The richest shipwreck in history has been sitting beneath a half mile of ocean for 300 years. Greg Stemm is sending a robot down to get it.
In 1694, an 80-gun British warship called the HMS Sussex set sail for southern France loaded with as much as 3 million pounds sterling and 6 tons of gold. The bounty was intended for the Duke of Savoy, a bribe to keep him allied with England in its war against Louis XIV.
The Duke never did get the money. Severe gales whipped up off the north coast of Africa. The Sussex foundered along with a dozen other ships in the British fleet, taking all its riches (and the lives of 1,200 crew members) to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Ultimately, the Duke threw his support to Louis XIV, and England's battle with France raged for seven more years before ending in a stalemate.
The plight of the Sussex left behind two huge questions, the first for historians: What if the mission had been successful? It's conceivable that England would have beaten back Louis XIV and annexed parts or all of France. If so, the British government might have been less concerned with a group of 13 rebellious colonies across the Atlantic and allowed them to split off to form a commonwealth - like Canada.
The other question, for the rest of us: What happened to all that loot?
By most accounts, the riches, estimated to be worth as much as $4 billion at auction, are sitting right where they have been for three centuries, some 2,500 feet beneath the ocean's surface. For treasure hunters, the Sussex has long been considered the ultimate prize, protected by a super-extreme environment: 1,100 pounds per square inch of pressure and complete darkness. No human, of course, could ever dive that deep.
Recovering the bounty is a job suitable only for a robot.
Greg Stemm is a 21st-century treasure hunter with just such a bot in mind. He's been researching the Sussex for two decades, and late this summer, he's planning to send a remote-operated vehicle, or ROV, about the size of a Chevy Suburban down to get it. "Our research makes a case that this could be the richest shipwreck in history," says the 46-year-old founder of Odyssey Marine Exploration. Stemm has a database of 3,000 deepwater wrecks, three side-scan sonar mapping devices, and a fleet of ROVs designed to scout out and recover everything from porcelain to gold bullion.
A slim man with a salt-and-pepper beard and an ever present national geographic cap, Stemm is more geeky businessman than swashbuckling explorer. He's versed in shipwreck history but would rather talk about how to minimize risks and amortize costs. He's convinced that technology - everything from cheap data storage and fiber optics to sonar scanning devices, and, of course, robots - is ushering in a new era of treasure hunting. He plans to use such tools for the good of society - and to earn a handsome profit for himself.
The key word is profit. Odyssey, based in Tampa, Florida, works only in deep water and puts potential expeditions in two simple categories: worth the effort and not. To make the cut, a wreck must meet three basic criteria. First, are the goods valuable enough to justify the expense of recovery? Just searching for a wreck costs $100 or more per square mile. Second, can it be found? Odyssey sometimes stakes out 2,000 square miles on a hunt. Coming up empty-handed after such an effort is not an option. And finally, will the company be able to keep the goods it recovers? "That's the part most people miss out on," Stemm says.
In scouting for targets, Stemm relies on recovered journals and ship logs as well as tips from fishermen. Odyssey currently has 15 projects on the books that meet all three criteria - each estimated to be worth at least $50 million. The HMS Sussex could return as much as all the others combined. Anyone with a passing knowledge of shipwrecks and a daydream of running their hands through a chest of gold and jewels knows roughly where the Sussex went down. Stemm claims to know precisely. And thanks to a series of negotiations with the British government, he's secured exclusive rights to the wreck.
For all the tech involved, treasure hunting is a straightforward process. Stemm and his colleagues identify an area where a ship went down and then begin the search by mapping the ocean floor. When they think they've identified a target, they deploy an inspector ROV to take some video and grab an artifact or two. If archaeologist reports warrant it, the team follows up with a larger, more complex ROV for excavation.
The biggest advance in modern-day treasure hunting is in mapping. A towfish dragged off the back of the boat bathes the seafloor in sonar waves, translating the data into a topographical map. It doesn't come cheap. A towfish can cost $250,000 with monitoring equipment - Odyssey has three, made by EdgeTech - but it's worth it. Using one is like casting aside your old spin-reel fishing pole in favor of a dragnet.
Odyssey's towfish cover 1,000 meters of ocean floor at a time. High-end models used by the oil industry can scan a mile or more. And the results are incredibly precise. Last fall, the New York Office of Historic Preservation requisitioned a bathymetric survey of 140 miles of Hudson riverbed. The results were so revealing that the city refused to release them for fear of mass looting. Every one of the hundreds of barges, tugboats, passenger ships, and pleasure craft that had sunk over the centuries had been identified.
Of course, treasure hunters aren't interested in tugboats. Knowing which vessels carried a real bounty to the ocean floor requires getting a close look. A decade ago, it wasn't practical to take quality video at depth because of the limitations of transmitting it back to the ship over copper wire. Early ROVs would snap pictures and return to the boat to develop the images - a huge waste of time. Today's robots record hi-def digital video to cheap onboard hard drives and transmit live footage back to the ship over fiber-optic lines. (Fiber has further helped ocean explorers in unexpected ways. Back when AT&T were laying fiber willy-nilly, they bought $50 million dynamic positioning ships like they were canoes. Now, Stemm talks about acquiring such boats secondhand at a fraction of the cost.
Then there are advances in the ROVs themselves. Treasure hunting is benefiting from a rash of robot R&D funded by the government and the oil industry. Last year, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution introduced Jason II, a $2.5 million bot developed for the National Science Foundation that can dive to 22,000 feet - giving it access to 98 percent of ocean floors. Houston-based Oceaneering is building ROVs that do maintenance on underwater oil drills as well as take on high-profile tasks like recovering the remains of TWA Flight 800 and pulling up a military helicopter from 17,000 feet. Meanwhile, as the tech gets better, it also gets cheaper, trickling down to treasure hunters. An entry-level, shallow-water ROV now costs about $20,000.
Stemm's crew launches a side-scan towfish for a bathymetric survey of the ocean floor.
When it comes to hauling up the bounty, sophisticated deepwater excavator bots are still expensive to purchase outright. Such ROVs are designed to install cables and repair leaks at depth. They come with 100-plus horsepower and complicated mechanisms like a triaxial magnetometer, designed to sniff out buried cables at great depths, and high-pressure nozzles to cut through clay. They can run $3 million or more.
With some tinkering, they can retrieve fragile artifacts. For the Sussex effort, Odyssey will lease an ROV designed for cable maintenance work and customize it with acoustic positioning, a "sticky grid" video system that provides a virtual archaeological layout, a multi-tiered elevator, and, of course, a grabber attachment. "It's spring-loaded," says Stemm, "like one of those games you see in a barroom."
We're aboard the Odyssey, a 113-foot research vessel equipped with a stern-mounted A-frame crane, two ROVs, a couple of side-scan sonar towfish, enough computer and video equipment to do light recovery work in a few thousand feet of water, and a massive roll of steel-armored fiber-optic cable. The crew of 10 has been traveling all night in search of a spot some 60 nautical miles off the coast of northern Florida, intent on finding the Bavaria, a steamship that went down in 1865.
Loaded with an estimated $50 million in gold and artifacts, the Bavaria was carrying carpetbaggers from New York City to New Orleans after the Civil War when it encountered a hurricane. "We have records of the last place it was spotted, and we have to ask, were they just getting to the edge of the hurricane, or were they right in the middle?" says crew manager Ernie Tapanes. "We have a search area of 600 square miles."
The Odyssey had spent the summer of 2002 mapping the area, at a cost of roughly $5,000 a day, and identified 50 targets that could be the Bavaria. Now, with data in hand and the promise of good weather and calm seas, the crew is hoping to drop an inspector ROV and survey four sites over the next three days. But at the first location, waves are pounding the sides of the boat. The horizon appears, disappears, and reappears in between 6-foot swells. The rocking makes it tough to stand, much less walk, and far too dangerous to lower a quarter-ton robot over the side.
Captain Sterling Vorus decides to hover awhile, hoping the weather will turn. It doesn't. The all-night trip was for naught. Disappointed, the Odyssey turns around and begins the slow trudge to shore. On the way back, Stemm offers to show me how the mapping was done. I grab the railings and, hand over hand, follow him to the ROV shack, a 12- by 12-foot room at the stern jammed with monitors, radios, weather-monitoring devices, and PCs. Treasure-hunting mission control.
As it turns out, mapping the seafloor is a lot like mowing a lawn. The ship drags the towfish - a roughly 7-foot-long, bright-yellow steel missile - on a few miles of cable. Depending on currents, the sonar-scanning begins, say, north to south, revealing anomalies on the seabed. "We can find anything bigger than the size of a chair," says Stemm. If the crew needs a closer look at something, the ship changes course and runs east to west, creating a crosshatch. For the ship's captain, the trick is to maintain a strict course - up and back, overlapping slightly on each pass - and not to let the device hit bottom. The towfish is neutrally buoyant - it neither sinks nor floats - but an unexpected ridge, or the jutting mast of a downed sailboat, can come up fast.
For the tech who's examining the data feed on a monitor, the challenge is simply staying awake. Mapping occurs 24/7 until it's done. Most of the time, the seafloor scrolls by as a stream of nothingness. It's like searching for a single cloud in a gray sky. "People have been known to nod off between 3 and 5 in the morning," says Tapanes. "There are areas where you'll go 12 hours and not see a thing."
When the sonar waves encounter something other than sand ridges, it shows up on the screen like a birthmark. A small wood boat appears as a jagged dot the size of a thumbnail. Anything with sharp edges or metal components, which deflect sonar waves with greater force, shows more clearly. An image of a battleship looks like a photo negative. Over the years, the crew has found everything from Spanish galleons to what seems to be an F-16 fighter jet off North Carolina. They told the Navy about the F-16. The Navy shrugged. Apparently, it happens.
Stemm is eager to bring up the Sussex for its historical value, but he's never lost sight of a central question: Can he keep the booty? Stories are legion in the treasure-hunting world of adventurers who spent months excavating riches only to have governments or insurance companies step in and make a claim. In a 1998 book, Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, author Gary Kinder recounts the recovery of the SS Central America, a steamship loaded with 21 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush that went down in 8,000 feet of water off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. In 1996, treasure hunter Tommy Thompson went after the Central America and brought up millions of dollars in coins by developing new methods to work at depths once considered unreachable. He then spent a dozen years and millions in legal fees battling for the right to keep it.
But Thompson was an engineer who considered marine excavation purely a matter of technology. Stemm is all business. A founding member of the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, where he rubbed shoulders with Michael Dell and future AOL vice chair Ted Leonsis, Stemm has a head for making money - and spinning things his way. He dropped out of college at age 20 to travel the world as Bob Hope's PR man. When that was over, he started a "very profitable" advertising and public relations business in Florida.
In 1986, Stemm was looking for a dinner boat to take to Jamaica when he stumbled across a research vessel for sale by the University of North Carolina. He bought it and, he says, "through a series of coincidences, I ended up with a small ROV." With a boat and a robot, Stemm was on his way to becoming a treasure hunter.
As important as ocean carriage continues to be - seafaring ships toted almost 6 billion tons of cargo last year - there was a time when water was the only worldwide highway. Without the benefit of global positioning or satellite weather mapping systems, countless ships have gone down over the centuries. Stemm likes to cite an unproven stat that 10 percent of all ships that have ever sailed have sunk. He and partner John Morris founded Odyssey in 1987 to go after a share of the loot. "Everyone knows there are billions of dollars on the ocean floor, and the technology exists to find it and recover it. But can you do it cost-effectively?"
The towfish sends back hi-res solar images like this modern-era vessel.
Odyssey's first success came shortly thereafter, with a 1622 Spanish wreck off Key West. Stemm broke even on the $5 million effort to recover artifacts, pearls, and gold, but it was worth it. Odyssey's credibility was established. Soon, it would open the door to the Sussex.
In 1997, Stemm went to London to negotiate an arrangement with the British government's shipwreck department - only to discover that there wasn't one. No one had ever tried to pre-negotiate rights to sunken treasure. He began working on the Ministry of Defense, making a case that the government retained sovereignty over a 17th-century vessel. "We didn't want to get tied up in courtrooms after the fact," Stemm says. Ultimately, London said it could be interested in an agreement, but Stemm had to find the ship first.
So the crew began mapping the Spanish coast, a process that took a dozen of Stemm's men four years and cost $3 million. They determined that the Sussex went down in a high-traffic shipping lane near the Strait of Gibraltar. Odyssey's sonar maps revealed 418 targets, two of which turned out to be Phoenician wrecks that dated as far back as the fourth century BC. "You see a lot of geology, but then all of a sudden you could see cannons," says Jamie Sherwood, a technician on board for the Sussex mapping expedition. "We knew it was something substantial."
The mapping complete, the crew eliminated obvious rock formations and dropped an ROV into the water for further inspection. About the size of a refrigerator, the inspector ROV is equipped with video cameras, a manipulator arm, and a basket to carry delicate items to the surface. Once submerged, the robot transmits video of its surroundings back to the ROV shack. Watching the video feed is a familiar experience - like the Discovery Channel - except that you're the director. Two joysticks control thrust (forward and backward, up and down) and rotation. Just don't kick up any sand or run into anything. "Almost anywhere we drop an ROV, we're the first to see what's there," says Stemm. "I still get a thrill out of that."
A lot can be learned from a visual inspection with an ROV. If the site appears to be a valuable wreck, the ROV tech brings up a few artifacts - a gold watch, some porcelain, a few coins, an anchor - to be inspected and dated by an archaeologist. In late summer 2001, Stemm and his partners brought back to London a sonar depiction of the Sussex, archaeological reports dating a number of recovered cannons, and underwater photos. It was good enough for the British government. A year later, Odyssey had a deal.
According to the terms, the company funds the excavation - at a cost of $5 million or more. In return, it gets 80 percent of the first $45 million, half of the next $455 million, and 40 percent of everything beyond that. The government has first rights to buy everything. The rest will be sold at auction, on Web sites, maybe on QVC - wherever there's an audience. If the bounty goes for $4 billion (Stemm, who was once the subject of an SEC inquiry for overstating the values of pending projects, opts for a conservative $500 million), Odyssey stands to make $2 billion. Critics of the Sussex arrangement say that would make Stemm, his company, and its investors the richest pirates in history.
Chief among those critics is the Council for British Archaeology, a charitable group devoted to historical preservation. It accuses the British government of "selling antiquities to pay for an investigation of doubtful archaeological feasibility, while also lining its own pockets and those of a foreign company." The CBA claims that the arrangement sets a bad precedent and will pressure other governments to "sign similar or worse deals, putting their underwater heritage at peril."
There's no denying that Odyssey's deal demonstrates how technology is opening new profit-making opportunities in ocean exploration. But Stemm has a notion of doing good, not just doing well. There are thousands of shipwrecks on the ocean floor that weren't carrying $50 million in treasure but nevertheless have incredible historical value. If Stemm can establish Odyssey as capable of good archaeological work, he could get hired by nonprofits (universities, museums, governments) to bring up such wrecks. Stemm also talks about getting into adventure tourism - allowing the public to experience the wonders of the deep firsthand. Whether such notions mean Stemm has a conscience or is just a good salesman is tough to tell. Having spent his whole career in PR and treasure hunting, two industries notorious for breeding smooth operators, Stemm remains a likable, enthusiastic geek - but not without a certain sheen about him.
The Sussex excavation is expected to take three months or more. To raise the necessary funds - it's not like Odyssey has regular earnings - Stemm is out stumping. He negotiated a deal with National Geographic to produce a two-hour TV special that he says is worth a few million. He's also been offering up logo space on his ROV. He won't talk about interested sponsors, but a robot-building consumer electronics giant like Sony might want to slap its brand on a cool piece of technology (especially if it shows up in a two-hour prime-time special). Maybe some Motorola headsets for the ROV techs? Get some Wi-Fi going and Intel will be all over it.
Of course, any corporate dough is pennies compared with what Odyssey stands to pull up from the Sussex itself. All that's between Stemm and real wealth is a whole lot of ocean and a few questions. Has the bulk of the treasure been ripped away by currents? Devoured by gold-eating grouper? Unlikely. Did other ships in the Sussex fleet save the loot before it sank? Might it have already been recovered by the same before-their-time geniuses who built Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids? Doubtful. Was the Sussex carrying not money but one big IOU? Maybe.
It's also getting late in the game for Stemm. He was planning a May recovery, then June. Now late summer. But by July, he still hadn't secured an excavation ROV or a recovery ship. Soon the weather will turn. Another year in waiting means more time for critics to persuade the British government to reneg.
If the Sussex effort falters, Stemm becomes the latest in a line of people to search for unclaimed wealth only to come up empty - another Geraldo eating his hat before the bare tomb of Al Capone. And yet even failure wouldn't be a total loss. Here's a guy who gave up a comfortable life serving the man for his dream to explore the depths of our oceans and of our history. How cool is that?
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