After sending faithful Lieutenant Walt Schob ahead to line up lodging and a survey crew, my son Dirk, Craig Dirgo arrived and immediately drove to the dock where we renewed old acquaintances with Bill Shea and Ralph Wilbanks who was in charge of the survey. Ralph had long since left the institute and formed his own underwater survey company called Diversity Survey. Having a fine, solid boat, a proton magnetometer, a Klein sonar and the latest in satellite positioning systems, Ralph, along with his associate Wes Hall, a veteran marine archaeologist who headed up Mid-Atlantic Technology, set out to mark the targets found during the 1981 survey and buoy them for the Institute divers to identify.

This latter phase of the project was a fiasco to say the least. The divers, most of them sport divers who paid Mark Newell for the privilege of joining the hunt, hardly performed to 530 expectations. Those of us in the survey boat had to constantly interrupt our line runs to remark the targets as the institute never seemed to get the hang of pinpointing the target with an underwater mag. I could go on in greater detail, but why muddy the water of a great achievement.

After eliminating the '81 targets and searching new ground without tangible results, we folded the operation and went home. But I was too dogged to give up. I contracted with Ralph and Wes to keep the search going when their time permitted.

During the next eleven months, Ralph ran lines totaling 796 miles. I would fax him search grids which he scoured. Upon announcing them empty, I would send him new ground to cover. Finally, after exhausting most of the area from the jetty east and between the Housatonic and Breech Inlet, Ralph decided to head back to the Housatonic site and work out to sea.

A thousand feet southeast of the Housatonic's boiler, Ralph, Wes Hall, and diver/archaeologist Harry Pecorelli struck a 650 gamma target that had somehow been overlooked during previous searches. Pecorelli went down and probed the silt since no object was protruding above the sea floor. The object was long and narrow. Then Wes Hall went down with a three inch dredge and sucked away two feet of the silt. Fortune smiled as Wes peered through the murk and drifting sand into the excavated hole and recognized the hatch cover of the Hunley.

Excitement quickly raising to a fever pitch, the three men uncovered a small portion of the wreck, finding that it lay thirty degrees on its starboard side. The entire entrance tower, the snorkel box and the port diving plane were now visible. One of the quartz lenses was missing from the tower and by inserting their hands they determined the sub was filled with silt, which until the sub is raised indicates the possibility the bones of the crew may still be preserved.

The crew then returned to shore and studied the Hunley replica at the History Museum of Charleston, enjoying the fact at that moment they were the only three men in the world who knew the differences between the real sub and the facsimile. They then phoned me with the news of the discovery.

I directed them to take photos of the wreck so we could authenticate our claim. Ralph took video of the excavated sections through the murk that proved more than sufficient to establish credibility. At a news conference three days later, the video was given to the news media and ran internationally on television news programs for the next two or three days.

Then the fun began as to who would take control of the sub, who would own it and who would direct the salvage and preservation.

But that's another story I won't bore you with here. At this writing (6-1-95) I can only hope the venerable old Peripatetic Coffin and her crew are saved, conserved and enshrined in a proper setting, preferably in Charleston where her legend was born.