt’s faithful gradiometer, rented a car and drove down to Plaquemines Parish. There, at the town of Venice, we chartered a small fifteen foot skiff from a local Cajun fisherman and began searching for several of the ships that sank in the Mississippi River during the battle for Forts Jackson and St. Phillip. I sat in the bow...

Zavala & Brutus

Zavala & Brutus Our search for the Republic of Texas Navy ships Zavala and Brutus. Both lost in Galveston Harbor, Texas. November, 1986 In April of 1984 Barbara and I visited Wayne Gronquist in Austin, Texas. During our stay, Wayne led me over to the capitol building and the Governor’s office where I was presented with a certificate signed by Governor White proclaiming me an Admiral in the Texas Navy (if they numbered them I’d probably be 4,932). With a slip of the lip I announced that since becoming an Admiral the least I could do was to find...

Siege of Charleston

Siege of Charleston Siege of Charleston expedition to find Hunley and survey for other Civil Warships. June, 1981. We came back with a more extensive search program in ’81, concentrating on covering a sixteen square mile grid between the remains of the Housatonic and Breech Inlet. During this project, Alan Albright, chief state archaeologist with the U. of South Carolina, generously loaned an outboard boat, equipment and the services of two damned fine men, Ralph Wilbanks and Rodney Warren, who proved indispensable. The research had gone on nonstop during the year. I was determined to locate as many Civil...

U.S.S. Carondelet

U.S.S. Carondelet The hunt for the famous Union ironclad river gunboat, Carondelet in the Ohio River. May 1982. The Carondelet’s history makes for fascinating reading. She had the distinction of fighting in more engagements than any navy ship until World War II. Except for her pounding by the Confederate ironclad Arkansas, she was a tough and winning ship. After the war, the Carondelet, along with her sister ships, was sold at auction. Her fate for the next few years is hazy, but by 1870 she wound up as a wharfboat at Gallipolis, Ohio. Just before she was to be...

Carpathia

Carpathia HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Sept 22 (Reuters) – A U.S. expedition confirmed on Friday it had located the wreck of RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued 705 survivors from the Titanic and that was later torpedoed by a German U boat. American author Clive Cussler and founder of the National Underwater & Marine Agency said the wreck that was found last spring was confirmed as the Carpathia last week. The ship, sunk near the end of World War One in 1918, was found in 171 meters (514 feet) of water off the east coast of Ireland. Cussler said he...

James River Search

James River Search James River search for Virginia Navy fleet sunk by Benedict Arnold during Revolutionary war, 1781, and the Civil War ships, Drewry, Commodore Jones, and Greyhound. June, 1985. On April 27, 1781, a force of British soldiers covertly positioned themselves on a rise overlooking a bend in the James River and attacked a fleet of Virginia Navy ships. They were led by Benedict Arnold after he deserted the American cause and threw his lot with the English. The attack was a complete surprise and all nine American warships were either captured or burned. Engaging the services once...

Cumberland, Hunley & Florida

Cumberland, Hunley & Florida July, 1980 Not content with looking for America’s most elusive shipwreck, I had to try for number two, which should indicate to those who don’t know me that my mind lies somewhere left of delirium and right of monomania. The story of the Hunley has been told and retold many times since her disappearance in 1864. Constructed by the Confederacy in Mobile, she was later shipped to Charleston in an optimistic hope of breaking the Union blockade. Despite the fact she dispatched four of her crews, she was quite advanced for her time. The Hunley...

Cyclops

Cyclops An attempt to find the mystery ship, Cyclops, which vanished in 1918 along with over 300 naval crewmen. May 1983. Much has been written about how the U.S. Navy coal collier, Cyclops, vanished without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle during a voyage from Bahia, Brazil, to Baltimore, Maryland, in February/March of 1918. Vincent Gaddis and Charles Berlitz have made fortunes touting barrel loads of bull shit from their books on the mythical triangle while Larry Kusche, a library researcher at the Arizona State, wrote an admirable, in-depth work called “The Bermuda Triangle Mystery – Solved” and barely...

Captain Cook’s Famous Ships

Captain Cook’s Famous Ships Search for Captain Cook’s famous ships the Endeavor and Resolution at Newport, Rhode Island. November, 1985. On April 27, 1781, a force of British soldiers covertly positioned themselves on a rise overlooking a bend in the James River and attacked a fleet of Virginia Navy ships. They were led by Benedict Arnold after he deserted the American cause and threw his lot with the English. The attack was a complete surprise and all nine American warships were either captured or burned. While on book tour in New Zealand I wandered into a marine museum near...

Lost Confederate Fleet Hunt

Lost Confederate Fleet Hunt This was a fleet that I found most intriguing. It was the Confederacy’s last fighting squadron of ships, and many of the south’s most famous naval heroes served on its ironclad gunboats. Semmes and Kell from the Alabama, Read of Arkansas and Florida fame, Glassel from the David in Charleston, and many others ended their naval careers with the James River Fleet. Our NUMA crew along with the UAJV team and Doc Edgerton made a few passes up and down the river at the Drewry Bluff site but the rain came down in torrents and...

Survey of Civil War Ships

Survey of Civil War Ships Survey of the Civil War ships, USS PHILIPPI, C.S.S. GAINES, blockade runner IVANHOE, USS MILWAUKEE, and USS OSAGE. Also eighteenth century French merchant vessel, BELLONE. September, 1989. The interesting aspect the marine archaeology of Mobil Bay is that so little has taken place. Except for a survey of Civil War obstructions just below the main city dock area, a few dives on the monitor Tecumseh, and the discovery of two Confederate ironclad floating batteries, no one bothered to confirm the location and dispositions of the many ships lost in and around Mobile Bay beginning...

Battle of Memphis

Battle of Memphis Expedition to find the SULTANA and the Confederate gunboats sunk during the battle of Memphis. April 1982. The burning of the fine sidepaddle steamer, SULTANA, in 1865 immediately after the end of the Civil War was the worst ship disaster in number of lives lost in North America. Over 1240 people were known lost. Twenty-two more than the Titanic. Again, Walt Schob and I, along with the Schonstedt gradiometer, gathered in Memphis, Tennessee, in preparation to look for the shipwrecks. Using an 1871 Mississippi River pilot’s map showing the marked positions of the wrecks, it took...

General Slocum

General Slocum Search for the steamship General Slocum off Corson’s Inlet, New Jersey. September 12, 1994. I contracted with Ralph Wilbanks and Wes Hall to search for the General Slocum, the paddlewheel steamer that burned and sank in the Hudson River off New York on June 15, 1904, while carrying 1500 passengers on an weekend excursion. As high as 1200 hundred were reported dead, mostly women and children. After studying the reports on the sinking of the General Slocum, after she was raised and refitted into a barge called the Maryland, I decided highest probability area stemmed from the...

Invincible

Invincible Search for the Republic of Texas Navy ship Invincible. Lost outside of Galveston after fight with two Mexican ships, August 27, 1837. The search for the Invincible was an ongoing one since at this writing we have yet to find it. I conducted a mag search in 1986 while the rest of the crew dug up the Zavala. We tried again in ’87 which was a disaster. I crushed to crushed two disks in my vertebra in an accident while trailing the mag up and down the beach, and the rest of the crew swamped the boat in...

Lexington

Lexington Expedition to find the lost Vanderbilt steamer, Lexington which burned and sank in Long Island Sound in 1840 with a loss of 154 lives. I can’t recall what piqued my interest in the Lexington. I think perhaps researcher Bob Fleming put me on the track of her. He certainly did a tremendous amount of digging in the archives for me. First it was the attraction of the story behind her burning and sinking and later salvage attempt. Newspaper accounts said she was raised and lost by salvagers in 1842. And again in 1850 it was reported she had...

Lost Locomotive Kiowa Creek

Lost Locomotive Kiowa Creek Hunt for the lost locomotive of Kiowa Creek, Colorado. January, 1989. This search came about as the result of reading an article about a train wreck and the mystery of the missing locomotive in 1978. The event inspired the basic concept of a book I wrote several years later entitled, “Night Probe”. As told by the following pages and articles, a Kansas Pacific freight train traveling east on the night of May 21, 1878, fell off a shattered bridge into a stream swollen by flash floods and was wrecked with the loss of three lives....

George Mallory, Andrew Irvine

George Mallory, Andrew Irvine NUMA was one of several co-sponsors who backed Tom Hotzel and the North Face Research Expedition to find British climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, lost on Mount Everest. November, 1986. The unknown fate of Mallory and Irvine, who vanished near the summit of Mount Everest in 1924, has been a puzzle for over six decades. Mallory, a famous mountain climber of his day, was the man who coined the phrase “because it’s there” when asked why he wanted to reach the peak of Mount Everest. I read of Hotzel’s expedition in the newspaper and...

Mary Celeste Discovery

Legendary Ghost Ship, Mary Celeste, Discovered an a Reef in Haiti HALIFAX, N.S.- Known throughout history as the fabled Ghost Ship, the MARY CELESTE was found sailing off the Azores in 1872 ghost-like with no one aboard. The MARY CELESTE sailed into oblivion when a boarding party from a passing ship found that her captain, his wife, two-year-old daughter and entire crew had inexplicably vanished. Clive Cussler, best-selling novelist and adventurer, representing the National Underwater & Marine Agency, (NUMA) and John Davis, president of ECO-NOVA Productions of Canada, announced August 9th, 2001, that they had discovered the remains of...

U.S.S. Merrimack

U.S.S. Merrimack The hunt for remains of the legendary Confederate ironclad, Merrimack in the Elizabeth River, Portsmouth, Virginia. September 1982. This was a fleet that I found most intriguing. It was the Confederacy’s last fighting squadron of ships, and many of the south’s most famous naval heroes served on its ironclad gunboats. Naturally, while everyone is making headlines and fame by searching for and discovering the monitor, where am I? Looking for the Merrimack, that’s where. How’s that for never following the mob? I decided to give it a try after working with researcher Bob Fleming in Washington. He...

New Orleans

New Orleans Search for the first steamboat on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, the New Orleans. April, 1989. The story of the New Orleans is a fascinating as well as historical story. Built in 1811 for Nicholas Roosevelt by Robert Fulton, the maiden voyage of the newly built ship down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers was an adventure epic by itself. Reaching the Mississippi just in time to experience the worst earthquake in American history, the New Madrid upheaval, its crew, including Roosevelt’s wife who gave birth to a descendant of Teddy and Franklin during the trip, was forced...

Savannah

Savannah Search for the first steamboat to cross the Atlantic, the Savannah, on Fire Island, New York. October 1982. The Savannah made all the history books. She was a fine ship, well constructed with elegant fixtures for her 32 passenger staterooms and expensive furnishings in her salons. An early 90-horsepower steam engine with folding paddles sat in her hull. And on May 22, 1819, she steamed out across the Atlantic. Twenty-nine days later, with smoke and sparks bursting from her single stack, she sailed into Liverpool harbor to the cheers of thousands. Although she was only under steam for...

Twin Sisters

Twin Sisters Search for Sam Houston’s TWIN SISTERS, a pair of four-pounder cannon used against Santa Ana in the battle of San Jacinto. April 1987. T he two, iron 6-pounder cannon, funded and cast in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Texas independence sympathizers and used by Houston’s army with great effect on the field of San Jacinto, have curiously meant far more to most Texans than the exploits of their entire navy. The story of how they were smuggled down the Mississippi though New Orleans as holloware and watched over by Dr. Rice, accompanied by his twin daughters Elizabeth and Eleanor,...

White Bird

White Bird First of three search expeditions for the White Bird, the aircraft flown by Nungessor & Coli, who vanished on transatlantic flight in 1927. October, 1984. Early on May 8, 1927, twelve days before Charles Lindberg was to make his historic flight, two famous WWI French flying aces took off from Le Bourget airfield near Paris on an east to west flight across the Atlantic to New York. They were one of the first who successfully managed to get off the ground with a fuel-over laden airplane and soar out over the Atlantic. Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli...

Waratah

Waratah Expedition to find the mystery ship Waratah that vanished off the eastern coast of South Africa. September, 1987. The Waratah was one of the most baffling mysteries of the sea. In July of 1909, the 500 foot steamer, on her return maiden voyage from Australia to Capetown, went missing with over 200 passengers and crew somewhere in the Indian ocean off the rugged eastern coast of South Africa. For 79 years she rested lost, but not forgotten. Her loss was the subject of numerous books, articles and endless speculation as to he fate. Rather than write another redundant...

Confederate Submarines

Confederate Submarines Following the Civil War, there were reports of three abandoned Confederate submarines near their place of construction in Shreveport, Louisiana (Cross Bayou). This PDF document also contains information about a search for the the C.S.S. Grand Duke and a Free French Air Force B-26 Bomber. Read more >> (PDF...