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.

Diversity left the port in the month of February. Each anomaly that was detected during the aerial surveys was located from the water surface as directed by the navigation computer software operating in conjunction with the differential global positioning system. Once the target was confirmed by the magnetometer, it was marked with a buoy. Next, the divers went over the side and examined the bottom. If the target was buried, the diver used a handheld proton to pinpoint the exact spot. Then a thin metal probe or water-jet probe was used to find out how deep the target was buried. Once the dimensions and depth were established, the induction dredge was lowered and the sand blown away, as a crater was dug over the target. Once an artifact or a wreck was revealed, a study was made to date it. A boiler meant a nineteenth- or twentieth-century wreck. Same with the remains of paddle wheels from an old steamship. Capstans, bronze propellers, deck winches, various pieces of ship’s machinery, and anchors along with their chains were uncovered. Fascinating discoveries, but no blue ribbon or trophy.

A shipwreck was soon discovered and marked as Target 4. It was routinely marked with a buoy, and the divers deployed to investigate the site. Two artifacts were found exposed and recovered for investigation. They appeared to be badly encrusted firearms, a flintlock pistol, and a flintlock musket.

Hopes were high that L‘Aimable had been found, as Ralph sent the artifacts to the conservation laboratory at Texas A&M for preservation and identification. Sadly, our hopes were dashed when an X ray evaluation revealed them to be from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. While of historical importance, they were not from L’Aimable.

Thus ended phase one.

I have been in contact with the Texas Antiquities Commission and Texas A&M University about the possibility of archaeology students excavating the artifacts on the wreck as a school project. Though I have offered to fund the effort, as of this writing I’ve yet to hear anything.

In September of the same year, Ralph set out again and launched phase two, lasting most of the fall and into the winter. Bad weather caused countless delays. I can’t imagine the jolly times they must have had in Port O’Connor while waiting days and weeks for the weather to clear. I heard that one of their pastimes was going down to the nearest bait shack and counting worms.

I flew into San Antonio and had a pleasant two-hundred-mile drive to Port O‘Connor for the next phase of the search. I met Ralph at the motel and had dinner at Josie’s, where the meals are real belly-busters.

We set out the next day with a relatively calm sea and clear skies. I have always felt as though I was coming home when I stepped aboard Diversity. She is as rugged as they come, as well as stable and fast, her 250-horsepower Yamaha shoving her through the waves. Diversity and I have a love-hate relationship. I never fail to bang my shins on her many flanges, sharp edges, and pointed knobs, causing me to bleed all over Ralph’s clean deck. Ralph always has a cooler of beer and soda pop, along with strange munchies from food manufacturers no one has ever heard of, such as Magnolia’s Spicy Pickled Okra and Carl’s Crunchy Pig Parts.

Wes Hall was working on another survey on the East Coast, so Mel Bell and Steve Howard, two very efficient and affable guys, filled in as dive crew for the second phase. Several targets were marked and probed before the dredge was unleashed, and we dug through the silt to see what turned up. Still no L’Aimable.

One evening during the operation, the leading citizens of Port O’Connor threw a barbecue party in our honor. A fun time was had by all, and I found it interesting to hear about the hefty amount of funding that was to be raised to aid in the recovery and preservation of any artifacts that would be put on display at a facility in town. I keep looking, but I haven’t found a check yet. Help did come, however, in the form of contacts for additional equipment, which proved invaluable.

Target 2 appeared that it might be L’Aimable. She had the right magnetometer readings and after being probed was found to lie twelve feet under the sand, definitely an old wreck and a likely prospect. She could not be revealed just yet, since the dredge aboard Diversity was not up to the job of blowing a twelve-foot-deep crater. I had to return home because of writing commitments. Ralph received the generous assistance of Steve Hoyt and Bill Pierson of the Texas Historical Commission (THC), who brought their boat, Anomaly, a state marine survey boat with reverse prop-wash thrusters that could blow a larger hole through the sand. Not much progress could be made, due to poor weather conditions, and it was decided to cease operations until the weather improved.

Phase three began in June of 1999, as the sea turned fairly smooth. A veritable fleet set out for Target 2. Besides Ralph and his Diversity team, there was the Texas Historical Commission crew and its survey boat Anomaly, and a new arrival, the sixty-five-foot Chip XI, owned by the Ocean Corporation of Houston, a school for commercial divers. This boat was more than well equipped to reach through the silt to investigate the target. Jerry Ford, chief dive instructor for OC, brought along a team of dedicated students who volunteered to work the project on their own time.

Over the next several days, Target 2 was partially exposed. She was indeed a very old shipwreck. A cannonball was recovered, and then the divers exposed a cannon. I was immediately phoned and asked to provide the necessary financial support to conserve it. I was more than willing to comply, and the THC agreed to permit the recovery. But, while this was going on, the weather turned bad again, and the recovery was postponed for three weeks to await clearer seas. Unfortunately, as usually happens, the crater containing the cannon filled in with sand.

When the climate became congenial once again, Diversity and Anomaly returned to the scene of the wreck, then blew another huge hole until the cannon was exposed for the second time since it had sunk into the seafloor. Then it was raised from its twelve-foot-deep hole with lift bags and laid on the surface of the bottom.

The next day, Chief Kevin Walker graciously offered the Coast Guard’s assistance, and he arrived at the site on a fifty-five-foot buoy tender. The crane used to lift buoys was activated, and the cannon was raised into the sun for the first time in more than two hundred years and lowered onto the deck. From the site, it was then carried to the Coast Guard base in Port O’Connor and immersed in shallow water for temporary preservation until it could be transported, along with the cannonball, to Texas A&M University for conservation.