My turn to share a story of the antique bottles I found while diving on a sunken ship in the St. Thomas Harbor, Virgin Islands.
Like typical philosopher/scientists of the 19th century, Thor and I have a curio cabinet full of specimens, travel mementos, and stories.
Shortly after arriving in St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands in January of 1983, I was working as a deck hand on a yacht while training with my scuba-instructor partner Jim to become his assistant as a divemaster. I celebrated my 30th birthday alone on the deck during a wild storm, keeping anchor watch while the rest of the crew ferried the seasick passengers ashore to find hotel rooms. I toasted the occasion with champagne because – well, I deserved it, and luckily I wasn’t seasick! (Below is a different boat where I was lending a hand.)
In those days, I thrived on adventures, and once I achieved the divemaster certification, I started working with Jim, taking tourists on intro beach dives over the reef at a marine park. Our crazy pal Tom, another scuba instructor, suggested we go treasure-diving at the bottom of the Charlotte Amalie harbor, where a terrible hurricane in 1867, followed by a severe earthquake and tsunamis, had wrecked many ships in the harbor, killed 600 people, and caused widespread damage. This painting by unknown artist (public domain) shows the harbor in 1850, when the island was a Danish colony, with Danish Royal Mail Steam Packet Company ships.
By the time we arrived, the island was a U.S. property, and the harbor bustled with pleasure boats and huge cruise ships. The harbor had been dredged to deepen it sufficiently for the cruise ships, which meant the old shipwrecks were pulverized beneath the bottom silt. When the cruise ships had to turn to leave the harbor, the blasts from their giant propellors would open up troughs in the bottom, sometimes exposing the remains of the old ships. What crazy Tom proposed was taking his small boat and anchoring it near the harbor edge after the cruise ships had departed for the day. Then we would don our scuba gear, strap on our wrist compasses, carrying mesh “goody bags,” and navigate along the bottom to see what we could find. We had to trust that Tom knew the cruise schedules, as there was only 2 or 3 feet of clearance beneath the big ships if we were wrong. Visibility was basically zero with all the silt, so the only way to navigate was to take compass bearings, count our kicks, and take right-angle turns that we would memorize in order to reverse and return to the boat. We were all on our own down there. “Illegal as hell,” Tom remarked as we started out, which somehow didn’t deter us, either….
This was the view (public domain photo) across the harbor toward the mountainside where Jim and I rented a funky little cottage, complete with a friendly iguana we named Old Granddad. This photo shows a couple of cruise ships docked:
I was doing a search pattern, occasionally startled when a big fish would swim up past my face from the blinding silt, when I came upon the jumbled timbers remaining from one of the old ships. Probing with my dive knife, I found a cache of antique bottles, including this beautiful little perfume bottle that now resides in our curio cabinet:
I stashed it carefully in my flotation-vest pocket and probed for more, eventually filling up my goody bag. In my ignorance, I passed on a blackened clump of circular shapes, which might have been corroded silver coins. Oh, well! With my goody bag full, I reversed my compass readings and kick counts, and emerged right at Tom’s boat. Tom and Jim hadn’t found anything, and I offered to guide them back to the wreck I’d found, but they decided it was getting too late. So we’ll never know what else might have been revealed there. Here are a couple more of the bottles, most of which have somehow disappeared in my various moves during the following years:
There were many more adventures to come, including a 30-foot free dive to a more modern wreck, where I followed Tom’s dare to swim down the open hatch and out a broken window before returning to the surface. I wish I still had those breath-holding skills!
I never tired of that beautiful blue tropic sea and the colorful fish. And it was satisfying to introduce novice divers to the sea, including towing one woman without legs who was thrilled with the experience. Mostly I watched for “poppers,” divers who might panic and try to shoot for the surface, which could be dangerous due to quickly depressurizing air in the lungs. I was able to catch them and calm them before either escorting them safely to the surface or allowing them to continue under surveillance. All communicated with eye contact and sign language.
I often took regular pleasure swims for more aerobic exercise and just to enjoy the serenity of the sea on my own. One day, I spotted this beautiful golden trumpet shell on the bottom and scooped it up.
The shell found its way into my Caribbean suspense novel ISLANDS, when my besieged archaeologist Susan Dunne takes a break from dangerous mysteries for a cooling swim:
“Damn it!” I grabbed my swimming goggles and turned to the cool clarity of the sea.
Splashing through the shallows, I plunged in. Clean blue washed over me. I headed out from shore in a fast crawl to get the heart pumping, skin tingling. Rippled lights flowed by on the sand below as I loosened into rhythm, pulling in deep breaths. Rounding the breakwater, I swam parallel to the rocky shore, waves slapping against my face now. I stroked harder, deepening my kicks until I finally reached that perfectly weightless, flying place where muscles and breathing and air and water are all one seamless whole and time is only the present.
I swam, surrendering myself to the effort and the rhythm, until I was tired—the good, clean tired of physical work. I rolled onto my back and floated. One far, gauzy shred of cloud drifted through hot blue.
Taking my time on the way back, I savored the sliding coolness of the sea, the luminous clarity, the darting shadows of fish below. I’d tasted Laura’s fear, it was genuine. But she was hiding something. And how had she known about my visit to the police? Only the island grapevine? Or was someone pressuring her to keep me quiet, stop me asking inconvenient questions? Why was everyone so insistent I stay away from Manden?
I filled my lungs and pushed toward the bottom, wishing the sea could wash away all the questions. I was sick of the whole mess. Maybe Laura was right, I should drop it.
A gleam of color on the rippled sea-bed caught my eye. Nearly buried, the yellow spiral of thin-walled shell pulled free with a trailing glitter of sand. Holding it, I surfaced and kicked in to the shallows, stood hip-deep to examine my find. The globe of the largest spiral filled my palm almost weightlessly, smaller twists narrowing to a fine point unblunted by the waves.
Sunlight ignited the shell’s golden curves as I held it up. Warm caress of the breeze, whispering, “All right!”
*****
A year later, Jim and I relocated to quieter St. John island, where we lived in a tent on a treehouse platform, without electricity or running water. A friend who was building a house there on the mountain let us stay on the land to keep an eye on things. We got to use her cistern water, and rigged up a black hose under a tree for a warm outdoor shower after diving. Our adventures there are a story for another day….
*****
You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s Caribbean suspense novel from Book View Café is ISLANDS, which draws on her experiences working as a scuba divemaster on various islands, and also her research into petroglyphs. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
