"IT WASN'T VALUABLE STUFF"
by David Arnold, The Boston Globe
Stephen Kiesling, Yale graduate and Olympic oarsman, became the darling of academic archeologists in 1994 when he wrote "Walking the Plank" a scathing critique of how Barry Clifford financed and documented the underwater excavation of the pirate ship Whydah off Cape Cod.
"The book is highly recommended for anyone interested in how treasure hunting works," Dr. Ricardo Elia, a Boston University archeologist and longtime Clifford critic, gushed in a subsequent review in Archaeology Magazine...
There's just one thing Kiesling neglected to share with his readers in the book or with the academic archeologists.
Two years before he wrote "Walking the Plank," he had participated with Robert McClung, a West Palm Beach treasure hunder and his collaborator on the book, in ransacking the Baltic, an intact 1866 cargo ship off Ridley Point in Spanish Wells, Bahamas. They were looking for gold, but, as one Bahamian official put it, "they found and destroyed a history capsule, leaving behind pain."
"God, it was a blast," Kiesling recalled in a telephone interview last week. "We called it the K-Mart because this ship had so much different [material] aboard. We pretty much destroyed it, we blew the heck out of it" using a device that deflects propeller wash down to clear away sand. "We had made a video tape to show the local officials what a good archaology job we were doing. But it was nothing more than a tape measure stretched across the hull. Then we turned the ship into something resembling the L.A. riots."
Kiesling was unconcerned that his remarkably frank account, from his Oregon home last week, might affect future invitations to archeology conventions.
"I mean, it was no big deal. This wasn't valuable stuff. Well, I guess some archeology graduate student would have enjoyed it." Kiesling paused, then added: "Actually, someone could have used the stuff to make a little museum nearby."
The Baltic was a two-masted, 127-foot American cargo ship caught by a hurricane midway between New York City and Galveston. The ship was loaded with British-made housewares--porcelain table place settings, pickle jars, ink wells, and mugs, to name a few. The crew anchored in a small cove on Eleuthera, then jumped ship just before the storm peaked. The Baltic sank like a sealed shipping crate.
"It was a one-in-a-million wreck, totally locked tight," recalls Nick Maillis of Eleuthera, who held the salvage permit and had hired Rob McClung to oversee the work. "I would watch in shame as straw came billowing up because I knew we had just cracked open another crate. But they just kept blasting. They wanted gold."
Maillis said the pace of the job was ultimately set by George Moscow, a Bahamian financier who refused to dawdle over salvage artifacts. In a telephone interview, Moscow said he did not remember specifics about the salvage.
"I can't even remember what I had for breakfast today," he said. McClung could not be reached for comment.
Grace Turner, curator of archives and archaeology for the Bahamian government, said the salvors made no effort to conserve any artifacts, adding that they "popped and cracked" the minute they hit the air. Turner said she hopes that some of the material that did survive will eventually end up in a Nassau museum.
Kiesling recalled salvors bringing up "a big old stove that was kinda neat" But a day or two later, when it began to smell, he said, "we threw it back." The excavation took a month; Kiesling returned hom after the first three days with souvenirs from the wreck, which he was surprised to learn is against Bahamian law.
"No one asked, " he said. On a lark, Kiesling said, he tried to microwave one of the mugs in Oregon. What happened?
"KA-BOOM!":
The Boston Globe, June 1, 1998 p.C04