“Run her aground on shore,” he said quietly.

The pilot steered for the bank.

“Prepare the men to make shore,” Warley shouted.

Manassas was run ashore, and the crew was evacuated. Climbing up the bank, Warley watched as Mississippi came abreast and pounded the abandoned ram with all the force of her guns. The rising sun had lightened the sky to a gray half-light. Warley watched as his command was pounded with shot.

Suddenly, a shell from Mississippi exploded against the stem just below the waterline, and the lower hold quickly began to flood. With the weight from the water, Manassas’s bow became light. She drifted away from shore with the current.

Now a ghost ship, Manassas floated a few dozen yards downstream of Warley and the crew. The gunners on Mississippi reloaded and fired. Screaming across the water, the shot parted the planks of Manassas’s hull.

As Manassas drifted downriver, Lieutenant Reed of McRae launched a last-ditch effort to save her. Rowing alongside in a small boat, he climbed aboard, only to find that Warley and his crew had cut through the steam pipes with axes. The ship had been rendered unusable. Reed had no choice but to abandon the ship and return to McRae.

Captain David Porter, later a distinguished admiral, in command of the mortar fleet, saw Manassas coming down the river, seemingly intent on destroying the mortar vessels, but he soon discovered that Manassas was never going to harm another ship.

“She was beginning to emit some smoke from her ports of holes,” he reported, “and was discovered to be on fire and sinking. Her pipes were all twisted and riddled with shot, and her hull was also well cut-up. She had evidently been used up by the squadron as they passed along. I tried to save her, as a curiosity, by getting a hawser around her and securing her to the bank, but just after doing so, she fairly exploded, her only gun went off, and, emitting flames through her bow port, like some huge animal, she gave a plunge and disappeared under the water.”

The career of Manassas had been short, but she led the way for armored ships. The first ironclad to do battle, she was soon followed by the Monitor and Merrimack/Virginia. Thanks to her, naval warfare would never be the same.

A few weeks after the unsuccessful conclusion of the 1981 Hunley expedition, I was sitting at my desk staring at the NUMA team’s graduation picture, a photo of everyone we always take before we head for home. I studied it carefully. The faces of so many dedicated and hardworking people brought back warm memories. Then, for some unknown reason, I counted those staring back at me. There were seventeen, excluding me. Seventeen! I began to wonder if all these bodies were critical to finding a shipwreck lying in no more than thirty feet of water. It seemed to me that three people could have achieved the same results.

The simple fact is — and this has been proven time and time again by our government — there comes a time when too many people get in one another’s way. Bureaucracy breeds bureaucracy. Feeding and housing a large search team requires support people. Once breakfast is consumed, a large crew needs at least four rental cars to ferry themselves and their equipment back and forth from the boat dock. And let us not forget the vital use of transportation for the younger members of the expedition team to make whoopee in town after dark.

More and more, it seemed that smaller might be better.

Warming to the idea, I planned the next expedition to the Mississippi River to search for ships sunk during Admiral David Farragut’s battle past the forts and his ultimate capture of New Orleans in 1861.

This time, there would be only two of us representing NUMA.

Walter Schob, an old faithful standby of NUMA, arranged to come with me on the expedition. All we brought was our Schonstedt gradiometer to detect ferrous metal and a golfer’s rangefinder. Walt met me at the Denver airport, where he had flown from his home in Palmdale, California, and was quite surprised when I rolled up to the gate in a little shuttle with my right ankle sticking out the side in a cast.

The day before I was to meet him, I was jogging behind my house on a path through the woods when I stumbled and twisted my ankle. There was little doubt a bone was broken, because I actually heard the snap. After limping up the path to the house, I found that my wife had gone grocery shopping. With no choice, I drove myself to the doctor, using my left foot for both brake and accelerator.

According to orthopedists who have looked at it twenty years later, the ankle bone didn’t mesh right and should have been screwed in place, or whatever it is they do in the twenty-first century to squeeze the parted bones together. As I aged, it developed arthritis. My advice is whatever you do, never get old.

The airline obliged me with a front-row seat facing the bulkhead so I could extend my foot. Incredibly, a fellow with another broken ankle sat across from me. Odd how misery loves company. His break was worse than mine, as his cast ran almost to his knee. Mine came only part way up my calf.

I always recall this flight because Walt had his carry-on bag sitting against the bulkhead at his feet. Now, you have to understand — Walt has a perverse sense of humor. When the flight attendant came along and asked him to move it under the seat or to an overhead bin, he said, “No, thank you, it’s fine right where it is.”

The flight attendant, with red hair and penetrating dark eyes, was rather attractive except for the fact that her hips brushed both seats as she walked down the aisle. She gave him a stem stare. “I’m sorry, FAA regulations. The bag has to be stowed.”

Walt stared back with an innocent expression. “There is no FAA regulation concerning a bag under my feet against the bulkhead needing to be stowed.”

“You stow it, sir, or the plane won’t take off,” she said in a voice filled with crushed ice.

“I’ll comply,” said Walt, “if you quote me the regulation, the section and paragraph.”

I might mention that Walt is an air accident investigator. If anyone knows FAA regulations, it’s him.

Now flustered, she said, “Then you leave me no choice but to get the pilot.”

This lady was not going to take no for an answer.

Walt smiled politely. “I’ll be more than happy to meet our pilot. I’d like to know his experience and flying time before we take off.”

Did I mention Walt is a retired air force colonel with several thousand hours’ piloting fighters?

She stormed off to the cockpit and returned with an exasperated pilot, who wanted to get the plane off the ground. In the meantime, Walt had stowed his bag and was reading a copy of an air accident investigative report.

“Do we have a problem here?” asked a grandfatherly-looking uniformed man with gray hair.

I looked up with my favorite dumb expression. “Problem?”

“The attendant says you won’t stow your bag.”

“I did.”

“Not you, him!” snapped the frustrated flight attendant, aiming a manicured finger at Walt.

Without looking up from his reading, Walt said calmly, “It’s stowed.”

As I said: perverse. But you have to like Walt. You can’t excite him. I’ve never seen him mad. With his ready smile and Andy Devine voice, he charms everyone — most of the time.

After landing at the New Orleans airport, we rented a big station wagon, a model now extinct, and made the seventy-five-mile drive down the river to Venice, Louisiana, the last town at the end of the road in the heart of delta country. From here it’s another twenty miles by boat to the Gulf of Mexico.