To the Sea...

We leave Edinburgh at 0900 for an 18-hour transit out to the work site.  Nearly all of the crew is out on deck watching the scenery go by. Once in a while I look up and see that I am being observed by various crew members, just out of curiosity, I'm told later and I must quickly get used to being an anomaly. When the ship turns for sea, everyone goes to their stations. I chat with the Scottish harbor pilot who has come aboard to help the crew navigate out of the loch and through the channel into open water. The crew is thrilled that he has also shown them an inshore route home, which should be smoother than their transit from France to Edinburgh.

As soon as we head for open water, I am asked to accompany the Operations Officer to the bridge to review the plan. We talk about the survey and decide to first use the Remotely Operated Vehicle to take a look at our priority wreck site, then use the sonar to survey a block of seabed nearby. It’s possible that there is more of the wreck in the adjacent areas, especially since the region has been trawled.

The forecast is dicey for tonight, good for tomorrow, and then terrible for the rest of the week.  I am surprised that the French Navy would send a minehunter to transit nearly four days, stop in port for three days, then transit another 18 hours, spend 36 hours at the work site, transit two days back to England for a port call, and then finish the several-day trip home to Brest, France.  That amounts to nearly a ten day trip for a day and a half of work if the weather holds, and it is a huge risk with the amount of time and resources involved. But I am grateful for the opportunity and for the continued commitment of France to continue our joint quest.

By later in the evening, the winds pick up significantly, and our transit south is a tough one. In most ships, these seas may not have been problematic, but minehunters are meant for short trips along the coast, and not for working in the open ocean in an extreme environment like the North Sea. They are unstable and roll around even in moderate seas. Here's an image of Sagittaire:

In all the time I've spent at sea on all kinds of vessels, I have been very lucky in that I have been spared the experience of seasickness. Seamen say it can strike even the toughest sailor at any time. My luck ran out on this trip.  During a punishing bout of illness that lasted several hours, I laid down in the Officers’ Wardroom on the sofa because I literally could not make it the two decks down to where my bunk was located (image below).

The smell of liver for dinner certainly didn’t help matters. The toughest part about seasickness is that there is no escape once it hits.  If I was sitting up or standing, any movement of the ship would throw my body off course, a new wave of nausea would strike, and I would swear that every bathroom was miles away. Around midnight, after a few of the longest hours of my life, the medicine I had taken kicked in and I was finally able to get some sleep. ROV operations were planned to start at 3:00 a.m., but I desperately hoped for a stay of execution, as there was no way I could have functioned under the circumstances. The sea state remained unworkable throughout the night, which was good for me, but bad for the mission.

Expedition 2014 - Of Whiskey and Men

The search for the Bonhomme Richard, ongoing for 8 years now, has grown massively since its inception.  It has become much more than a quest for the remains of an important American war ship. It is an exercise in maximizing assets; it is a test of endurance for people, ships, and equipment; allows for cultural exchange; is used for training in an extreme environment; and is a highly regarded partnership between the U.S. and France.  I write about all of the above, and not just the results of the missions, because all of these things are what makes time spent at sea so valuable and unforgettable. 

Arriving in Edinburgh, Scotland two days before heading to sea on our first expedition of the year proved to be a very wise move for me. I have a hotel room and a large bathtub to luxuriate in before taking on the seas and tiny, moving showers.  It also provides invaluable time to get to know the Commandant and officers of the French Navy’s minehunting vessel Sagitairre, who are enjoying a weekend port call.  We meet for the first time for a tour of Edinburgh Castle. 

We are pleasantly surprised that the Bonhomme Richard and John Paul Jones are mentioned in an audio recording in the prisoners’ barracks, but with Jones being a Scotsman it does make sense that he would find some honor there. These hours together are important because they make us a little more comfortable in that we are no longer unknown to one another, and hopefully some preliminary bonding can occur.  It also gives me a head start on remembering and correctly pronouncing the names of the people whose capable hands my mission is now in. There is a U.S. Navy Exchange Officer with us who is on a two-year tour with the French Navy, and is my project liaison in France.  He is an important part of the mission and as he speaks French and English, eases my transition into French Navy culture, and brings me into the conversations.

Our group of seven men and one woman opt for dinner and drinks at a local pub, and chat as best we can.  Although I am politely invited to tomorrow's pilgrimage to the whiskey distillery at 8:00 a.m. (eek!), I opt to sleep in and spend the day shopping and touring by myself, enjoying some precious alone time before boarding the ship the following morning.  And sometimes men just need to do their man things without a woman tagging along. Speaking of whiskey, this is a common sight in many of the shops.

Re-Creating the BHR?

A friend of mine in France just sent me this article that appeared in a French newspaper.  Apparently the mayor of L'Orient, France, who is also Vice-President of the tourism board, would like to build a replica of the Bonhomme Richard to serve as a tourist attraction. What fun that would be! A colleague of mine had originally pitched this idea to the US Naval Academy a few years ago, but I guess it didn't quite catch on. The BHR was built in L'Orient originally as the Duc de Duras, and then when it was loaned to the U.S., it was renamed Bonhomme Richard.  The French have already built a replica of the vessel Hermione, which will be visiting the U.S. next year. It cost 25 million euros to build it.

Here are some images of the BHR model from the article, courtesy of Ouest-France:

I am going to try to contact the mayor and lend my support.  Vive la France!

BHR Model Arrives in France

In the April 10 post I mentioned that a model of the BHR was being transported across the Atlantic to France. It has arrived, and is now safely ensconced in a place of honor at the French Naval Academy (Ecole Navale).  A reception honoring this gift from the US Naval Academy was held on June 4 at Ecole Navale.

Here is the French version of events. Translated, it reads:
"On the occasion of Naval History Days, the opening of the model Bonhomme Richard ceremony was held Tuesday, June 4 at the French Naval Academy, under the direction Rear Admiral Philippe Hello and in the presence of U.S. Naval Attache, Captain Robert Buzzell.

Mr. Alain Boulaire, Doctor of History, prefaced this ceremony, gave a lecture entitled "A merchant ship became warship, the example of the Bonhomme Richard," particularly for the benefit of students in the first year at the Naval Academy and students of foreign naval schools present in the context of the international week."

You can read the model's descriptive plaque here.

In other news, our French Navy mission that was scheduled for early July has had to be postponed till later this fall due to the ships' military obligations. This project certainly takes a lot of patience, as it can be months or even a year until we can return to a wreck site to further investigate it.

News Article and Conforming to Social Media

This week's news is literally...news.  This article appeared in our local newspaper on Friday.

So I took a big leap last week, and finally created a Facebook page for the BHR Project:

I think I am officially old because I had to have my colleague (in her twenties) help me with this. And how do you get everything connected to everyone and everything else once you're in there? I hoped I would never have to go around around saying, "Like us on Facebook!" but here I am. The things we do for love...

My motivations for this are to generate interest in the project, which hopefully then leads to new partnerships and sponsors, the latter being critical right now.  So those of you who are FB experts, I'm counting on you to use your vast networks to help me get the word out!

Have A Look!

Having recently returned from the first mission of 2013, I wanted to share some encouraging results.  You may recall that at the end of the 2012 mission, the French Navy had located an interesting sonar target that we did not have time to further investigate. Finally, almost a year later, we got a better look at this fascinating site. The first object we identified was this large anchor.

Next was an area of wooden planking (below) that looked like it had recently been unburied, due to the lack of marine life growing on it.  From this, it seems like the colonization rate of marine organisms takes a while (at least a year), since we had seen this planking on the sonar last year, so it must have been exposed even then.

Given that I am a marine biologist by training, I'm sometimes more interested in the stuff growing on the shipwrecks, as well as the critters that call the wrecks home. (And yes, sometimes we get distracted and will follow a lobster around for a minute.)

The weird-looking lump below is actually a concretion, which is a combination of rust, shell, marine organisms, calcium carbonate, and other materials that form a layer around iron objects as the iron oxidizes and reverts back to its natural state.  Concretions are usually more irregularly-shaped than rocks, and this one gave a spike in the magnetometer data.  I might have been seeing what I want to see, but upon closer inspection it looked to me like there were cannonball shapes in this one.

Perfectly linear shapes in nature are rare. That's why we always hear that when someone is stranded on a deserted island, they make patterns or spell out words in the sand to indicate to aircraft that there are humans present. We apply the same theory beneath the sea, and look for things that appear unnatural in the seabed. The image below is of another likely concretion hiding some man-made object:

This white soft coral is most often the best clue to indicate buried objects. In the image below, there appears to be a long length of wood buried just under the surface, so there is more to this site than meets the eye. It is a mostly buried wooden shipwreck with some iron objects present.

So...in the thousands of sonar targets, and dozens of actual wrecks we've seen in 600 square miles of seabed over the past eight years, we've not seen anything with characteristics that even come close to the ones expressed by this site.  If we could just figure out if cannons are present (buried or concreted and not easily identifiable), we could be on our way to something huge.  If anyone reading this blog has access, or knows someone who has access to Autonomous vehicles with magnetometers, or reliable sub-bottom imagery technology, etc. please let me know (melissa.oceantechnology@gmail.com).

We have a summer expedition planned to learn more. The Ocean Technology Foundation's ability to successfully manage and lead this search has been made possible by our wonderful donors and a lot of in-kind support, but we need support now more than ever.  When we are able to prove that we've found the Bonhomme Richard, there will be opportunities for major publicity for our sponsors, and it will all happen fast!  Join us in this great maritime quest and become a sponsor!

AQUITAINE

I recently had the great pleasure of being invited to a reception on board the new French Navy frigate AQUITAINE. It was in port visiting Norfolk, VA this past weekend. The ship is unique in that it is state-of-the-art technology and where normally a crew of 300 would be necessary, it needs only a crew of 94.  It was very impressive, both visually and capability-wise. When we stopped at the gate to get on the Navy base, we were told to "just look for the ship that looks totally different than a US Navy ship."

The AQUITAINE is going to transport a model of the BONHOMME RICHARD that was donated by the US Naval Academy to the French Naval Academy. 

It will deliver the model to Brest, France when it returns home this spring.  The model will be displayed at the French Naval Academy as a symbol of our continuing partnership in the search for BHR.

I was invited to deliver some short remarks during the event, along with Admiral John Harvey (USN ret.) and Tim Disher from the US Naval Academy. The event afforded me the opportunity for formal and public acknowledgement of French Navy support for the ongoing search, which since 2009 has involved seven expeditions, with more than 300 FRN personnel going to sea and many more working shoreside to make it all happen.  What a fantastic evening!