Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo Read online

  La Salle mopped his sweating brow with an embroidered handkerchief. The temperature outside was barely fifty degrees, but he could not stop sweating.

  “Tonty?” he asked.

  “I say we continue sailing due north until we make landfall, then send a party ashore,” Tonty said logically. “That should give us an idea where we are.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” La Salle said.

  Three hours later, the dim outline of land was spotted by the crow’s-nest lookout. La Salle went ashore to explore. From land, the area looked different from what he remembered, but there could be good reasons for that. First, the flat marshland featured less vegetation in January than in springtime, which was the only time he had seen it. Second, approaching from water was always tricky; the perspective was different, and landmarks were harder to identify.

  Unless the expedition made land near the Head of Passes and could spot the brown outflow, the land might look the same from the Florida panhandle to the Red River. Whatever La Salle decided, it could go either way. The shore boat slid to a stop up a small tributary. The tangled growth of cypress trees and underbrush nearly blotted out the sun. Mullet splashed on top of the water. La Salle brushed a black fly from his neck, then dipped his hand into the water and tasted.

  “Fresh and sweet,” he noted. “We are near the fabled rivers of north Florida.”

  “I don’t think so, master. I think we are close to the Mississippi,” Nika said.

  “It looks different,” Tonty said, “from what I remember.”

  A fever racked La Salle’s body. He shivered like a dog climbing from an icy stream. For a moment, he saw stars and heard voices. A vision entered his mind.

  “I’m sure the river is over there,” he said, pointing. “Let’s return to L’Aimable. We’ll sail west. If we hug the shoreline, we should see the muddy waters.”

  In his feverish mind, La Salle was convinced they were somewhere near the Florida panhandle. In fact, they made land only a few miles to the west of the Mississippi River. Going east, they would have seen the brown water by lunchtime.

  Another wrong decision would doom the expedition to failure.

  “LA SALLE HAS no idea where we are,” Beaujeu noted.

  “Placing a non-navy man in charge of navigation is both unheralded and unwise,” Aigron said.

  Beaujeu nodded. “Return to your ship. Short of mutiny, we must follow the order.”

  “Mutiny might be wise,” Aigron said, rising to return to Belle. “The damned settlers are eating my sailors’ rations. If we don’t make land and get a hunting party ashore, we may all starve to death.”

  The next morning, the trio of ships began sailing west. The tiny Belle hugged the shoreline, while L’Aimable stayed in the middle. The gunship Joly stayed farther out to sea to defend in case a Spanish ship happened past. A week passed, with the Father of Waters falling farther off their stern. When the expedition finally arrived off Texas, it was low on food and lower still on morale. Events were quickly turning worse.

  “These barrier islands must have been farther out to sea,” La Salle said.

  “Then behind the islands is where we planted the French flag?” Tonty asked.

  “I believe so,” La Salle said.

  Nika sat silently, brooding. Their current location was different from what he remembered. Here, the species of birds were not the same. Not only that, the beasts he glimpsed on land were more like those that graced the Great Plains.

  Even so, the taciturn Indian said nothing. No one had asked his opinion.

  “Even if the lagoons are not the outflow of the Mississippi, they must be a tributary that the river empties into,” La Salle said. “We will make land, send out hunters, erect a fort for protection, then set out exploring. I have a good feeling.”

  His feeling came from the fever, but there was no one to second-guess his decision.

  BELLE HAD PASSED the bar. L’Aimable and Joly remained outside.

  “Sir,” Aigron said, “I must protest. The water is shallow and the currents tricky.”

  It was the first face-to-face meeting between the two men in months.

  “Belle has been inside,” La Salle noted.

  “A smaller, shallow draft vessel,” Aigron said. “L’Aimable is three hundred tons.”

  “I am ordering you to take command of L’Aimable and take her inside,” La Salle said, “or face charges of mutiny.”

  Aigron stared at the menacing presence of Tonty only feet away.

  “I will draw up orders absolving me of any responsibility,” Aigron said, “which you must sign. Then I am transferring my personal possessions to Joly outside the bar.”

  “I will agree to those terms,” La Salle said wearily.

  Aigron turned to his second in command. “Have sailors sound the bottom and lay a string of buoys lining each side of the channel. We enter at high tide tomorrow.”

  La Salle rose. “I am turning over command of this vessel. Have a shore boat drop our possessions on land. Tonty, Nika, and I will stay on land tonight.”

  “As you wish, Monsieur La Salle,” Aigron said.

  LA SALLE, HIS two trusted companions, and a small party of settlers and sailors spent the night on land. The twentieth day of February 1685 dawned clear. Only a few scattered gusts of wind marred what appeared to be an otherwise perfect day. La Salle was tired. Indians from a nearby tribe had approached twice. So far the savages had remained peaceful, but they spoke a dialect neither La Salle nor Nika could understand.

  Their intentions remained an unknown.

  La Salle ordered a party of men to a small forested area nearby to fell a tree to be used to construct a dugout canoe for exploring the shallow waters. Staring out to sea, La Salle could see L’Aimable weigh anchor. At just that instant, a sailor jogged over to where he was standing. He was breathless and required a second to catch his wind.

  “The savages,” he gasped at last, “they came and took our men.”

  La Salle stared out to sea. The Belle was supposed to tow L‘Aimable through the gap, but she remained away. Was the pilot intending to take L’Aimable in on sail against orders? There was no time for La Salle to find out. Together with Tonty and Nika, he ran toward the Indian encampment.

  Looking over his shoulder, La Salle watched as L’Aimable’s sails were unfurled.

  IT WASN’T THE wine as much as the brandy that gave pilot Duhout and Captain Aigron their courage. With sails to the wind, they closed the distance. On old sailing vessels the pilot faced backward, staring at the horizon behind. With masts, riggings, and supplies stacked on deck, there is little to see facing forward.

  “Port a quarter,” Duhout shouted to Aigron, who adjusted the wheel.

  “Starboard an eighth.”

  And so it went.

  Aigron steered L’Aimable through the first shoals successfully. Lining up with the buoys, he began his run past the reef. In a few minutes, he would be inside.

  “ONE AX AND a dozen needles,” La Salle offered as trade for his men.

  Nika translated as best he could, then waited to see if it was understood.

  The Indian chief nodded his assent and motioned for the men to be released.

  La Salle and Tonty stepped outside to stare at the water at L’Aimable.

  “If they hold the present course, they’ll run her aground,” La Salle said to Tonty.

  “I fear you are right,” Tonty said, “but there is nothing we can do.”

  La Salle was completing the negotiations when he heard the cannon shot the expedition had agreed upon as a sign of distress. L’Aimable had run aground.

  WOOD RUBBING AGAINST a reef makes the sound of a screaming infant.

  In the lower hold, the supplies to sustain the expedition were already becoming damp. If they were not quickly removed and dried, they would be lost.

  “She’s hard aground,” Aigron said to Duhout. “The reef has holed the bottom.”

  “The wine and brandy,” Duhout said, “
should be salvaged first.”

  LA SALLE MADE his way back to the coast with his freed men as quickly as he could. As he rounded a corner and climbed up a small rise, his eyes met a grim sight. L’Aimable was hopelessly aground atop the reef, the tear in her side discharging the cargo into the water. To make matters worse, out in the Gulf of Mexico the sky was turning an angry black.

  All that remained was to salvage what they could and pray for better luck, but luck would prove elusive. The rest of the day, the crew salvaged what goods they could by loading them onto small boats and transferring them to shore. At nightfall they set up camp.

  Tomorrow, God willing, they would return for the rest.

  The winds and the waves came calling that night, battering the stationary L‘Aimable like a punching bag being pummeled by a prizefighter, and the ship was ripped to shreds. The morning sky dawned red. At first light La Salle stood silently, watching as wave after wave washed over the few sections of L’Aimable’s hull that remained above water.

  Little remained but to add up the losses.

  Nearly all the expedition provisions were gone, along with all the medicines. Four cannon and their shot, four hundred grenades, and small arms to protect the settlers. Iron, lead, the forge, and the tools. Baggage and personal items, books and trinkets.

  The loss of L’Aimable was the deathblow, but La Salle had yet to realize it.

  With what goods could be salvaged, La Salle moved inland and constructed a fort he named for the king of France. Fort Saint Louis gave La Salle a base from which to explore. With the few sailors and settlers still loyal, he began his search for the elusive Father of Waters.

  But fate was a cruel mistress.

  With La Salle’s permission, Captain Beaujeu took all the settlers wanting to leave aboard Joly. In March of 1685, he returned to France. The next year was one of hardship and disappointment for La Salle. His inland expeditions made him realize he was hundreds of miles from the Mississippi River Delta.

  After months of hardships, he returned to Fort Saint Louis to regroup. Upon arriving, La Salle received word that Belle had run aground and sunk.

  The loss of Belle added fuel to the disillusionment of the remaining settlers and soldiers. The little ship was the only visible lifeline to France. With Belle destroyed, the settlers were little more than stranded visitors in a savage and cruel new world.

  It was the final straw.

  “I’LL TAKE A few men and set off for Canada,” La Salle told Tonty. “You remain here so I have someone in control.”

  “That’s a thirty-five-hundred-mile trip on foot,” Tonty said. “Are you sure?”

  “What other choice do we have?” La Salle said. “If we don’t get some supplies soon, we all die. I’ve made it down the Mississippi before.”

  Tonty nodded. That had been years before, when La Salle was younger and healthier.

  “How many men will you need?” Tonty asked.

  “Less than a dozen,” La Salle said, “so we can move quickly.”

  “I shall arrange it immediately,” the always-loyal Tonty said.

  IN MARCH OF 1687, La Salle set out, but an old wound would bring death.

  Duhout was the pilot of L’Aimable when she ran aground. Those who stayed behind blamed him for the expedition’s failure. Because of that fact it was strange that La Salle allowed him to go along on the trip to Canada. The truth was that the settlers who would remain at Fort Saint Louis didn’t want him around—Duhout had been acting increasingly strange as time passed.

  La Salle figured that if he led Duhout to Canada he could wash his hands of him.

  But Duhout’s mind was fast fading into madness. He was beset by paranoia and voices in his head—evil thoughts that floated on the wind. At first, Duhout believed La Salle was talking about him behind his back. Within a few days, he thought La Salle was plotting to trade him to the Indians as a slave. By the time they reached the Trinity River, Duhout was sure La Salle was planning to kill him, so he moved first. He killed La Salle and left his body by the river.

  The man who had set out to claim a continent died alone and disillusioned. His grave has yet to be found.

  Within months of La Salle’s death, Indians attacked Fort Saint Louis. Weakened by disease, the settlers could barely put up a fight, and they were slaughtered. The French plans for a settlement in the New World had been savagely crushed by weather, distance, and discord. When it was all said and done, only a dozen people had survived.

  La Salle was a visionary, but, like so many other explorers, his vanity got the best of him. And yet his place in American history is secure. Only Lewis and Clark covered more territory than the aristocrat from France.

  II

  Out of Reach 1998-1999

  HOW I WAS BEGUILED INTO LOOKING FOR L’AIMABLE

  (pronounced “la amaablea”) is still a mystery to me. In my mind it was not a ship that held great interest. It had great historical significance, to be sure, but there was little romance or tragedy tied to it. Besides, NUMA had never searched for a ship that had been lost for three hundred years. However, like a trout that hasn’t eaten all winter, I took the bait, rounded up a team, and began studying the historical records on La Salle’s fatal expedition.

  It all began when Wayne Gronquist, then-president of NUMA, met with Barto Arnold, who was then-director of the Underwater Archeological Research Section of the Texas Antiquities Commission. Arnold had achieved a remarkable accomplishment in recovering La Salle’s smallest ship, Joly, which had grounded inside Matagorda Bay and had been abandoned. Building a cofferdam around the wreck, Arnold and his team recovered hundreds of artifacts from La Salle’s doomed 1685 expedition.

  Arnold had conducted a magnetic survey of the area in 1978 and had hoped to initiate a major investigation of the myriad targets he had found. Texas Antiquities did have the funds and came to NUMA. Barnum was right: There’s a sucker born every minute. Caught in an unguarded moment, I succumbed and offered to fund the survey and expedition, never dreaming it would take months and a boatload of currency.

  The services of World Geoscience Inc., of Houston, were enlisted for an in-depth aerial magnetic survey using technology that was unavailable to Arnold twenty years earlier. The plan was to conduct a follow-up project to excavate and identify the magnetic anomalies located from the air.

  Good old steadfast Ralph Wilbanks, a respected marine surveyor and valued trustee of NUMA, along with marine archaeologist Wes Hall, were called in to execute the survey. Ralph and Wes are the two men who discovered the Confederate submarine Hunley in 1995.

  The historical data was accumulated and analyzed by respected historian Gary McKee. Douglas Wheeler, a NUMA trustee and a dedicated shipwreck hunter, generously provided funding for the first survey. Doug’s only return on his investment was a remarkable painting of L’Aimable, by marine artist Richard DeRosset, that hangs in his office.

  Contemporary reports on La Salle’s ill-fated expedition were studied. The journals of Henri Joutel described a detailed account of the loss of L‘Aimable. Minet, La Salle’s chief navigator, drew contemporary charts that accurately illustrated Cavallo Pass as it appeared in 1685 and indicated the position of the wreck. Minet’s charts show the wreck of L’Aimable lying on the eastern side of the old channel. The only predicament was that Minet seemed to have trouble measuring distances over water. He had a tendency to overestimate, a common error made by people judging distance over water by eye. Still, it isn’t often that you can be lucky enough to find an eyewitness account that puts you in the ballpark.

  The area to be investigated was determined at 4.81 nautical miles north to south and 2.12 nautical miles east to west, more than covering the documented wreck site. By making transparencies of Minet’s charts to scale and then overlaying them with modem charts and aerial photographs, we could see that the shorelines had changed considerably over three hundred years. The southern tip of Matagorda Island has eroded significantly, up to a thousand feet, whereas the M
atagorda Peninsula’s erosion has not been as extreme. Though Minet’s channel width seems too wide, it would be logical to assume that he simply misgauged the distance, since most charts from between 1750 and 1965 do not vary by more than a hundred yards.

  The major frustrations we faced were the changes in the channel that had occurred over the last thirty-five years. In 1965, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers opened a new shipping channel through the Matagorda Peninsula to the Intracoastal Waterway a few miles northeast of Cavallo Pass. The new channel changed the dynamics of the water flow out of the bay and altered the pass dramatically. These changes made it difficult to make exact comparisons between the modem charts and the older ones.

  If we had come along before 1965, our job would have been much simpler. After the new channel was dredged, the original thirty-foot-deep channel began to “sand in.” This transformation deeply buried most of the shipwrecks in our search grid, making it all the more difficult to reach them.

  In February 1998, Ralph and Wes began the first survey, using Ralph’s reliable twenty-five-foot Parker he had named Diversity . Naturally, the rest of us refer to it as Perversity. No more practical boat ever sailed the water in search of shipwrecks, but luxury yacht comfort she ain’t. If you’ll pardon a dry description of the technical equipment, the boat carried two marine cesium magnetometers, a handheld proton procession magnetometer, a NAVSTAR differentially corrected global positioning system (GPS), Coastal Oceanographics navigation and data-collecting software, and a small induction dredge.

  The search team operated out of Port O‘Connor, Texas, a town of friendly, warm people but not much else. There is a gas station, a nice motel, Josie’s Mexican Restaurant—run by the wonderful Elosia Newsome—and 560 bait shacks. There is no main street. Next to Port O’Connor, Mayberry was a metropolis. I don’t possess much insight into people’s souls, so I am still baffled as to why Ralph bought a house there. I suppose one reason is that the local citizens think the world of Ralph and look upon him as the best thing to hit the town since grits.