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From: Steve
Category: Shipwreck Research
Date: 06 Oct 2004
Time: 14:31:44
Remote Name: 24.236.157.62
Willie-
it’s been rather amusing up to this point. There comes a certain satisfaction when it all comes together. Kinda like when you finally identify a wreck. I see that you now want to call the conversation quits, so I’ll just put in my last 2 cents.
I am convinced that you did find the remains of the DC-4 some years ago. (If you didn’t and are just making outlandish claims, then there is something real wrong). Whether you were specifically looking for the plane, or whether you happened upon it in the course of other work, only you know. It would have been pretty common practice to remove some things to prove your discovery—maybe just a propeller, or maybe more. Since discovery is only about 10% of the effort, and figuring out how to make some bucks for the effort is 90% of the effort, we can’t know if you found financial reward.
Now its almost 30 years later, and we’ve got these laws to deal with. If you make an open claim about a long-ago discovery, there just may be some bureaucrat lurking around who wants to pin a theft on you, and doesn’t much care if things were removed pre or post law. Thanks to some president setting recent cases, this would be hard to do, but who wants to go to court to fight it out? I think what Paul Ehorn had to do to stay out of jail was ridiculous. I was rooting for his side of that battle, and I’d rout for yours too in the case of the plane!
Now, when another person or group comes along and tries to find the plane and perhaps is successful, that name/s will forever be associated with the plane. That could be quite frustrating to the first person who originally made the discovery. But as Brendon stated in his Oct 2 posting, “Found means the discovery has been publicly announced and/or independently verified”. It would be nice if you could be recognized for it, but since you choose to remain anonymous that won’t be possible. I imagine we will hear something in the coming months if there was any search effort for the plane this year. It wouldn’t be your story though, and there would be no impropriety in telling it.
That aside, let me say that most of us are just in this game as a hobby. We like diving, we like history, we like solving mysteries, and get a kick out of telling the stories. When it stops being fun, and interrupts the more important things in life, then it’s time to get out. For others, like perhaps you, lake disasters have provided a living. It is serious business -it is a livelihood. And when others mess with their ability to make a living, it is understandable that they would be angry.
When I began diving, it was common practice to collect souvenirs from a wreck. When soon thereafter the new laws came into being, it was easy for me to make the change in attitude – taking “pictures” rather than artifacts. I can imagine it would be much more difficult for people whose living depended on the lake to do the same.
In the early days of working the lake, there were only a handful of people searching and finding wrecks, and few who could figure out how to make a decent buck off that. The new laws and technology changed a lot of things—the laws made a salvor’s job of financial reward more difficult, and the technology brought a lot more people into the game. Today most shipwreck hunters don’t bother trying to find the money. That requires too much effort and more money than its worth. Their reward is the ability to tell the stories at the numerous “shipwreck” events that have cropped up in the Midwest. What little money comes from that in the way of ticket sales, honorariums or book sales, is just seed money for the continued pursuit of their hobbies.
This shipwreck game is supposed to be fun, (Unless maybe it is your profession) but I have never encountered a sport that cultivated so much animosity, anger, grudge holding and backstabbing. I’ve been caught up in the nonsense too and not happy about it. Even as a person who is in this only as a hobby, I have taken my fair share of grief from the bureaucrats too, so am much more understanding of the salvors side than you could imagine. Youth is ignorant, but with age comes wisdom.
My regards for your discovery of the plane and other things.
STEVE
Ps. I don’t know who CC&C is.