The first lesson my son taught me was not to schedule your paternity leave to begin on a baby’s due date. I was given a meager two weeks off for the birth of my first child and he, being independent while still in the womb, decided to come out a week later. During that first week, I busied myself doing chores around the house and injuring myself once every other day. I broke my toe, sprained my ankle, wrenched my knee, and ran over a wasp nest with the lawnmower, thus incurring several painful wasp stings on my sprained ankle. When my wife finally went into labor the following Saturday, the process took 30 hours. T-H-I-R-T-Y hours! She did all the work, but I was standing the whole time.

As a child, my son learned to endure a father who was an adult in search of a childhood. When I was taking flying lessons, I was forbidden to take him up in the airplane. Yet, somehow, he magically developed a love of flying.

The same rule applied to motorcycles. I was absolutely forbidden to take Ian on the back of my motorcycle. We put our heads together and came up with a solution. What if we just rode around the yard while his Mom was out running errands and I quickly cut the grass to cover our tire tracks before she came home? That solution worked well, and I gained extra brownie points for keeping a tidy lawn.

Eventually, the lawn trick grew boring and we would take to the open road, cruising around the Shire in the waning light of day. One of my fondest memories is of riding into the setting sun, looking down and seeing the shadow cast by my son’s outstretched arms. He was flying. I swelled with pride as I thought of him feeling the wind beneath his arms as we were steadily in motion, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the satisfaction of a conspiracy well-executed.

The marriage did not last, but the father and son shenanigans continued.

There was our visit to the Reptile Show. Mom: “Don’t get him a snake! Don’t get him a snake!” Dad: “Just pick something out.”

I took care of that python for five years. And the dogs, the Chinese Water Dragon, fish, insects, and assorted other animals.

My son loved that his dad was an explorer. After my first expedition to the Titanic, I spoke at his elementary school — the same school where I developed a love of the outdoors when I was a boy — while he sat on stage, beaming with pride. He came home later that day gushing about a how a girl had asked him for his autograph.

But being my son was not always easy. Ian was just four when I went on my first Titanic expedition. I was away for nearly a month. This was an excruciating amount of time for a little boy and, after this, he timed my work trips on “Titanic time.” He would ask, “Will you be away for as long as you were for Titanic, daddy?” This meant would I be away for an insufferable amount of time or for something less, which he could bear.

After this, I always took a personal satellite phone on my journeys, and I would check in with Ian nightly. When two silky sharks used me as a volleyball underwater in the Galapagos, I called Ian and asked him to research the species in his “Shark Book” — an encyclopedia of toothy predators — and tell me how to avoid a reoccurrence of this incident. I learned a lot on that satellite phone call. Chiefly, to avoid silky sharks or any shark encounters near the surface and to exhale sharply in the presence of hammerhead sharks because they don’t like bubbles. Who knew?

Then, there was shooting. Ian started at age seven, as I did, and he earned his NRA Marksman rating by the age of 12. He was Captain of the Rifle Team at summer camp that year. It was the same camp that I went to at his age, but he was already achieving far more than I ever had.

I once told Ian that “a boy becomes a man when he does something better than his father.” I came to regret making this statement, early and often.

We would go deer hunting in the woods of western Pennsylvania — or, as I called it, “making the roads safe for motorists.” We never harmed an animal, but we spent hours together in the forest, laughing, telling jokes, and throwing pine cones at one another. The deer must have found us entertaining, because they certainly were not worried about us interfering with their interactions with automobiles.

I took Ian to the first private space flight when he was in third grade, to the launch of SpaceShipOne in California. Lawyers were involved in the negotiations, but the elementary school principal readily agreed that this would be an excused absence, thus clinching the deal. Ian met Jim Cameron that day, after Jim was gracious enough to keep a promise to find us in the crowd. Ian was dumbfounded and he remained mute, but he still asks me to “Say hi to Jim for me!” if he hears that I will be in his company somewhere.

Ian learned to scuba dive at the age of ten (something I would hold off on today), and he earned my tremendous respect when he called the first dive not far below the surface because he was not feeling comfortable. He took advanced scuba certifications courses, learned to sail a catamaran, and generally learned to experience the world for himself.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that raising a miniature version of me was not the most optimal plan. I started listening more closely when he told me about the things he liked to do, and I held my tongue if I did not always agree. We both loved live music. He introduced me to Weezer and the Foo Fighters, and I introduced him to Social Distortion and the Cure. It was a win-win situation.

My son has always been brutally honest. When Jeff Bezos announced that he had hired “the right team of undersea pros” to find and recover the Apollo F-1 engines, and I revealed to Ian that I had been gone so often because I had organized and led that team, Ian said: “Congratulations, Dad. You finally did something that matters.”

I was more than a bit stung by this comment, until Ian continued: “You are finally associated with a triumph instead of a tragedy.”

Translation: I would finally be associated with honoring the success of the Apollo program instead of revisiting the calamity of the Titanic, something we had both grown to dislike.

And so it went. We traveled to Ireland together to explore our family history, to see first hand the broken ties between father and son in multiple successive generations in the Concannon family: from my father and I, to my father and his father, to my grandfather and my great-grandfather. We stood at the threshold of a ruined cottage in an abandoned fishing village, on a windswept island at the far western edge of the European continent, and stared back at the view of Connemara across the sea. We each thought of the world that awaited the viewer on the other side of the ocean, as my grandfather and great-grandfather must have thought as they took in the same view more than a century ago.

Over the years, our mutual interests merged and diverged, but in a good way. There were the tumultuous teenage years and the false start of college, where Ian excelled at majoring in beer. There were restarts and re-awakenings, for both of us, and we both matured and grew along the way.

Some of the things we both enjoyed doing fell away, and our time together became more precious. By far, the best week of my life came three days after Ian graduated from high school, when we loaded my motorcycle into the back of a newly acquired pickup truck and drove cross-country. We exchanged driving duties approximately every four hours, each time we stopped to fill up with a new tank of gas. The rules were simple: the driver picked the music, cell phones were off, and we kept each other company by talking about everything and anything. I will never, ever forget those four spectacular days, when our enormous country passed by outside the windows and we learned more about each other than I ever thought possible.

As we both matured and I now lived on the other side of the country, we fell into one ritual that we both hold sacred. We still talk as often as possible, about work, life, marriage, health and everything under the sun. But, when we get together, we try to do it in Idaho, during the third weekend in July, to participate in what was originally the Sun Valley Road Rally and eventually became the Sun Valley Tour de Force.

This is a multi-day event centered around fast cars, culminating in what was then the only no-speed-limit, open road excursion in the United States, set in the wilderness at a mythical and legendary stretch of road known as “Phantom Hill.”

Ian and I started participating in this event in 2015, when Ian volunteered to be the in-car photographer for a professional driver trying to top 200 mph in an American supercar on an American road. “Don’t tell your mother” was my only instruction, but Ian’s photo credits in Forbes magazine were hard to hide as he photographed multiple runs topping out at 197 mph from inside a stock Corvette Z06. Ian was unflappable, even as the driver became more maniacal. To his credit, my son pulled himself out of the madness when the driver switched to a turbocharged Corvette Z06, thus missing the chance to hit 206 mph but wisely deciding that the mix of aftermarket speed kits and “get-there-itis” might not make for a successful outcome. I never had to say a word. Ian was now an adult, and an extraordinary lifetime of experience evaluating risk told him everything he needed to know.

In subsequent years, we would attend all three days of the event together, driving, walking around the car show, and photographing the high speed event.

In 2021, I finally entered my own car in the event, securing three runs. The plan was for Ian and I to take turns at the wheel, seeing how fast we could go in a 2009 Porsche 911 Carrera that topped out at 179 mph when new and driven on a closed course at sea level. But Phantom Hill sits at an altitude of 7,000 feet and the temperature climbs 30 degrees throughout the day, creating cross-winds and air that is less dense in the afternoon than the cool air enjoyed by the cars that take the morning runs. In other words, it was a challenge, one where trust and experience mattered more than hubris and bravado.

For the first two runs, we were solidly in the 161-162 mph range. Faster than either of us had ever driven behind the wheel, but nowhere near approaching our goal of exceeding 170 mph. On our third and final run, with the air heated and cross-winds blowing, I put my foot down and watched the world fly by. Ian called out the speed as I focused on the road ahead and kept the tires pointed where they belonged. “140, 150, 160, 170, 171, 172,” I heard him say.

Then, Ian said it as I saw it: “Bird!!!”

Some distance ahead, but not far enough when you are traveling at 281 feet per second, a large bird jumped up from the right side of the road and flew directly into the path of our vehicle.

A bird strike at any speed would be unpleasant, but this would have been catastrophic.

I lifted my toe off the accelerator ever so slightly, careful not to unweight the front end of the car and gain lift that would raise the nose and cause a loss of control, and the bird hurtled by just inches above the windshield.

Although I pressed my foot back down on the accelerator, we did not have enough road left to achieve the same speed. We crossed the finish line and the speed trap at somewhere near 165 mph.

Ian was slightly disappointed but I was not. I was keeping a secret. I had received word that morning that my father had died. I told no one except my wife, and I carried on throughout the day.

My father and I had been amiable strangers throughout my adult life and, although I loved him, I did not really know him. Not well, at least. Not like I have tried to get to know my son and my other children. I did not want the news of his passing to overshadow the experience Ian and I were hoping to have, that we had waited for and worked for over the years.

So, I stayed quiet, and I learned an important lesson about fatherhood at 172 mph: ease up when you have to and put your foot down when it matters.

I am still learning new lessons. Every day.

In July 2026, I purchased a Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT to use on expeditions, as a travel watch, and just to see if I liked it. I paid retail for the watch and Bucherer sent it to me just days before I journeyed to Peru to photograph a field research project at the Boiling River in the Amazon rainforest.

The Boiling River, known locally as Shanay-timpishka (meaning “boiled by the heat of the sun”), is a 4-mile (6.4 km) long thermal river located in the Mayantuyacu sanctuary, three hours from the nearest town of Pucallpa. Its waters reach temperatures up to 210°F (99°C), averaging around 186°F (86°C), which can cook humans and animals alive. Unlike most extreme hot springs, Shanay-timpishka is located over 400 miles (700 km) away from the nearest active volcano. It is a deeply sacred place, in acute danger of being lost to illegal mining and deforestation. Our friend, geoscientist Andrés Ruzo, led the project of scientists, conservationists and explorers, with the goal of studying this unique ecosystem and saving the Boiling River before it is lost.

Unfortunately, I suffered a neck injury and I was completely immobilized when I reached the Boiling River. So, I asked my friend, emerging explorer, photographer and writer Katie Hitchcock-Smith, if she would wear the watch for me and give me her impressions. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Katie and I know her to be honest, tough and hard-working. Best of all (for this assignment), she is 31 years old and from a generation that does not typically wear mechanical watches. Wearing the Tudor would be a new experience for her, and her use of the watch would match or exceed the promises Tudor makes for its watches. I interviewed Katie after she emerged from the jungle and this is what she had to say.

DC: It is August 13th, 2026. I am in the Peruvian Amazon with Katie Hitchcock-Smith and I am going to ask Katie some questions about the Boiling River Project and the Tudor Pelagos FXD GMT. Katie, tell us who you are and what do you do?

KHS: Hi, yes, I am a writer, photographer, and explorer, and I have been published in National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Boston Globe, with both of my writing and photography. My job at the Boiling River was to document, photograph and elevate a lot of the biodiversity, flora and fauna, and the work of the scientists, shaman, artists, and advocates of the Boiling River to save it from deforestation, which has been increasingly happening recently.

DC: Tell us some of your recent projects that you’ve done and your recent publications. You’ve had a pretty exciting year.

KHS: Yeah, it’s been amazing. I have been regularly pitching to National Geographic, through my work as an explorer, and I have been able to cover a couple different stories. One was about the largest cheetah translocation ever – they moved 16 cheetahs from South Africa to Mozambique. Another story has just been published on Megamouth sharks. They are one of the rarest animals in the world, just a couple hundred sightings, and it was only discovered about 50 years ago. And then, for the Smithsonian Magazine, I was able to publish another story about shipwrecks, three very rare shipwrecks off the coast of Minorca. This expedition was headed by Trevor Wallace, one of The Explorers Club’s board members.

DC: And you just spent some time in the Arctic, too, correct?

KHS: I did. I was sailing on a tall ship in the Arctic and then also in Greenland. We were documenting forgotten explorers, and we interviewed Matthew Henson’s descendants. Henson was the first man who claimed to reach the North Pole.

What was really incredible about that is I got to go with J.R. Harris, another outstanding Explorers Club member [like Katie] who is head of the Forgotten Explorers Society. My dissertation right now is on heritage and collective memory at the University of Aberdeen. I am using it to study forgotten explorers and how we remember and rediscover people. My work brings me all around the world for the book that I’m writing, as well as articles that have been published in Nat Geo, Smithsonian, and the Boston Globe.

DC: And you’re ancient like me, right?

KHS: No. You’re not ancient. I am 31, turning 32 in September.

DC: So, you get around the world, and you have some experience doing some incredible things. Do you normally wear a watch?

KHS: I don’t, actually. I think, in my generation, we don’t wear watches as much. But after using the Tudor watch, I might be changing my mind.

DC: Why?

KHS: It was incredible. I was in the jungle, and, at the Boiling River, there are really hot parts of the water and colder parts of the water, but it’s still almost boiling. There are some parts that are steaming, but are tolerable to actually get into.

I’d love how we’d be out there in the dead of night – and of course, there are no lights in the Amazon at all – and I’d take the Tudor watch into the water, and it would glow just like the stars - almost reflecting off the water - and I could check what time it was, what time I need to be up to film, and do photography, and writing. I could orient myself.

But it’s truly, this watch was one of a kind. It ran through the jungle and heat with me.

DC: So, you’re starting to see the utility of wearing a mechanical watch.

KHS: I would say so. I think the main thing as an explorer is that you need your gear to be reliable.

That’s the main thing. I’ve been to 13 countries in 11 months. And, the truth is, you know when your gear is not working and how important it is. For example, when I went scuba diving in the Philippines this year, we had some scary moments where our dive equipment wasn’t working. And, the truth is, when your gear’s not working you start to see how important it is.

On my last expedition in the Arctic, my phone got cracked and I could not tell the time.

I could not use the sun to orient myself due to the midnight sun, which shines 24/7 where I was.

Having gear that is reliable and mechanical is not optional. You can’t use an Apple Watch for something like this, and definitely not something depending on a charge. I am hoping to add a Tudor watch to my kit.

DC: I asked you to wear the Tudor and give me your thoughts on it. What do you like? What do you not like?

KHS: Well, first, I do a lot of work in heritage and design. So, I interview the Shapibo in the Peruvian Amazon, the locals about their textiles and work. I am a lover of aesthetic pieces, especially in design and fashion. So, what I liked the best was the watch face specifically. I thought it was classic. It was something that I could wear every day and with everything. All of my jungle gear matched everything.

The fact that it glows in the dark is so useful, especially when you’re in the pitch black dead of night and can’t tell time any other way. Light is a necessity in the jungle. If you don’t have a phone or headlamp or torch, you have the lume from the watch to help you see. The watch size is large, but that’s a plus. And it feels like it weighs nothing. Those were some of my favorite things.

Some things I think could maybe use some room for improvement is, first, the strap itself. But, to be fair, this watch got beat up in the Amazon. It was in torrential downpours, it was chasing sloths in the jungle, it was getting bitten by ants. But the strap is a little beat up after about 10 to 14 days in the Peruvian Amazon. I usually abuse my gear anyway because that’s what happens when we’re explorers in the jungle, but I think that’s one thing that could be more robust. I think that’s something to look at for the future, to ensure creating really tough gear to handle the shenanigans that us explorers get up to.

DC: One thing that’s unusual about this particular model is that it’s made out of titanium, not steel. Which means it doesn’t conduct heat or cold. Do you see an advantage in either a hot or cold climate, such as when you were just in the Arctic?

KHS: Yes. Not conducting cold or heat on your skin is really important, especially because I really swing into such extreme environments all the time. For example, being in the Arctic, it was their summer there, but it was still 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature dropped far lower during the nighttime. We were in full Arctic gear and snowsuits in June. And then also in the jungle, our gear is so important because you can get overheated, dehydrated, or uncomfortable really easily.

It’s almost like a mental thing. You can’t have gear that adds to any discomfort if you can help it. I think that’s the main thing. I really liked the fact that the Tudor watch was adaptable to the environment that I was in.

The other nice thing is, with the titanium, you can beat it, and it doesn’t show the beating.

The watch face itself looks brand new, and I’ll tell you, it was put through the wringer. I mean, you’ll see all the photos. They’re truly crazy. I am covered in sweat and dirt but the watch looks perfect on my wrist.

DC: Just to summarize, you’ve talked about how we beat our gear, and it’s important to have reliable, sustainable equipment. I mean, does it fit your needs?

KHS: I think so. I think the only thing to improve upon is the strap, but the watch face looks brand new after the abuse that I put it through these past 14 days. The watch just completely survived so much, and it looks brand new.

DC: Did you baby it?

KHS: I did not baby it. I didn’t. And I was a little worried that something might happen to it and I would have to, one, explain that to you and then, two, pay you back, obviously. But, no, I did not baby it at all.

I abuse my gear when I am in the field. This is part of being an explorer. If your gear comes back looking perfect from the field, then you’re not doing real work.

DC: Katie, I really appreciate you taking the time and also taking on this task. Thanks for helping out. Let’s see if Tudor appreciates your feedback. I know I do.

KHS: No, I thank you for asking me. This has been so fun, and thank you for thinking of me about this watch. I really connected with it. It was a good watch.

Good watch, good gear. That’s all we need in the field. So, thank you.

DC: Thanks a lot. I know Katie is running for the airport, so that’s it, folks. Adios!

Photo credits: Kim Frank, Andrés Ruzo and David Concannon

As I approach 700 followers and subscribers, most in the past month or so, it occurred to me that few of you know anything about me, and that’s ok. I started this Substack at the end of last year to ruminate about the things I wanted to ruminate about, to the two or three people I thought would take an interest or stop by. I never thought I would have so many of you checking in, and I am truly grateful for every one of you. Thank you.

The description in my bio says “Explorer, collector, photographer, wanderer...” These are accurate terms. I should have added “eclectic.” I am interested in various things, and my life philosophy is to ask “Why not?” not “Why?”

In other words, when life has thrown me an opportunity to do something, no matter how unusual, I ask myself “Why not?” without looking for a reason why. If I cannot find a solid reason not to do something – which has never included “I do not have the money” or “I do not have the time” – I say yes and off I go.

I believe people are the product of their experiences and I have chosen to write about some of my experiences here. Whether that is being raised by a single mother and having a Moonwalker tell me I would never do anything significant in my life because “the Great Age of Exploration has passed you by,” experiencing religious intolerance and being shown real courage at an early age, making the first dive of this century to explore the wreck of the Titanic, or learning that a dream deferred is a dream denied.

I realize that some of my experiences seem out of the box, especially if you have access to the Google Machine, you have looked me up, and you have said “Huh?” But that’s the point. Much of what I do in my “real job” (which I am no longer enamored with) is confidential. That’s just the way it is. C’est la vie. But, much of what I do in my personal life and my “other job” is something I just have not talked about or I have written about sporadically over the years. Substack has given me a chance to share these stories here.

One thing I am excited to share is stories about lessons I have learned from amazing people I’ve met along the way. My favorite Substack post so far has been “The Importance of Being Second.” Next is “A Boy and His Father’s Watch.” Please take a look if you have not already.

I also enjoy photography and the stories behind some of my own favorite images, including here and here.

If you enjoy old cars, here are two great stories: “The Joy of Owning an Old Car” and “The Joy of Owning another Old Car (sort of).”

If you enjoy old guitars, I own more than 50, and each has its own unique or impressive story. I dipped my toe in the water with Mike Ness and with Joe Strummer, and I will roll out more stories as the guitars find their way out of their cases and it’s time to share.

Don’t get me started about watches, because some of the Substack community already have! Here are some stories I have published already: Ralph White and the discovery of the Titanic, Brent Bishop and the story of his father’s watch and multiple climbs in the Himalayas, and the relationship between Rolex and The Explorers Club. My next long form story will be about a watch and exploration, and I expect it to drop next week.

Finally, there will be more stories about expeditions and exploration. This is my sweet spot. I have had way more than my fair share of once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and I am happy to talk about almost all of them here.

Thank you again for welcoming me into this community and, as always, thank you for stopping by.

All the best,

David

While searching the archives of Trinity College, I discovered that the most comprehensive survey of island life in Ireland is largely the work of one man, Charles R. Browne, a physician and anthropologist from Dublin who documented the lives of people on the west coast of Ireland between 1891 and 1900. The results of the survey are held in six photographic albums in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin and in various reports (ethnographies) published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy between 1893 and 1900.

Browne’s survey covered the Aran Islands, Inishbofin and Inishshark in County Galway; villages in Connemara; islands in Mayo; and the Blasket Islands in Kerry. It recorded everything, from coastline and surface to antiquities, modes of life, housing and health, but the heart of it all was the people themselves. Their physical appearance was recorded in minute detail, down to fractions of an inch when it came to head size and cranial capacity.

The heads of the people of the islands in the west of Ireland were believed to hold the key to the origins of the Irish race. Size mattered, enormously. Cranial capacity – brain size – was regarded as one of the main things that separated humans from anthropoid apes. The search for that key was the sole basis for Browne’s survey of life on the islands.

This is shocking, but not surprising. To the British, Ireland was a special case. How did one explain the presence of a primitive (white) race living in the back yard of the United Kingdom? The answer had to lie in the origin of the species, in this case the Irish peasant in remote communities all along the west coast. As explained by the Trinity College web site:  “The Victorians began to search for evidence that might explain the existence of the ‘black’ or ‘Africanoid’ Irish…. In particular, the jutting lower jaw of the Irish as the principal evidence used to suggest a link between Irish primitives and, ultimately, anthropoid apes.”

Charles R. Browne was the Irish headhunter. Indeed, during Browne’s first visit to Inishbofin in 1890, he and his cohort, Alfred Cort Haddon, a/k/a “Haddon the Headhunter,” stole 13 skulls from the ruins of a 8th-century monastery on the island.

Browne returned to Inishbofin in 1893. Lots of photographs were taken. Browne kept these photos in his albums, some were used to illustrate the ethnographies in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. This archive is the only depiction the people living in the west of Ireland in the 1890s, including my grandfather, who was born in 1885. Browne’s daughter waited more than a century to come forward, in 1997, to donate the photo albums to Trinity College.

Incredibly, the photos, which have been digitized and placed online by Trinity College, provide an amazing insight into the conditions that led my grandfather to emigrate to America. They also show his older sister, Brigid; his aunt, Margaret; and, quite likely, my grandfather, Thomas Concannon.

Note: The stolen skulls were finally returned to the island in 2023, after an effort akin to having the Elgin Marbles returned to Greece.

Here is part three of the story of Bezos Expeditions’ Apollo F-1 Project, meant to find and recover the F-1 engines from Apollo 11, to inspire five-year olds. If you want to start reading at parts one or two, here are links to both: Part 1 and Part 2.

D. Returning to Florida

The entire Apollo F-1 project was kept a closely guarded secret but, on March 20, 2013, Jeff Bezos made a public announcement on his personal web site, www.bezosexpeditions.com. Jeff wrote:

Soon after, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden released a statement congratulating Jeff Bezos and the team on the recovery:

I could not possibly have been more proud.

E. Conservation

After returning home to Cape Canaveral, Florida on March 21, 2013, 25,000 pounds (11,340 kg) of artifacts were offloaded onto flatbed trucks and taken halfway across the United States to SpaceWorks, the conservation, restoration and fabrication facility at the Cosmosphere International SciEd Center and Space Museum (formerly known as the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center) in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Once at SpaceWorks, the engine components were placed in specially designed tanks so that the public could witness the stabilization process, which took more than two years.

The SpaceWorks team knew we were keen to identify a F-1 engine from Apollo 11, but we seemed to be defeated in our efforts. The youngest member on that team was a former Space Camp attendee named Jared, and he came up with an ingenious solution. Jared was fresh out of serving as a mechanic in the U.S. Air Force, and he had previously worked as an automobile mechanic in high school. One of his earliest jobs was to look for leaks in radiators by placing a blacklight inside and looking for organic material, which would collect at the source of the leak and glow under fluorescent light. He wondered, “What if serial numbers had been painted on the engine components and they were no longer visible to the naked eye? But, since paint in the 1960s was made from organic material, maybe it would show up under a blacklight?”

So, on his way to work the next day, Jared stopped by an auto parts store, where he bought a blacklight and yellow safety goggles to help him see using the proper visible spectrum. Then, once he got to work, he turned off all the lights, put the goggles on, and waved the blacklight over the engine parts. BAM! There it was! The numbers “2044” — stenciled in paint that was no longer visible to the naked eye — were glowing back at him from the side of a torn-open thrust chamber.

Later, upon the removal of more corrosion at the base of the same thrust chamber, the conservator found “Unit No 2044” stamped into the metal surface. This unit number was the Rocketdyne serial number that correlated to NASA number F-6044, which was assigned to the center F-1 engine on Apollo 11. The mystery had been solved, and Jeff got his engine from Apollo 11 after all.

Similar discoveries in subsequent months conclusively identified engine parts from Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 16.

But what about the mystery of 2050? This was the serial number stenciled on to the first F-1 engine thrust chamber recovered from Area 17 before Winter Storm Saturn shut down the recovery expedition. The engine was found resting less than 50 meters away from 2044, the center engine from Apollo 11, but 2050 was the Rocketdyne serial number that correlated to NASA number F-6050, which was assigned to the F-1 engine on Apollo 12. Moreover, Rocketdyne reportedly assigned serial numbers 2043, 2044, 2046, 2051 and 2054 to the F-1 engines flown on Apollo 11; and NASA had renumbered them F-6043, F-6044, F-6046, F-6051 and F-6054. Apollo 12 had supposedly landed eight miles (13 km) away, so how did a F-1 engine from Apollo 12 land in the debris field for Apollo 11?

It would take another three years to solve this mystery, but the answer had been staring at us the whole time.

Rocketdyne placed its serial numbers on the engine in several locations, including on engine identification plates on the thrust chamber, gas generator and nozzle extension; and on stencil markings painted on to the thrust chamber. The numbers were added sequentially as an engine proceeded down the Rocketdyne assembly line and more components were added. The NASA serial number, which is what we were using to cross-reference which F-1 engines were assigned to a particular mission, was added at the very end of the process, when a finished engine was mated to the S-IC first stage at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Louisiana. But the first number and the last number did not always match.

After extensive research, we discovered that two engines, F-6051 and F-6054, had been pulled off S-IC-7, the first stage for Apollo 12, and placed on the first stage for Apollo 11 when the first stages were being completed at Michoud. In an odd quirk, F-6051 had started its life as Rocketdyne unit number 2050, and this number had been painted on its thrust chamber, but it was delayed a beat in assembly and it left Rocketdyne with the final serial number 2051. By the time it completed final assembly at NASA, it was assigned the number F-6051 and it found its way onto Apollo 11.

If we had looked at the photo above while we were at sea, it is likely we would have never left Area 17, and we would have never recovered F-1 engines from other Apollo missions. Personally, I am glad we made this mistake.

The juxtaposition between old and new technology was always apparent during the Apollo F-1 project. While it took brute force technology from the 1960s to launch men to the Moon, it took sophisticated deep-sea robots of the modern era to perform the delicate task of returning the engines to the ocean surface. The Apollo 11 astronauts made it to the Moon with components made of switches and circuitry that most children would laugh at today, but my team of explorers was able to rely on the most modern deep-sea systems ever developed to find and recover these relics of a bygone era. Even then, the most difficult problems had to be solved by smart people employing simple solutions. Ultimately, it is the people that make a project successful, and if it were not for the skill, passion and determination of the explorers on the Apollo F-1 project, it never would have been successful—much like Apollo 11.

E. More Accolades and Public Display

On March 22, 2014, the entire Apollo F-1 Engine Search & Recovery Team was awarded The Explorers Club Citation of Merit “for an outstanding feat of exploration.” This was the same honor given to Dr. Robert Ballard for the discovery of the Titanic in 1985.1 The award was bestowed by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin before an audience of 1,500 people gathered at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, after this 11-minute video was shown to the audience.

​In accepting the award on behalf of his teammates, Jeff Bezos stated: “I was blown away by the skill and professionalism of the entire team.”

​Jeff announced that NASA had agreed to give the F-1 engines to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum and the Seattle Museum of Flight, among others, for public display.

On November 19, 2015, the anniversary of the Apollo 12 Moon landing on November 19, 1969, The Museum of Flight in Seattle made the first public showing of the restored remains of the F-1 rocket engines used to launch NASA’s Apollo 12 and Apollo 16 missions to the Moon. At the request of the Bezos Expeditions team, NASA has now given the artifacts to the Museum for permanent display in Seattle. The engines had undergone 2.5 years of painstaking conservation at the SpaceWorks and they were now ready to be shown to the world.

Jeff Bezos was ecstatic when he unveiled the engines. “It took a lot of 21st century underwater tech and an extraordinary team of skilled professionals to find and recover these historical treasures and, thanks to them, NASA, and The Museum of Flight, now a whole new generation of young people will be able to see these amazing engines on display,” said Jeff. “When I was five years old I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the moon and it imprinted me with a passion for science and exploration - it’s my hope that these engines might spark a similar passion in a child who sees them today.”

Finally, on May 20, 2017, the Apollo permanent exhibit opened at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. The exhibit displays a full-size F-1 engine next to engine artifacts recovered in 2013, including the thrust chamber and thrust chamber injector of the Number 3 engine from the Apollo 12 mission, as well as a gas generator from an engine that powered the Apollo 16 flight.

While I handled press and public introductions, Jeff officially opened the exhibit by giving an inspirational talk to 100 students about the Apollo moon missions, recovery of the F-1 engines from the ocean floor, the future of space travel and his private space exploration company, Blue Origin.

Jeff stressed the importance of teamwork, perseverance and passion:

Jeff recalled the words of Wernher von Braun, the architect of the Apollo space program, when referring to the moon landings:

Jeff concluded with:

Seven years after he first proposed the idea of recovering the Apollo F-1 engines that launched men to the Moon and sharing them with the world, Jeff Bezos’ dream had become a reality.

Here is part two of the story of Bezos Expeditions’ Apollo F-1 Project, meant to find and recover the F-1 engines from Apollo 11, to inspire five-year olds. If you want to start reading at part one, here is a link.

C. The Recovery Expedition in 2013

While finding the targets was difficult, safely recovering them in potentially stormy seas could be impossible. We initially explored the possibility of a short reconnaissance expedition in the summer of 2012 to assess the condition of the engines and determine lifting solutions. However, much to our chagrin, the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season began unusually early. Tropical storms Alberto and Beryl, and Hurricane Chris all swept over the search area in one four-week period from mid-May to mid-June. At the end of June, Tropical Storm Debby bore down on the Gulf of Mexico, wreaking havoc on ship schedules. A summer departure would be impossible. A decision was made to postpone a return to sea until the winter, when the seas should have been calmer.

The weather delay turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

On July 18, 2012, news broke that 48 tons of silver had been recovered from the wreck of the SS Gairsoppa, a British merchant vessel resting in 15,420 ft. (4,700 m) of water off the coast of Ireland, having been torpedoed by a German U-boat in February 1941. Although the silver recovery was impressive, the most interesting aspect of the Gairsoppa project from our standpoint was the asset used to perform the recovery: the 291 ft. (88.8 m) Norwegian salvage vessel Seabed Worker outfitted with a Schilling HD 150 hp Heavy Work Class remotely-operated vehicle (“ROV”) capable of operating at depths up to 5,000 meters (16,404 ft.) and a second 150 hp ROV capable of working at depths up to 4,000 meters (13,123 ft.).

An inspection of the ship during an August 2012 port-of-call in Ireland confirmed that its capabilities were unmatched, and the ship was secured for an expedition to begin in February 2013. This would allow ample time for the ship’s owner, Swire Seabed, to acquire a second 5,000-meter-capable Schilling ROV outfitted with a sophisticated high-definition underwater imaging and lighting system designed and built by Marine Imaging Technologies. Because the Seabed Worker was able to conduct a survey and recovery operation with two ROVs working in tandem, the team decided to consolidate the reconnaissance and recovery expeditions into one long but comprehensive mission.

Members of the team met in Bergen, Norway, in late January 2013 to install specially designed lifting cradles to bring the F-1 engines to the surface, plus install the underwater imaging system and mobilize for the recovery expedition. The Seabed Worker could accommodate 65 people, including the ship’s crew, ROV crew, and the F-1 project team.

The ship set sail from Norway on February 9, 2013, and, after crossing the stormy Atlantic, was met by the full crew in Bermuda two weeks later. More rough weather accompanied the Seabed Worker as it made its way 500 nautical miles southwest to the Apollo site.

However, the seas were calm on March 2, 2013, when the ship arrived on site and the first ROV was deployed.

The deep-sea robot sank to the ocean bottom, tasked with finding and exploring what was now called “Area 17,” the furthest east of three small debris fields extending in a one nautical-mile line along the flight path of Apollo 11. At that point, we had narrowed our list of high-value targets to just 130 objects, which were now marked with red dots on a large map of the search area. Area 17, with Areas 16 and 15 to the west, held the most promise.

As the ROV reached the bottom, it began returning ghostly images of the seafloor. Within minutes, we found an F-1 engine part, confirming that an engine was close by and it had broken apart on impact. Within the first hour of the first day spent exploring the bottom, we found what was undeniably an F-1 engine. Although the engine was in pieces and debris was strewn about, its thrust chamber, turbo pump, heat exchanger, and fuel valves were all resting in close proximity to one another. As we continued to search to the west, we found significant parts of two more engines, before gathering seas forced us to retrieve the ROV.

We had planned to inspect small areas of the engines in fine detail, as well as surrounding debris from the S-IC, to search for serial numbers identifying the engines and rocket parts as coming from Apollo 11. Rocketdyne, the engine manufacturer, had initially assigned each F-1 engine a four-digit serial number beginning with the number “2.“ Then, upon final completion, NASA had renumbered each engine with a newer serial number beginning with the number “6” for missions that were intended to land on the Moon. Rocketdyne had assigned serial numbers 2043, 2044, 2046, 2051, and 2054 to the F-1 engines flown on Apollo 11; whereas NASA later recorded that F-6043, F-6044, F-6046, F-6051, and F-6054. The serial number was placed on the engine in several locations, including on engine identification plates on the thrust chamber, gas generator, and nozzle extension; and on stencil markings painted on the thrust chamber and lower portion of each nozzle. However, the initial Rocketdyne serial number did not always match the final NASA serial number.

All the team had to do to confirm that an engine was from Apollo 11 was find a serial number and match it to the numbers assigned to a particular mission. Simple, right?

Unfortunately, this is where state-of the-art technology was nearly defeated by simple chemistry. In most cases, the identification plates had dissolved or they were inaccessible. The mud on the seafloor was caustic and ate away parts of the engines that it touched like acid. The most reliable way to identify an engine was to look for the Rocketdyne serial number that was sometimes painted on a particular area of the thrust chamber, if we could see it in situ. With the weather worsening, we were not able to conclusively identify which Apollo mission the engines had come from before leaving the bottom. To positively identify an engine, we would have to bring it up.

On March 5, 2013, we were able to put the ROV back on the bottom, complete a pre-disturbance survey of Area 17 and perform the delicate job of rigging a thrust chamber for a nerve-wracking lift to the surface. The thrust chamber broke the surface at dawn the following day, just as the waves and wind were rising again as heavy weather was approaching. Nevertheless, we were excited as a careful examination of the thrust chamber revealed a serial number: “2050.” It appeared to be from Apollo 12, which was supposed to be eight miles (13 km) away. If this engine was from Apollo 12, where was Apollo 11?

At that moment, the weather turned ugly, as the ironically named Winter Storm Saturn, a powerful Category 2 (”Significant”) Nor’easter, parked itself off the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. and shut down our operations below the surface. We were battered by gale-force, 50-knot winds and 50-foot seas for six days. Nevertheless, the team persevered and used the time to evaluate all of its research and conclusions against our findings below. We scoured all of our prior research, historic NASA documents, maps, performed re-navigations, and pursued every single angle to determine the answer to one perplexing question: Where was Apollo 11?

After the storm subsided, we spent the next two weeks exploring all but six of the red dots on the large map. In the process, we discovered 15 thrust chambers and dozens of engine components from eight Apollo mission.

Although the project was originally conceived to find and recover a F-1 engine from Apollo 11, by looking at the remnants of rockets from the entire Apollo program, the team came to realize that each mission was just as important as the penultimate mission that first landed a man on the Moon in July 1969. Each astronaut took the same risks, endured the same training, was supported by the same 100,000 people, and their families made the same sacrifices as all the other astronauts. By not being able to conclusively identify a F-1 engine from Apollo 11, we inadvertently found the true meaning of the entire Apollo program: teamwork is the key to success, not a singular focus on achieving a specific task.

With the ocean not giving up her secrets and time running out, the team decided to recover the best preserved and most complete engine components of several F-1 engines for conservation and public display. There was one F-1 engine, found in the first hour of the first day in Area 17, that deserved particular attention. Although the thrust chamber was torn open, the top of the engine and all of its major components were still attached to a section of the heat shield and thrust structure of the S-IC. The engine and its surrounding components were recovered on March 18, 2013.

Over the next few days, the team recovered enough components to rebuild two complete F-1 engines. Only two Rocketdyne serial numbers were visible on these thrust chambers, although two other thrust chambers had two digit numbers stenciled on them. The mostly complete engine had no visible serial numbers. Mission identification was one secret that the ocean would not give up easily.

In a fitting tribute to the Apollo program, the Seabed Worker returned to shore with its precious cargo to a dock at Port Canaveral, Florida, within sight of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. This was the exact location where the F-1 engines had last touched land, after journeying by sea from the “rocket factory” at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, Louisiana. Fifty four years after Apollo 11 had carried men to the Moon, we had brought the engines home.

But we weren’t done yet.

To be continued…

At 9:31:51.1 a.m. EDT on July 16, 1969, as Apollo 11 sat poised atop the mighty Saturn V on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, the ignition sequence began for what would become a defining moment in the history of exploration. At exactly 8.9 seconds later, the multi-stage rocket lifted off, propelled toward the heavens by five F-1 engines, each generating more than 1.5 million pounds of thrust and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen per second. In the words of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, “the Saturn V rose with the power of 100,000 locomotives, burning 5,000,000 pounds of fuel in 150 seconds, getting a full 5 inches to the gallon.”

Two minutes and forty-two seconds later, having lifted Apollo 11 to an altitude of 42 miles (67 kilometers), at a speed of more than 9,100 feet per second (2,773 meters per second), the quincunx of engines known as the S-IC—the first of the Saturn V’s three stages—separated from the rocket and continued to climb to an altitude of more than 71.5 miles (115 km) before plummeting into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean some 350 nautical miles (650 km) east of Florida.

Like so many children of the Apollo age, I was mesmerized by the events that unfolded over the ensuing days: our technological ability to build a craft that could reach the 25,000 mph (40,320 km/h) escape velocity necessary to get to the Moon, 238,900 miles (384,400 km) away; the astronauts’ heroic landing on the lunar surface on July 20; and their triumphant return to Earth on July 24. Apollo 11 was to have a profound impact on my life, fostering in me a passion for science and exploration. And, I am not alone.

Amazon.com and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos credits the Moon landings with inspiring his endeavors in the realm of technological innovation and wondered if it just might be possible to find and recover the F-1 engines that propelled Apollo 11 to the Moon. If successful, he reasoned, the endeavor had the potential to inspire a new generation of young people to invent and explore.

In August 2010, I was contacted by a member of Jeff’s team to see if such an objective could be achieved. My answer was yes, but I cautioned that the project would be difficult and nearly unprecedented in the field of deep-ocean exploration. At that time, the only expeditions that had successfully searched for and recovered historic objects from such great depth were those to the R.M.S. Titanic, which sank off the coast of Newfoundland during her maiden voyage in April 1912, a project with which I had been deeply involved.

A. An Unprecedented Challenge

Compared to Titanic, which was 882.5 feet (269 meters) long and weighed 52,310 tons (47,454,795.04 kilograms), the F-1 engines were seemingly minute, being a mere 19 ft. (6 m) tall and weighing 10 tons (9,070 kg). Moreover, the Titanic’s location on the surface prior to her sinking was reported with some precision. Its drift after the collision was uncertain, as was the location of the wreck site 12,500 ft. (3,800 m) down, but at least the joint American-French expedition that discovered the Titanic knew approximately where to look. They also had the benefit of being the fifth expedition to search for the Titanic; four previous expeditions had spent more than 100 days searching 995 sq. mi. (1,600 sq. km) of seafloor in the vicinity of the sinking by the time Robert D. Ballard led his successful expedition in late summer 1985.

Conversely, little was known about the actual location of the F-1 engines. NASA did not track the S-IC’s trajectory on radar after it separated from the body of the Saturn V. Instead, NASA predicted where each S-IC would “splash down” in the Atlantic based on a handful of data points, including: the Saturn V’s flight path, the time the first stage separated from the Saturn V, the S-IC’s location at the time of separation; the rocket’s speed at separation, and whether the S-IC may have fallen horizontally, vertically, or it tumbled. NASA made no effort to actually track the S-IC’s apogee on radar, determine whether the S-IC came apart as it fell to Earth, measure winds aloft, calculate a precise point of impact, or even issue a Notice to Mariners passing through the impact zone (which lies in a major shipping lane) that rocket debris could be falling from the sky.1 After their job was done, Apollo 11’s F-1 engines simply fell from the sky, slammed into the ocean’s surface at great speed, and sank to the ocean bottom.

Finally, eight S-ICs from various Apollo missions had landed in the same general area. It was anybody’s guess if the individual F-1s had separated from their S-IC, or how far each of their 40 F-1 engines may have drifted as they sank some 14,108 feet (4,300 m) to the seafloor. To find any of the F-1 engines from Apollo 11, we would be looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack or, more accurately, the eye of the needle in the haystack.

Never one to be dissuaded by long odds, Bezos was up for the challenge and so we began to work with him on a comprehensive plan to make it happen.

To carry out the project, we brought together a core team of undersea pros—mostly members of The Explorers Club—chosen for their vast experience and, more important, their discretion. In time, we would expand our team to include more than 100 people—experts in deep-sea search and recovery, marine archaeology, conservation, aviation, and space exploration, as well as retired astronauts and NASA and Rocketdyne engineers. In addition, we would need to identify and secure the necessary ships, remote sensing technologies, submersibles, and remotely operated vehicles.

To obscure the identity and purpose of the project, I gave it the codename “Murphy,” in honor of my grandfather George N. Murphy, the man that instilled in me a grand view of exploration and my love of the sea. In his lifetime, he had witnessed the Titanic sink and a man land on the Moon, and he expressed his awe at the progress he had seen to his young grandson at every opportunity. Every document, email, map and memo contained the header “Murphy Project,” a fitting tribute that the core participants in the project still call it to this day.

B. The Search Expedition in 2011

Throughout the spring and summer of 2011, our vessel team secretly gutted and overhauled the Ocean Stalwart, a 230 ft. (70 m) former U.S. Navy spy ship that would serve as our base of operations, in a makeshift shipyard created in a vacant lot next to a canal in Newport News, Virginia, across from a public area that the locals referred to as “Murder Park.” One day, the police ventured out of their nearby barbed wire-enclosed compound to visit the site and, upon seeing the machinery and equipment strewn about, they sternly advised us to “get a dog and always carry a gun.” Noted.

Meanwhile, the sonar team finalized the development of a new high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar system known as the SLH ProSAS-60, which could provide 10-square-centimeter resolution at ranges up to 1,500 meters per side. The advanced sonar was first tested in Puget Sound, discovering several previously unknown shipwrecks, and then in the Pacific Ocean at the crash site of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, where we discovered a lost WW-II aircraft. We told no one.

With preparations completed, our efforts to set out into the Atlantic Ocean were hampered by an overactive hurricane season — nine tropical storms and hurricanes swept through the search area and mobilization site in Virginia between July and September.

On September 24, 2011, we set off from Newport News, reaching our target area four days later. Over the next two weeks, we surveyed some 180 sq. mi. (300 sq. km) of ocean bottom, at depths ranging from 13,123 to 14,517 ft. (4,000 m to 4,425 m), discovering thousands of man-made targets and more than 300 “high value targets.” To be absolutely thorough, we covered the search area twice — once with low resolution but wide search search swaths, and a second time with high resolution but narrow sonar swaths. These searches were interrupted by a hurricane and the loss of both the synthetic aperture sonar and a backup “old school” sonar system — the same technology used to find the Titanic in 1985 — but the team persevered.

We returned to Jacksonville, Florida at 7:40 a.m. on October 7, 2011, thirty years to the minute after George Murphy died.

The post-expedition target identification process took nearly six months, with two sonar analysts conducting independent “double blind” reviews of the sonar imagery and then comparing notes after they were introduced to each other months later. The greatest concentrations of targets were clustered in 18 distinct target areas, none of which were located anywhere near where NASA had predicted the S-ICs had splashed down. Within these target areas, we were able to identify parts of at least 30 F-1 engines.

With the verification process complete, Bezos announced the discovery to the world on March 28, 2012, and his intention to recover the engines and turn them over to NASA. “We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in—they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see.”

With his pronouncement, preparations for the recovery phase began in earnest.

To be continued…

I’VE GOT A LOVELY BUNCH OF COCONUTS: THREE MILES DOWN

By Don Walsh and David Concannon

What does this old English music hall song have to do with historic shipwrecks? Perhaps not much, but it seems to fit this case. Here’s the story of a lost ship and its peculiar cargo. It is offered as a work in progress rather than a rigorously researched historical report. The intent is to show how current technological and operational capabilities are used for exploration and archaeology in the deep ocean.

The story begins in mid-1810. A small twin-masted sailing vessel, about 90 feet long and 22 feet wide, leaves a Caribbean port, most likely Kingston, Jamaica, bound for a northern port with an exotic cargo of coconuts and rum. The cedar ship has fast lines typical of early American construction – it is quite possibly an early version of the famous “Baltimore Clipper” ship – and she is outfitted to sail long distances across deep water. Her primary defense against the pirates, privateers and combatants in the Napoleonic Wars is speed and a measly brace of pistols. Indications are that she may have been engaged in the slave trade from West Africa, or “Guinea,” to the Caribbean, and she is now heading north through the Windward Passage with trade goods after dropping off her human cargo in Jamaica.

A few days out of port, the tiny merchant ship is seized by a powerful early season hurricane. She is dismasted and swamped by fierce winds and waves. Sinking upright, the ship falls silently three miles to the bottom, eventually coming to rest on her keel on the top of a massive sand dune at a depth of nearly 16,000 feet. She will lay undisturbed in the heart of what will eventually become known as the Bermuda Triangle for almost two centuries.

More than 150 years later, the tiny ship would receive some auspicious company. In 1961, the Mercury space capsule Liberty Bell 7 sank nearby after completing one of man’s first space flights. Both ships, which symbolize different eras of man’s exploration of his environment, will lie undisturbed for another 40 years.

In mid-1999, underwater explorer Curt Newport went to sea to fulfill his life-long dream of finding and recovering astronaut Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 space capsule. After many days of sonar searching in water depths of more than three miles, Newport had developed a set of several promising seafloor targets. But his time and money were running out. After analyzing the sonar images, Newport selected a half dozen promising targets for a closer look. Using an unmanned remotely operated vehicle, Newport inspected the first of his targets. Incredibly, luck was with him; the first target he inspected was Liberty Bell 7. The capsule was recovered at a depth of 16,043 feet on a return visit to the site. This became one of the deepest artifact recoveries on record.

During his search, Newport saw several other interesting targets in the same area. One target in particular – lying just outside the search area -- was intriguing. As the ship-towed sonar platform made a turn at the end of one of the search swaths (much like mowing the lawn with overlapping paths), there was this interesting target. It appeared to be sitting upright on the seafloor. Furthermore, its shape suggested it was an older ship. Consulting with other experts knowledgeable on old wrecks, they agreed that this might be one. However, without any photographic imagery, Newport had nothing more than an intelligent guess.

Additionally, this target was near the track taken by the Spanish treasure fleets leaving the New World. These fleets would assemble in convoys at Havana and then head north with the Gulf Stream until making landfall at Bermuda. With this as their last terrestrial navigation point, they would sail east towards the Azores and onwards to Spain. Could this be one of those ships? A galleon that was blown off course and lost in heavy weather? No one had every found a galleon in deep water, but statistically some of them had to be out there. With the knowledge that Spanish treasure ships typically carried 600,000 to 1,000,000 silver dollars, known as “pieces of eight” or pesos, weighing nearly 25 tons, the sonar image was certainly an enticing target.

Newport felt he had to return. In early 2000, he met with Michael McDowell, an Australian entrepreneur and head of Deep Ocean Expeditions (“DOE”). DOE regularly charters the Russian research vessel Akademik Mistivlav Keldysh and its two Mir submersibles to offer tourist dives to famous places on the seafloor, including the RMS Titanic and the WW II German battleship Bismarck. At 6,500 tons, the Keldysh is the world’s largest oceanographic research vessel, while the Mirs are capable of diving with three people to depths as great as 20,000 feet, which means they can reach 98% of the seafloor worldwide. McDowell had the resources and imagination to work with Newport to investigate the intriguing Atlantic target.

Given the name “Atlantic Sands,” the expedition was scheduled for June-July, 2001. In addition to McDowell and Newport, the project team included marine archaeologist James Sinclair, the first archaeologist to visit the Titanic, who would supervise the identification and mapping of the site, collection of artifacts, and conservation of items recovered. Guy Zajonc would be expedition coordinator. Richard Garriott, who had previous diving experience in the Mirs, would assist in artifact recovery and photography. David Concannon, a diver and lawyer with experience advising explorers on legal issues affecting deep ocean exploration, was along to provide advice. In 2000, Concannon made three artifact recovery dives to the Titanic in Mir 1 and he was familiar with the sub’s operational capabilities and photographic equipment. Don Walsh was aboard to act as a liaison with the scientific staff, and to assist with the identification of the ship and the conservation of artifacts. On the Russian side, Keldysh had 13 Russian oceanographers under the supervision of Anatoly Sagalevitch to conduct oceanographic research at the site. Finally, a German television crew would document the expedition activities on the surface, while the expedition would be utilizing sophisticated digital high-definition television (“HDTV”) cameras graciously supplied by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to document any discoveries on the bottom.

Prior to the expedition, Concannon applied for and received The Explorers Club Flag for the “Atlantic Sands Expedition 2001.” He selected Flag No. 132, one of the oldest flags still in circulation, and the same flag Dr. Robert Ballard carried on his Bismarck and Skerki Banks expeditions.

The expedition team assembled in Bermuda on June 27^th sailing for the site the next day. Transit time was about two days. The Blake Abyssal Plain was the destination, with the target site being more than 200 miles northeast of the Bahamas. On July 1^st, the Keldysh positioned over Newport’s coordinates and four acoustic beacons were sent to the seafloor. Each was positioned on a corner of a square surrounding the coordinates, at a height of 50 feet off the bottom. These units were intended to provide navigational references while the submersibles were on the bottom. The water depth was nearly 16,000 feet.

Mir 1 was launched at 9:00 a.m. on July 2^nd, with Mir 2 following about an hour later. Estimated dive time would be 14 to16 hours, giving about five hours of bottom time at the wreck -- if it were there. McDowell, Newport, Sinclair and Zajonc were the first four divers, along with the two Russian pilots, Anatoly Sagalevitch and Genya Chernaiev.

After three hours, word came that Mir 1 was on the bottom. Mir 2 landed 50 minutes later. Due to an unusually strong current throughout the three-mile descent, the subs landed more than a mile away from their intended target. Worse yet, when the explorers reached the bottom, they unexpectedly encountered ridges of sand dunes more than 60 feet high. They were unlike anything anyone had ever seen or theorized could exist at this depth. The subs had to traverse this mountainous terrain to get back to the transponder grid before they could begin their coordinated search patterns. Moreover, when they arrived at the search area, they discovered that the transponders were hanging below the tops of the dunes, rendering them practically useless. Given these difficulties, no contact was made with the target at the initial coordinates. After five fruitless hours of searching, it appeared that there was no target here. Mir 1, out of power, was forced to begin its ascent; its occupants had seen nothing but massive sand dunes during their dive.

Mir 2 was about to leave the bottom when it suddenly got a strong sonar target. The sub quickly moved towards it; battery power was getting low and they would not have much time to investigate. On the top of a sand dune, just 50 meters south of – but above -- where Mir 1 had passed, McDowell, Zajonc and Chernaiev discovered what appeared to be pieces of a sailing vessel’s rigging along with some shaped wooden parts, perhaps the remains of a mast or spars. Looking beyond this point, Chernaiev suddenly spotted a shape emerging from the darkness. McDowell recognized it immediately: “It’s the bow of a boat! It’s the bow of a boat!” he shouted excitedly.

Although the sub’s occupants recognized their discovery as the hull of a sailing vessel, they did not immediately understand its age or significance. Not recognizing the verdigris of the hull’s intact copper sheathing, Zajonc commented, “Look, its painted turquoise!”

The ship’s size – approximately 90 feet long and 22 feet wide – indicated it was too large to be a pleasure craft. However, its remarkable state of preservation concealed its true vintage. Wood-eating worms had done their job well above the copper sheathing; the main deck and bulkheads were gone, while most of the hull planking and frames above the sheathing were extremely deteriorated. However, the copper sheathing had saved everything below it from significant deterioration. Although the copper was only intended to keep worms away while the ship was afloat, the toxic chemicals leaching from the plating had continued to perform their protective work for another two centuries. The stub of a mast was located well aft, indicating that this had been a two-masted vessel. The forward mast was gone, but the material stretching north in the sand from the bow appeared to be its remnants. If the foremast had gone over the side in heavy weather, it could have remained attached to the hull by some of the rigging. The remains of mast steps and leather mast collars indicated that the ship had tall rigging and could have been rigged as a schooner.

Perhaps the most stunning find was the ship’s principal cargo: coconuts! The cargo hold, which was about two thirds of the ship’s length, was covered by a layer of coconuts, many of which had been eaten hollow by albino crabs. Ballast rocks could be seen underneath the layer of coconuts. Forward along the hull was a large collection of bottles, mostly of the type used for rum, gin or beer. Many of the bottles were still corked with their contents intact. The bottles had been stowed in a separate hold beneath the forecastle, but the bulkheads had now disappeared and the bottles were mixed with coconuts and cedar framing. Clearly, this was no Spanish galleon – unless the conquistadores were fond of pina coladas!

Moving aft, the Mir 2 crew was fascinated to discover the remains of a below deck compartment at the stern. This was evidently where the captain/owner kept his more valuable items, because sets of dishes, tableware, a chest, navigational equipment and a mahogany and brass telescope were now piled neatly on the deck. Of particular interest was a large pile of silver coins, which had been spilled out from the remains of a wooden box. This must have been the “cash box” for buying and selling cargo while the ship was in port.

Based on the configuration of the ship and the navigational equipment found in this area, it was apparent that the wreck was that of a merchant ship trading between the Caribbean islands, America, Bermuda and perhaps Europe. But the ship’s identity remained elusive.

The crew in Mir 2 did not immediately begin recovering artifacts. Instead, they first photographed the entire wreck site with the HDTV cameras. The advantage to HDTV is that it produces high quality digital still and/or moving images from the same source. These images can be used to compile a digital map of the wreck site and its artifacts in situ. After documenting the entire wreck site, Mir 2 recovered five coins and a bottle to help identify the wreck. The wreck site was then photographed again before the sub left the bottom.

Both subs were recovered on the Keldysh early Tuesday morning. But the first dive day had not yet ended. Everyone was astonished to learn that the “turquoise” sailing ship was carrying Spanish silver coins, the most recent dated 1798. This was the deepest historic shipwreck ever discovered, and it was in excellent condition for a 200 year old wooden sailing vessel.

After celebrating their good fortune, the expedition members reviewed several hours of imagery from Mir 2 to attempt to identify their find. By 4:00 a.m., a strategy was worked out for the next two days of dives on the wreck. The primary focus would be on the stern area and its large collection of artifacts. Because only one sub could work there at a time, the other would investigate the forward end of the vessel and the seafloor in the immediate vicinity.

During the next dive day on July 4^th, the first significant quantity of artifacts was recovered. The Mirs brought up nearly 500 Spanish silver coins from the “cash box.” About 160 of the coins were silver dollars -- also known as eight reales, “pieces of eight,” or pesos -- with the balance being in varying denominations down to a half-real piece. The coins were remarkably well preserved, although iron oxide deposits obscured some of the detail due to long exposure to seawater. The newest coin was a shiny specimen from 1810, so the shipwreck could be dated as being no older than this. Some of the oldest coins were drilled with holes, indicating that the coins were once worn by slaves on necklaces, a common practice in those days to keep the coins from being lost or stolen. All of the coins were minted in Mexico City. Spanish colonial coins were not out of place on this ship. In the early 1800s, Spanish pesos were the true “coin of the realm” in the New World. Everyone used them -- Spanish, French, Dutch, British and the Americans -- because of their consistent size and shape. In fact, they were considered legal tender in the United States until the late 1850s.

Other important finds were an intact mahogany, ivory and brass octant (used before the sextant was developed); a mahogany and brass telescope; several bottles, one marked “LONDON” in raised lettering; a section of rope; two flintlock pistols; and a bolt of silk cloth stamped “NIS NOT TO BE SOLD” in deep blue ink. The ship’s box compass was also found, but it was deemed to be too delicate to recover.

All of the artifacts were in a remarkable state of preservation. A heated debate broke out over whether the silk cloth could have, in fact, come from a 200-year-old ship at a depth of three miles. The octant was clearly marked with the name of its manufacturer -- “Spencer, Browning & Rust, London” – and the presence of its flat brass index arm indicated that it was manufactured before 1790. One of the pistols had the “broad arrow” mark on its barrel, indicating ownership (at one time) by the British Crown. Perhaps this was a British ship? There was no clear identification of a possible ship’s name other than a part of a wooden box that said “Roxbury.” Was this a company, partial address or the ship’s name? We could not tell.

On July 6^th, the third and final dive day, many more artifacts were collected, including another intact octant, nearly 800 coins, an intact sand hourglass, and a leather boot. But the star of the show was a small gold snuff box – maker’s marks indicating it was made in Paris -- with 13 gold coins in it, mostly Portuguese escudos, minted in Rio de Janeiro, with a couple of French and Spanish coins added in. Again, these were widely used throughout this region as a standard currency. It was reasonable to expect a few gold coins in the wreck since they would have been the equivalent of $100 or more (one gold escudo was equal in value to approximately 16 silver pesos). They would have been used for larger payments. In fact, the ship’s cash box carried coins worth the equivalent of more than $10,000 today, indicating that the ship was engaged in trade worth a significant amount for the period.

Perhaps the most intriguing discovery was a small piece of intact newspaper wrapped around the gold coins inside the snuff box. When the paper was carefully unfolded and read, it was found to contain “classified ads” listing the sale of slaves at various workhouses in Jamaica in late 1809. For instance, the paper revealed that the following slaves were offered at the Kingston Workhouse on October 3, 1809:

This slip of paper provided a tantalizing clue to the origin of the ship. It certainly proved that the ship or a member of its crew had been in Jamaica in late 1809. Could this paper be a description of the ship’s prior cargo? Was the ship heading north to colder climates with an exotic shipment of coconuts and liquor after dropping off its human cargo in Jamaica? Perhaps the ship was engaged in the triangular trade between Great Britain, the Caribbean and West Africa? Without additional evidence, we can only speculate. However, the ship’s rakish lines, the presence of slave coins and the newspaper support the theory that it could have been engaged in the slave trade.

By the end of the expedition, there were more than 100 artifacts and 1,315 coins recovered. On the return trip to Bermuda, each artifact was carefully numbered, cataloged and photographed using digital cameras. This was done under the supervision of Jim Sinclair to create a photographic record of each item (other than individual coins), its size and catalog number. This catalog was put on a CD disk on board the Keldysh.

After returning to Bermuda, noted underwater explorer Teddy Tucker came aboard to view the imagery and artifacts. From the shape of the hull, as defined by the copper sheathing, Tucker guessed it was an American-built brig or brigantine which traded between American, Caribbean and Bermudan ports. Since there was nothing found that identified the vessel by name or owner, he indicated that this is only an educated guess. Tucker was excited by the condition of the artifacts; he revealed that in more than 50 years of exploring shipwrecks, he had never seen a “mint state” Spanish silver dollar recovered from a shipwreck.

While the Atlantic Sands Expedition did not find a fabulous treasure ship, it did yield unexpected and exciting historic and oceanographic research. Massive deep ocean sand dunes had never been observed by human eyes. The expedition also photographed several interesting species of deep-water sea life, including a massive blood red jumbo shrimp. Moreover, the merchant vessel provided a good cross-section of early 19^th century maritime trade in the Americas. The presence of two octants and other navigational equipment meant that she navigated out of sight of land. Her steeply raked bow and lack of armaments indicated that she relied on speed as her primary defense in dangerous waters. Post-expedition research revealed that there were four major hurricanes in 1810 – in June, August, September and October. The best guess is that the ship left the Caribbean in early summer – which would allow enough time for new silver coins to make their way from the Mexico City mint to a ship lost off the Bahamas – and she was dismasted and sank in heavy weather while en route to Bermuda or Europe.

The collection of artifacts is now undergoing conservation and study at the South Florida Museum of Natural History. A scientific report will be written on his findings. When the conservation process is completed, the expedition members will decide what to do with the artifacts. If possible, the artifact collection will remain intact and be put on display for public education. In the meantime, the investigation of the identity of the ship continues.

The Atlantic Sands Expedition represented the spirit of exploration at its best. This was not a well-publicized investigation of a famous shipwreck. Instead, it began as a follow up to the recovery of an important relic of man’s exploration of space and ended with the discovery of an example of man’s exploration of the New World. This was an exciting find -- the deepest historic shipwreck ever investigated in situ. And of course, this is the deepest collection of artifacts ever recovered from the ocean floor. The little sailing ship represents the vast majority of the millions of shipwrecks littering the ocean floor -- ordinary working vessels hauling goods and people from one point to another.

The expedition also demonstrates what modern undersea technology is capable of doing. There are millions of shipwrecks on the ocean floor. Using sophisticated new technologies, they can be found, investigated and recovered. The only limiting factors in deep sea exploration today are cost and imagination, not operational capability.

Credits:

Dr. Don Walsh is neither marine archaeologist nor treasure hunter. He has spent the past four decades involved with design, manufacture and operation of submersible systems. A retired naval officer (submarines) he was designated US Navy deep submersible pilot #1 in the early 1970’s. During 2001, he has participated in diving operations at the Battleship Bismarck (15,000 feet) and RMS Titanic (12,500 feet) in addition to Atlantic Sands.

David Concannon, Esq. is an expert on the law and its impact on international exploration. He has been a diver for most of his life, and he has made five deep submersible dives to depths ranging from 900 to 16,000 feet, including the first dive of the century to the RMS Titanic and the final dive to the Atlantic Sands wreck. He carried The Explorers Club Flag on each of these dives.

It is shortly after 8:00 a.m. on July 29, 2000, and I have a secret. I am about to make the first dive of the new century to the R.M.S. Titanic, and I am suffering from a wicked champagne hangover.

This is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, a dream shared by millions, and I feel awful. I’m sure this has never happened to anyone else. Even worse, I am trying to hide my condition from the world’s media. Thankfully, one respected journalist from a major international newspaper, which is read daily in airports and hotels all over the world, is in worse shape than I am. But this provides little solace because the observant reporter from Der Spiegel is beginning to worry me. She is here to do a hatchet job on the expedition, and she is eyeing me like a hawk that has spotted a tasty squirrel.

“Are you feeling Okay?” she asks her prey, eyes focused like lasers. “A little too much celebrating last night, ya?”

She is fishing for a story, but I am not biting.

“No, I’m just dehydrated. . . and a little nervous,” I offer, looking away.

She pauses for a moment and then reluctantly accepts my explanation without further inquiry. No stranger to expedition politics, she realizes that alienating the expedition consigliere on the first dive day is a bad idea.

The prospect of making a deep submersible dive to the Titanic is dangerously seductive. The Der Spiegel lady has never met me, but she correctly figures that my name appears on the dive schedule below “Mir 1, Day 1, Dive 1” for a reason. Although she is searching for a lead, she is shrewd enough to realize that embarrassing me in front of the cast and crew could cost her a dive. She moves off to find weaker or more interesting prey.

Where Explorers Go, Lawyers Follow

Actually, my explanation is not too far from the truth. To reach this point, I have survived two years of contentious litigation, several trips to New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., and an eight-day ride across 1,200 miles of open ocean on a diving support vessel designed to operate in the calm waters of the Gulf of Mexico instead of the stormy North Atlantic.

Every day of this trip has brought rising winds and seas. On the day before we arrived at the Titanic site, the seas reached nearly 30 feet, and the wind was blowing at a sustained 45 knots. Water funnels were chasing our wake. If the trip had been on a Carnival cruise liner, we would have been merely sick. But it was downright frightening on this barge. On a calm day, the ship’s stern rose only four feet off the water. On this trip, however, it had been submerged under a 20-foot high wall of green water every few seconds for several days.

We had been tossed like a cork in the heavy seas, our progress slowed to only four knots. We were left exhausted by the constant booming of the unsecured anchors getting slammed into their hawser pipes by waves crashing over the bow. At first, an occasional rogue wave would slam into the anchors, causing a crash that sounded like cannon fire on an artillery range. With nothing better to do, we persuaded our eccentric English historian that each boom was the sound of an endangered sea turtle, the “armadillos of the North Atlantic,” being run over for sport by the ship’s captain. By the last 100 miles, he thought the world’s entire population of sea turtles had been slaughtered.

Curiously, the storm abated when we finally arrived at the Titanic wreck site, early on the cold morning of July 28, 2000. The scene was eerily familiar to what the rescue ship Carpathia had encountered upon its arrival at this very spot at first light on April 15, 1912. The seas were calm, cold and devoid of any sign of the tragedy that had occurred on this spot hours earlier. It was rather unsettling.

So yes, I had too much champagne the night before – exactly two glasses to celebrate our safe arrival at the Titanic wreck site – but it was the only thing I had persuaded myself to eat or drink for 24 hours. Now, I am about to spend the next 12 hours crammed into a seven-foot wide titanium sphere with no heat and no bathroom, traveling through freezing darkness to the wreck of the Titanic, and my head is splitting.

The Titanic wreck is located in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, nearly 400 miles from the nearest point of land at a depth of 12,460 feet where the water pressure exceeds 6,000 pounds per square inch. Fewer people have been to this place than have been to outer space. Of course I am nervous.

Shortly after 9:00 a.m., I step into the Russian deep-diving submersible Mir 1, one of only five submersibles capable of reaching the crushing depth of Titanic, wave goodbye to the cameras, and settle in for the long ride to the bottom.

My diving companions are former National Geographic cinematographer Ralph White and Dr. Anatoly Sagalevitch, the designer of the Mirs. Between them, White and Sagalevitch have made nearly 60 dives to the Titanic. Each has spent more time on the ship than did Captain Edward Smith, the man who guided the Titanic to its ill-fated destiny. (As White likes to say, “It took 14,000 Irishmen four years to build the Titanic, and only one dumb Englishman one week to sink it.”)

Our mission today is to assess the condition of the Titanic, which is rapidly disintegrating, and to explore a previously unknown area of the wreck site. Our plan is to traverse the entire wreck site from north to south, covering a distance on the bottom of more than a mile. We will also explore the area to the west of the bow and stern sections, an area which has received little attention on the 12 previous expeditions that have visited the wreck site.

As we descend in a slow spiral from the surface to 3,000 feet, the temperature inside the sub drops from nearly 95 degrees to a more comfortable 65 degrees. The inside temperature will continuously drop throughout the dive, until it conforms to the outside temperature of approximately 34 degrees. Later on, we will don thick pile jackets over our black Nomex fire suits to keep warm.

As the tedium of the two-hour descent begins to set in, I reflect further on the course of events that has put a lawyer in the sub for the first dive of the century. The Titanic is like an annuity for lawyers – it just keeps paying off. Litigation over the Titanic and its remains has raged in at least five different jurisdictions since the ship’s discovery in 1985.

In 1987, the U.S. Congress passed legislation called the R.M.S. Titanic Memorial Act of 1987. The Act, which has been the subject of great debate, expresses “the sense of Congress” (an oxymoron if there ever was one) that the wreck should be treated as a memorial and left alone. In addition, the Titanic is now the subject of a draft international agreement between the U.S., U.K., Canada and France that imposes severe restrictions on activities at the wreck site. Ignoring both geography and the international law of the sea, the draft agreement states that the Titanic is located on the Canadian Continental Shelf. This is the practical equivalent of ceding authority over Tallahassee, Florida to Cuba. Thus, the company lawyer has been sent down to get a first-hand look at the wreck to formulate a response.

The interior of the Mir is compact and efficient. It is as comfortable as one can expect of a tiny sphere crammed with three people and all their equipment. There are four walls formed by panels full of gauges, lights and switches. Underneath the port and starboard instrument panels are reclining benches with thin black padding. The co-pilot sits on the port side, the observer on the starboard side. With less than five feet of linear space on the benches, I am forced to lie on my side in the fetal position to see out the six-inch wide starboard porthole. It is impossible to raise my legs, since video housings and carbon dioxide scrubbers hang just above my knees and feet.

The titanium hull curves around by my right shoulder, where I have placed a towel to act as a barrier between me and the cold and condensation. The towel also doubles nicely as a pillow during the long descent. Above my head is the red panic button, curiously known as the “Giddings switch,” encased in a steel cage. I have been instructed to push it only in the event of an actual emergency, after both the pilot and co-pilot have become incapacitated. It will send a signal to release ballast from the sub’s bottom, thus allowing the sub to achieve positive buoyancy and, theoretically, float safely to the surface. Otherwise, as the JAFO (“Just A F***ing Observer”) on this dive, I am not supposed to touch anything.

The pilot has the most room to move. He sits on a chair in the center during the ascent and descent, and kneels at the control panel when the sub is on the bottom. I grow increasingly envious as I realize that the pilot can stand fully upright if he wants to. I will not be able to do this until I climb out of the sub on the surface at 9:00 p.m., 12 hours after the beginning of my journey.

Diving in the submersible is a far cry from the wreck diving I have done for the past 15 years. For one thing, it’s incredibly expensive. Each hour in the sub costs nearly $1,500. The six-week charter for the ship and submersibles costs over $1 million.

On the other hand, diving in the Mir would be familiar to any experienced diver. Even though we have sophisticated sonar and navigational systems at our disposal, we will use standard underwater search and recovery techniques during our survey of the wreck site. Artifacts will be identified for recovery using the naked eye, since subtle differences in light reflection and shading are not discernable on the video monitors. Navigation will be achieved by monitoring speed and distance, and the simple compass mounted below the pilot’s viewport will be used more than any other piece of equipment during the dive.

We reach the ocean floor at 12,460 feet shortly before noon. I am surprised to see that the bottom is not the featureless expanse of mud I had expected. Instead, it is covered with large boulders that have been dropped for centuries by melting icebergs.

We are one-half mile north of the bow section of the Titanic. As we quietly traverse this distance, spider crabs and rattail fish pass beneath us. Staring out my tiny viewport, I feel insulated from the outside world, as if I am flying slowly above the surface of another planet.

My feeling of isolation is magnified by the occasional radio communication with the surface. The Keldysh sounds so faint it may as well be on another planet. Our faint communications (in Russian, no less) provide a tangible reminder that the closest point of human contact and safety is two-and-one-half miles above our tiny sphere. If anything goes wrong, we have little chance of survival. Each time I hear the faint sound of the mother ship Keldysh, I tick off a mental checklist of everything that can go fatally wrong: fire, suffocation, implosion, drowning, freezing to death. White’s earlier assertion that we are likely to freeze to death before suffocating provides little comfort. I decide that a sudden implosion is preferable to the other means of catastrophe.

Wreck Rapidly Deteriorating

Finally, at 12:30 p.m., we arrive at the Titanic. My first glimpse of the fabled ship is a section of her mast lying on the bottom, north of the bow. Beyond that, the bottom rises sharply into a hill caused by the force of ship’s bow colliding with the bottom 88 years ago. We wait for a few moments for Mir 1’s identical twin, Mir 2, to join us before ascending.

As the Titanic’s hull rises steeply out of the darkness, Sagalevitch quietly says just one word: “Terrible.”

White says nothing. He is obviously still captivated by the sight of the ship he has already seen 24 times before.

I am astonished by the appalling condition of the wreck. The Titanic looks like it is made of wet sand. Rusticles, which are caused by a bacteria-eating the iron ore from the steel hull, drape the wreck. Sections of the hull have collapsed. The wood decking is gone. Walls look like they are made of papier-maché. The ship looks nothing like I imagined. Instead, it appears to be rotting away like a candle melting from the top down. It is easy to believe that the Titanic will be nothing more than a stain on the ocean floor in a few years.

We are on the port side of the bow, near the forecastle. As we ascend approximately 50 feet, I stare through ghostly portholes into the ship’s dark interior. When we rise above the port side railing, I can see the ship’s 15-ton spare anchor still secured in the well deck on the forecastle. I am amazed that an object so heavy could have remained in its place during the ship’s descent to the bottom.

After surveying the forecastle, we glide aft toward the shelter deck. As we pass over the forward well deck, I stare down into the blackness of the No. 2 cargo hatch. I can see the giraffe-like electric cargo cranes, which remain crossed like forearms, below the first class cabins on C-Deck.

This area of the bow section, which is canted forward, shows significant signs of deterioration. Rusticles drape the walls on the front of A, B and C-Decks. Mounds of rusticles have fallen on to the shelter deck and the front of B-Deck. The upper third of the mast, which used to run straight, is now collapsed in the shape of a “Z” onto the boat deck and A-Deck.

We follow the ship’s collapsed mast as it ascends toward the bridge. Sagalevitch points to where the crow’s nest used to be. I can almost hear the voice of lookout Frederick Fleet late on the night of April 14, 1912 shouting, “Iceberg right ahead!”

White recovered the crow’s nest bell, which Fleet rang three times to signal the bridge that an obstacle lay directly ahead, on the 1987 expedition. A few days after this dive, White will also recover the telephone that Sixth Officer James Moody answered on the bridge when Fleet called to relay the same distress signal.

Near the top of the mast, we come to the bridge - or what is left of it. The walls and ceiling of the wheelhouse, and nearly all of the bridge’s equipment, are now gone. The only fixture that remains is the ship’s telemotor, or the bronze pedestal to which the ship’s wheel was attached. This fixture betrays the former existence of the bridge, along with the short rail of the teak molding which traces the lines where the wheelhouse walls once stood.

As we glide aft on the starboard side of the boat deck past the officers’ quarters, we notice that the ceiling and wall of Captain Smith’s stateroom have almost completely collapsed. This is significant because the wall was here just 10 months ago. In 1999, the wall was peeled away and hanging precariously. Now, a large section of the wall has disappeared, and I can stare directly down into Captain Smith’s bath tub.

Sagalevitch sets the sub down next to an expansion joint that has opened to expose the interior of the officers’ quarters. We take a brief moment to discuss the plan for the rest of our dive. I find myself staring out my porthole during the entire discussion, fascinated by the interior of the ship as it is illuminated by the sub’s powerful halogen lights. I can see fixtures still affixed to the wall inside the hull. I am startled, and a little unsettled, by the sight of my own reflection in a piece of glass on the far side of the cabin. I did not expect to see my reflection inside this time capsule from 1912.

Suddenly, our discussion is interrupted by a terse call from the surface. Sagalevitch listens patiently, with a look of deep concern on his face. He says “Da” into the microphone and then turns to us before announcing “It’s time to go.” After less than 20 minutes on the bow, we have been informed that the barge has managed to tangle the cable of a remotely operated vehicle the size of a Volkswagen in its stern thrusters. The ROV and three miles of cable are about to come raining down on us from the surface. We quickly decide that it is time to leave the area, and Sagalevitch makes a cursory pass over the grand staircase as we head off to the west.

Unexplored Areas

The Titanic’s 882-foot hull ripped in half as it sank, spilling the contents of the ship over a wide area. The water-filled bow retained its shape as it fell upright through the water column, like a leaf falling from a tree. The bow now rests upright, buried 50 feet into the sea bottom, almost one-half mile north and slightly to the east of the stern. The air-filled stern remained on the surface for a while before sinking, spilling its contents like an upturned department store. It initially imploded during its descent and then exploded when it hit the bottom. Because of the great distance between the two hull sections, most submersible dives focus their valuable bottom time on one section of the wreck or the other.

There is also a more practical reason to explore just one area of the wreck: the bow section is more visually striking than the stern. The bow is still recognizable as a luxury liner from a different era, whereas the stern is a barely recognizable heap of twisted steel and debris. Therefore, most of the photographic expeditions to the Titanic have concentrated their dives on the bow, while the salvage expeditions have concentrated their dives on the debris fields to the north, south and east of the stern section, where artifacts can be easily retrieved. Consequently, the area to the west of the Titanic’s bow is virtually unexplored.

Today, we will be rewarded for traveling off the beaten path. We find a pristine pair of binoculars, still in their case, almost immediately after leaving the bow. This is significant because binoculars have never been recovered from the Titanic. Moreover, we know that binoculars were issued to the crew, but they were never given to the lookouts in the crow’s nest. Could this pair be one of those that remained unused in their case, possibly on the ship’s bridge? We recover the binoculars and turn south.

As we travel south, we make several other unique discoveries: first-class china, wash bowls, an intact window from the first-class deck. We dutifully record the position of each significant artifact, recover some, and leave the rest for future dives.

It is easy to see that we are exploring new territory. Each of the submersibles that have visited the Titanic - Alvin, Nautile and the Mirs - leaves distinctive tracks on the bottom. There are no tracks in this area of the wreck site. Our observations confirm that, after 12 expeditions, there is still much left to explore. After this dive, we will divide the wreck site into 400 square-meter grids, and then systematically search each grid in ten-meter-wide swaths until the entire wreck site has been surveyed.

Tense Moments

We finally arrive at the stern section around 4:00 p.m., seven hours into our dive. Sagalevitch is normally easygoing, but his demeanor changes dramatically as we approach this eerie web of entanglements. Torn pieces of hull plating, wires, plumbing, boilers and fixtures are everywhere. In other words, this is a death trap for a small submersible.

As we drift over a torn section of hull plating, I can see the exposed ribs of the ship. Suddenly, the sub becomes snagged by an overhang. A stream of rusticles rains down in front of my viewport. Sagalevitch quickly reverses thrust, but nothing happens.

“Anatoly, are we stuck?” I ask. “Da,” he says.

As any good JAFO would do, I sit quietly as Sagalevitch continues to work the controls. I don’t want to distract him at this important time, just as it would be impolite to question a pilot as a plane was crashing. After what seems like an eternity, we are free. We unanimously agree to leave this dangerous area of the wreck.

To break the tension, I joke that we can’t leave without going under the hull to see the ship’s enormous bronze propeller. Sagalevitch ignores me as he flies south into the debris field.

This is an area known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” The Titanic broke apart in the vicinity of the galleys for the first and second-class dining areas. Consequently, this area is covered by thousands of pieces of coal, dishes, cups, copper pots, crystal decanters and cooking utensils. Nearly all of them are broken. We recover what we can, guided by a list of artifacts required for our employer’s international artifact exhibitions.

Suddenly, I spot a large leather bag, the only piece of personal luggage I have seen during the entire dive. We know from previous recovery expeditions that leather bags protect their contents from deterioration. Bags recovered on previous expeditions have contained clothing, currency, newspapers, post cards, coins and jewelry. None of these items can survive independently in this hostile environment.

We immediately recover the bag, which opens slightly as Sagalevitch lifts it with the sub’s mechanical arm, revealing a layer of books. Miraculously, I can still read the print on the pages through my porthole. I realize that I am looking at a page in a book that has been underwater for more than 88 years, after it was lost in one of the worst tragedies of the last century.

Subsequent research will reveal that the bag belonged to a second-class passenger named Edgar Samuel Andrew, a 17-year-old student from Argentina. Andrew boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England, not far from where he was attending school. As he was departing, Andrew wrote a letter to his friend Josey Cowan on Titanic stationary lamenting that his transfer from another steamship to the Titanic required him to depart from England a week early, which meant he would miss his friend’s arrival in England:

“You figure, Josey, I am boarding the greatest steamship in the world, but I don’t really feel proud of it at all, right now I wish the Titanic were lying at the bottom of the ocean.”

The letter was posted from the Titanic’s first port call in Cherbourg, France. Five days later, this young man got his wish. Both his bag and the Titanic were lying at the bottom of the ocean, and Andrew perished in the sinking. His body was never recovered. Now, at the beginning of a new century, we are returning his belongings to the surface.

At 6:00 p.m., Sagalevitch announces that it is time to begin our ascent. The submersible begins to rise slowly as we pump water from our ballast tanks. As the bottom begins to recede into total darkness, I am reminded of the scene of the moon falling away from Apollo 11 as it began its ascent from the lunar surface exactly 31 years ago.

For the next three hours, I contemplate my journey to the Titanic. I have seen things few others will ever see, a time capsule from a different era slowly dissolving into the sea.

When we break the surface at 9:00 p.m., I can think of only one thing: “When can I go back?”

Armstrong is so completely fused to a single moment in July 1969 that it can be difficult to picture him anywhere else. The moon did not simply define him; it swallowed him. For most people, Neil Armstrong exists in one permanent black and white frame: standing on the ladder of Apollo 11, dropping down to the surface of the moon, and delivering those immortal words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

In that moment, with brevity and gravity, Armstrong became the most significant explorer in human history. Everything else seems like a postscript.

Which is one reason I have always been drawn to the much less famous story of Armstrong going to the North Pole in 1985. Quietly, without any publicity, in the company of other legends in exploration history.

By 1985, Armstrong had nothing left to prove. He was already installed securely in history, and the last thing he wanted was more fame. He went to the Arctic because he was curious, joining a small expedition that included Sir Edmund Hillary, Peter Hillary, Steve Fossett and Patrick Morrow. They traveled through the Canadian High Arctic in ski-equipped aircraft, intent on reaching the North Pole.

For those with an ego, this would be the penultimate achievement. They could slap another patch on their expedition parka – the “suit of lights” that already looks like a billboard for adventure travel, the conversation starter for airport terminals and hotel bars. They could check off another box and push another pin in the map on the wall of their man cave. But not Armstrong.

On their way north, bad weather grounded the group in the tiny town of Resolute, Nunavut, where they passed the time in a tiny “mom and pop” guest house and Armstrong built an igloo to sleep in. Egos, if they were present, were checked at the door. What happened next turns the trip from a list of names into something more intimate: a fellowship of explorers pinned down by weather, with nothing to do but talk, remember, and wait. And it reveals volumes about a notoriously private individual and his thoughts on exploration, achievement, effort, and the actual definitions of “success” and “failure.”

To entertain the group, Armstrong produced his personal type-written notes on a doomed 1897 attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon dubbed The Eagle, little known and forgotten to history, and he read them aloud to his compatriots. These detailed notes, which were obviously the product of painstaking research and analysis, provide a window into Armstrong’s thinking.

Remember, Armstrong was not reading to tourists. He was sharing his thoughts on courage and effort with Sir Edmund Hillary, who had just become the first person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the South Pole and the North Pole; to Patrick Morrow, who had already climbed the Seven Summits and was on his way to knocking off the eighth to make sure he was the first to climb the world’s seven highest mountains on both the Bass list and the Messner list; to Steve Fossett, who had climbed six of the Seven Summits and would go on to become the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon and again in a fixed-wing aircraft; and to Peter Hillary, who already knew expedition life from the inside but was far more than merely “Ed’s son” – Peter’s expedition record already included the first high-altitude traverse of the Himalayan range: a 3,000-mile, ten-month route from Kanchenjunga in India, across Nepal to K2 in Pakistan.

This detail tells you something important about Armstrong. Stuck in the Arctic with a room full of accomplished explorers, he did not reach for abstraction, nostalgia, or some grand speech about human striving. He reached for a case study. Another man’s polar attempt. Another machine. Another gamble. Another effort to solve, through the air, what the ice had long refused to yield, and what countless other explorers would die to achieve, or lie about achieving.

And, maybe most telling of all, he read Salomon August Andrée the way an aviator and an engineer would read him.

This is what stands out in Armstrong’s notes. He was not interested in Andrée merely as a tragic figure in polar history. He was interested in him as a fellow problem solver.

He begins with the basics: Andrée was trained as an engineer, drawn to scientific inquiry, and attracted to ballooning because of its promise for aerial navigation. Armstrong notes Andrée’s central idea with characteristic clarity: that he believed he could steer his balloon roughly thirty degrees to either side of the wind by using sails and drag ropes. Andrée believed he could ride the winds 800 miles to the North Pole and back to Spitsbergen in 43 hours each way; or 2,200 miles over the Pole, across the Bering Straits to Alaska, in six days.

He notes the details without skepticism, in the language of a man trying to understand whether Andrée’s contraption was ever truly flyable.

Armstrong lays out the flight plans, the materials, the hydrogen, the silk envelope, the basket, the duration estimates, the launch preparations on Danes Island. He notes that hydrogen leakage concerns led the meteorologist Ekholm to resign from the expedition on their first attempt in 1896, but he was replaced and the team returned in 1897. He follows the launch sequence closely, and this is where you can feel Armstrong’s instincts most clearly. The guide ropes were a thousand feet long, connected in sections by metal threaded fittings that, he notes, had not been tested by Andrée. Immediately after takeoff, there is a severe downdraft. Ballast is thrown overboard. The balloon strikes the sea, then rises.

Then comes the crucial failure. The lower sections of the guide lines somehow unscrew themselves and are left behind on shore.

In Armstrong’s rendering, that is the moment the plan really dies. Not poetically. Mechanically. At that point the steering concept is gone. What remains is no longer controlled flight, but a free balloon, now at the mercy of the weather. This Eagle has not landed, it is lost.

That is a pilot’s judgment. Clean, exact, and final. It is described to a roomful of men who have had to make the exact same judgments to survive on mountaintops, in aircraft and in spacecraft, as they are all trapped in a hut in the Arctic, with a storm raging outside and the possibility of rescue ranging from uncertain to impossible, after they have just landed at the North Pole. Each listener in the audience understood what drives men to explore, and how a fine line separates the famous from the forgotten.

Everything that follows in Armstrong’s account of 1897 reads like the unfolding of a failure chain. Bright sunshine and gas loss. Entry into cloud and an ascent to higher altitude and optimism. Descent again until the short lines drag in the water. Repeated contact with the ice. Brief recoveries. More ballast jettisoned. A desperate effort to become properly airborne, all for naught.

Andrée and his two companions, Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg, made a final landing 376 miles northeast of Danes Island, still 480 miles short of the Pole, after just over 65 hours. Carrier pigeons they released were never found, notes they dropped were recovered years later. They survived for months and nearly walked to safety, but they were never heard from again.

News of Andrée’s fate was finally revealed 33 years later when a whaler stopped at an island for fresh water and discovered their encampment, skeletal remains, diaries, logs of scientific observations and photographs—glass negative plates, which had been deep frozen and were later developed.

You can feel Armstrong’s mind working through the event as he writes it. He is tracing the logic of the machine, the break between theory and reality, the point at which intention yields to weather, to engineering, to physics. It feels entirely true to the man. He had too much discipline, too much test-pilot exactness, to sentimentalize a flawed system or a weak assumption.

But what makes the notes worth lingering over is that he does not stop there. He does not dismiss Andrée. In fact, what is most striking is how generous he is.

Yes, Armstrong says plainly that, in retrospect, Andrée made “a lot of mistakes. Testing, clothing, planning.” Coming from Armstrong, that is a severe assessment, and a fair one. But he does not leave Andrée there. He also calls him “spirited” and “dedicated,” and says he was “ironically, beaten by a force over which he had little control and could not expect.”

Most poignantly, Armstrong reads this passage from Andrée’s diary which reveals their mood in the face of calamity:

Is it not a little strange to be floating here above the Polar Sea, to be the first to have floated here in a hydrogen–filled balloon? How soon, I wonder, shall we have successors? Shall we be thought mad, or will our example be followed? I cannot deny but that all three of us are dominated by a feeling of pride. We think we can well face death, having known what we have done is not the whole, perhaps the expression of an extremely strong sense of individuality which cannot bear the thought of living and dying like a man within the ranks, forgotten by the coming generations? Is this ambition?

Then comes the line that matters most. Armstrong’s final assessment of Andrée:

“I think he was a worthy forbearer to our humble expedition.”

That is an extraordinary sentence.

Armstrong is not saying Andrée was right. He is not excusing the mistakes. He is not indulging the easy romance of glorious failure. He is doing something better than that. He is placing Andrée in the line. He is recognizing that exploration has always depended on people willing to go before the methods were fully worked out. Some of those people get it wrong. Some get it catastrophically wrong. But they still matter, because they were reaching for something real before the world knew how to reach for it safely.

To me, that is Armstrong’s real feeling about Andrée: respect, without illusion.

That would have meant something in that tiny enclave in 1985. Every man in that remote outpost understood, in his own way, what drives people outward. Not because it is rational. Not because it is safe. But because something in them answers when an unvisited place on the map asks the question.

This is why this story matters to me. Not because Armstrong went to the North Pole with other famous explorers, nor because, when grounded by bad weather, he chose to read about a failed balloon expedition from 1897.

It matters because it gives us a rare glimpse of how he regarded the explorers who came before him. His eye was technical. His standards were high. He saw Andrée’s mistakes clearly, perhaps more clearly than most. But he also saw what made him worth remembering. Not the failure but the attempt. The seriousness. The willingness to go first. Optimism in the face of defeat.

Armstrong did not call Andrée a fool. He called him a forbearer.

I believe that the definition of an “adventurer” is a person who goes from here to there, comes back and says “This is what I did.” But the definition of an “explorer” is a person who goes from here to there, comes back and says “This is what I learned.”

Neil Armstrong’s notes about Salomon August Andrée – the details that he took the time to research, type and print so he could carry them to the North Pole – feels like one of the clearest windows into the mind of Neil Armstrong that we are likely to get.

And maybe that is the deeper point here. Explorers do not admire success alone. They admire commitment. They admire nerve. They admire the man who was early, even if he was wrong. Especially if he was wrong in ways that later generations can understand, measure, and learn from.

Thank you, Mr. Armstrong, for showing us what you have learned, and for trying to teach others, even if they could be forgiven for resting on their resumes and listening to the wind outside rather than to you. I sincerely appreciate the legacy you have left.

Please allow me to explain. My wife is uber cool. Genetically gifted, smart, funny, gorgeous and she knows what she wants and likes. Me? Not so much. I have a hair and makeup budget of about $4 per year, I am dorky and I like old things. But!!!! I can drive a “three on the tree” transmission and this makes me feel superior!

My wife has two cars. Both would make the heart of any red-blooded 15-year-old boy pound with excitement. Actually, a boy of any age, and quite a few women too. One is a 1973 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, restored and modified by the owner of two NASCAR racing teams. The original 2F inline 6-cylinder motor is gone, replaced by a Chevy 327 cubic inch V-8 with a 4-barrel Holley carburetor, Edelbrock manifold, headers and … well … you get the idea. It roars to life and she goes tearing out of the driveway, on her way to yoga or to ruin the relationship of any man dumb enough to look at her driving it when they are walking by with their girlfriend or wife. Which they do – a lot!

I hate sitting in it. First, because she doesn’t let me drive it and, second, because I feel like a loser sitting in the passenger seat when bypassers stare and ogle.

So, when a “friend” in Colorado called me during the waning days of the Covid pandemic to ask if I knew anyone that wanted to buy a vintage FJ40 and be as cool as my wife, I didn’t even ask him the price. I simply said “I’ll take it.”

This is where we start the “cost per mile driven” meter.

I hopped in my truck, rented a trailer, and began the 4-day, 1,500-mile roundtrip journey to acquire the “Red Rocket.” I was on my way to coolness. I did not know it but I was also about to embark on an expensive 4-year odyssey to restore an all original 1970 FJ40 from beater status to a capable but compromised nearly new classic with patina.

The Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40

I first fell in love with the Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 when I lived in Kenya in 1989 and I spent considerable time in the bush. It’s reliability and durability captured my heart.

Few vehicles had earned the reputation for durability and global adventure quite like the Toyota Land Cruiser. By the time my old warhorse was manufactured in December 1969 – just after the Apollo 12 mission! – the short‑wheelbase FJ40 had already become the backbone of expeditions, safari fleets, and remote operations around the world. Its combination of mechanical simplicity, rugged construction, and impressive off‑road capability made it one of the most trusted vehicles ever built. The 1970 model represents the classic early configuration of the 40‑Series Land Cruiser—spartan, nearly indestructible, and purpose‑built for terrain where roads barely exist. It is “basic” in every sense of the word.

The core factory specifications for the 1970 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 reveal its tractor in disguise, go anywhere design:

Engine

Engine: Toyota F-series inline‑6
Displacement: 3,878 cc (3.9 L / 236.6 cu in)
Configuration: OHV inline‑6 with cast‑iron block and head
Carburetor: Single downdraft carburetor
Horsepower: Approximately 125 hp @ 3,600 rpm
Torque: Approximately 209 lb‑ft @ 2,000 rpm

The F‑series engine traces its lineage to early Chevrolet inline‑six designs but it was heavily refined by Toyota for reliability and low‑speed torque. Its simplicity and durability made it legendary in remote environments where mechanical reliability was paramount. The engine’s ability to produce steady torque at low speeds is exactly what was needed to climb rocky trails, crawl through mud, or pull heavy loads through rough terrain. I knew this when I said “Yes” to my friend’s question, but I was about to learn an expensive lesson.

Drivetrain

Transmission: 3‑speed manual (Toyota H41 gearbox)
Transfer case: Two‑speed part‑time four‑wheel drive
Drive system: Selectable 4WD
Front axle: Solid axle
Rear axle: Full‑floating solid axle
Differentials: Open differentials (no factory lockers)

The drivetrain prioritized strength and serviceability. Combined with the low‑range transfer case, the FJ40 could crawl slowly through terrain that stopped most other vehicles of the era, just like the terrain where I live!

Chassis, Suspension and Brakes

Frame: Boxed steel ladder frame
Front suspension: Solid axle with semi‑elliptical leaf springs
Rear suspension: Solid axle with semi‑elliptical leaf springs
Steering: Recirculating ball steering box
Turning radius: Approximately 17.7 feet

Front brakes: Drum
Rear brakes: Drum

The suspension design emphasized durability rather than comfort. While the ride could be firm, the setup proved nearly indestructible under extreme off‑road use. The drum brake system was simple and reliable, though antiquated, with a stopping distance measured in yards instead of feet.

The “Red Rocket”

The Red Rocket personifies the old FJ40 ethos. It was purchased new by the Dean of the College of Mines in Leadville, Colorado and it lived most of its life crawling the backcountry at high altitude, rarely venturing below 9,000 feet. In fact, my garage sits at an altitude of 6,200 feet and this is the lowest home the old FJ40 has ever had. The vehicle is completely stock. This means it is set up more like a farm tractor or a bulldozer than a NASCAR racer. It was quite literally built for “The End of the Road” and beyond.

The old FJ40’s engine – its heart – appeals to the nostalgia in me. My first car was a 1972 Pontiac Ventura with an inline 6-cylinder 250 cubic inch motor, fast enough to get me into trouble but not to kill me, easy to work on, and bomb-proof. The FJ40’s inline 6-cylinder 236.6 cubic inch engine reminds me of my original Pontiac. With only 125 horsepower but 209 lb-ft of torque, it is more suited to pulling tree stumps out of the ground than to doing smoky burnouts in the Dairy Queen parking lot late on a Saturday night.

The transmission, although quirky, makes me smile. I learned to drive a manual transmission in a 1942 Ford pickup truck that had a “three on a tree” transmission on the steering column, and I practiced driving it on a farm before I felt confident enough to take it on the road. I don’t believe in corporal punishment for naughty children, but I am not above requiring my teenagers to learn to drive “stick” in the Red Rocket if they misbehave.

Then, there are the creature comforts, or the distinct lack thereof. Air conditioning? Sure, just roll up the sides on the soft top and kick open the air vents at your feet. Seat belts? There are two lap belts, but good luck closing or adjusting them. Radio? Who needs one? Just enjoy the loud thumping of the suspension amidst the rattling doors, squeaky spare tire, whistling wind and flapping soft top.

My second vehicle was a 1975 Jeep CJ-5, followed by a 1977 Jeep CJ-7, and both had identical quirks, sounds, suspensions and drivetrains to the FJ40.

The FJ40’s drum brakes, however, DO NOT appeal to me. I rarely drive the Red Rocket into town or near pedestrians, which have the right of way over vehicles in my state. It is simply a backcountry vehicle for me. I take it out in the mud, slog through anything, then hose it off when I get home.

The Cost Per Mile Equation

For all the aforementioned reasons, the Red Rocket was the perfect White Elephant to leap for impulsively during the waning days of the Covid lockdown. It ticked all the nostalgia boxes, and it scratched the male inadequacy itch. But, while the cost of entry was reasonable, the cost of ownership was astronomical.

The first time I had the FJ40 out in the backcountry, the engine overheated. Badly. This was no simple breakdown. I was 9,000 feet up, 10 miles from anywhere, and the engine was cooking. I limped back to civilization, replaced the hoses, radiator and added a fan shroud, and hoped for the best. The second time I was out in the backcountry, the Red Rocket overheated again. F*ck! More diagnostics were performed, more parts were replaced, and a new water pump was added. The third time I had it out, I went only a few miles up the road and it overheated again. Now, it was time to dig deeper. I found an old shade tree mechanic who knew how to repair an engine without a code reader and, sure enough, he discovered a blown head gasket and two engine cylinders losing compression.

The old mechanic lacked the tools and time necessary to rebuild the engine, so he pulled it out, we loaded the engine into the bed of my Toyota pickup truck and I took it to a dedicated engine repair shop in a farming community 90 miles south. A tractor engine repair shop. The owner was older than me, his shop was spotless, and he even wore a lab coat. I had found my people!

The pandemic played havoc on our ability to acquire parts. Through a combination of eBay, dedicated Land Cruiser parts suppliers, junkyards and online forums, Mr. Labcoat and I cobbled together the parts necessary to rebuild the engine. It took more than a year. But what good is a rebuilt engine without a rebuilt transmission? Why not add a new brake system, exhaust system, battery and a rebuilt carburetor? The entire rebuild took nearly three years.

During this time, snow falling off the roof of the garage crushed the fiberglass cap on the hardtop. There is an inkling that the rear axle may be slightly bent, but I want a second opinion before I replace it. I have not allocated the funds for these repairs yet. And, oh yeah, the shade tree mechanic has now retired.

The good news is the vehicle is now road worthy and running well. The total cost of repairs was somewhere near $90 per mile driven by me when the vehicle first came home from the rebuilds, but I was able to put some miles on the Red Rocket last year and the cost is now down to about $70 per mile driven. I trust the old FJ40 enough to drive it in the backcountry, and its value increased immeasurably when I was able to see the joy in my old dog when I would take him on “bouncy rides” in the wilderness before he died. I can drive it now without grimacing.

The Enduring Appeal

Almost sixty years later, the 1970 Land Cruiser FJ40 still carries an aura that modern vehicles rarely match. It represents a time when machines were built with straightforward mechanical logic. When reliability mattered more than complexity. When a vehicle could be repaired with a set of wrenches and a little ingenuity.

Those days are behind us now but, if you appreciate simplicity and nostalgia, you can find enjoyment in owning an old FJ40 that has not been hacked, modified and modernized. I know I have.

I just can’t compete with my wife.

I have a confession to make: I am a walking cliche. I am an old man, I wear an old watch, and I drive an old car.

Why do I like owning this old car? Why do I row through the gearbox, taxing my Theta Chi knee, occasionally missing a throw, just to wind this thing up to a speed that my wife’s car could hit before you can sneeze?

There are faster cars. There are more comfortable cars. There are even more rational cars. But there are very few cars that feel as alive as a 1978 Porsche 911SC—and fewer still that ask so much of their driver while giving so much back. That’s probably the answer.

What the 911SC Is (and Isn’t)

The 911SC occupies a strange and wonderful place in Porsche history. It was meant, famously, to be the last 911. Porsche’s future, at least on paper in the late 1970s, was the front-engined, water-cooled, V-8-powered 928. The rear-engined 911 was supposed to fade politely into history. Instead, the SC became the car that saved the 911 by proving—yet again—that stubborn ideas sometimes turn out to be the right ones.

“SC” stands for Super Carrera, though there is nothing superfluous about the car. The 1978 model introduced the 3.0-liter air-cooled flat-six, derived from the Turbo program but naturally aspirated, and tuned more for durability and torque than headline numbers.

On paper, the specifications are modest by modern standards:

• Engine: 3.0-liter air-cooled flat-six

• Output: ~172 horsepower @ 5,500 rpm (U.S. spec)

• Torque: ~189 lb-ft @ 4,200 rpm

• Transmission: 5-speed manual

• Curb weight: ~2,630 lbs

• 0–60 mph: ~5.5 seconds

• Top speed: ~136 mph

Those numbers don’t explain the car at all. What matters is where the weight is, how the power arrives, and what the car communicates back through the wheel, the pedals, and the seat. As contemporary testers noted, it was both the fastest normally aspirated Porsche of its day and surprisingly efficient—a blend of opposing virtues that felt almost defiant in the late-’70s automotive landscape.

The Rear-Engine Truth

The defining characteristic of the 911SC—its rear-engine layout—is not a quirk you overcome; it’s a truth you learn to respect.

With roughly 60 percent of the car’s weight over the rear axle, the SC rewards smoothness and punishes bravado. Enter a corner thoughtfully and the car feels planted, almost telepathic. Enter it carelessly and you’ll feel the famous warning signs: subtle twitches, a lightening of the front end, a reminder that physics is always awake even when you aren’t.

This is not a car that flatters you. It educates you.

That education happens everywhere. The steering is unassisted and full of texture. The brakes require real pedal pressure. The throttle demands finesse, especially mid-corner. Drive it well and you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Drive it poorly and the car lets you know—immediately.

The Quirks That Become Affection

Owning a 1978 911SC means making peace with its eccentricities, many of which eventually turn into sources of affection:

• Offset pedals: Your feet are slightly angled toward the centerline, a byproduct of the front suspension packaging. It feels odd for about a week. After that, every “normal” car feels wrong.

• The 915 gearbox: Long throws, vague gates, and a second-gear synchro that rewards patience. Rush it and you’ll grind. Respect it and it becomes an oddly satisfying ritual.

• Cold starts: The engine sounds mechanical—almost agricultural—until it warms up. Then it settles into that unmistakable air-cooled thrum.

• The smell: Oil, warm metal, faint fuel vapor. It’s not leaking; it’s communicating.

• Suspension: Call the dentist and make an appointment to have your fillings re-cemented. But damn, this thing corners!

These are not flaws so much as personality traits. The SC doesn’t try to hide its mechanical nature. It invites you into it.

Why the 911SC Endures

Part of the joy of owning a 1978 Porsche 911SC is knowing that it represents a turning point. It introduced the fully galvanized body shell that made long-term ownership realistic, especially when you live in an area with nine months of snow and punishing road salt.

The SC proved the 911 could be reliable, usable, and still deeply engaging. And it quietly laid the groundwork for every air-cooled 911 that followed. (Did you ever wonder why Singer takes a 964-era 911 and “backdates” it to look like a ‘70s 911?)

This is also a car that exists in perfect balance. Not as raw as the early long-hood cars. Not as refined as the later Carreras. It sits in that sweet spot where the car still demands something from you—but rewards you every mile.

The SC doesn’t shout. It doesn’t posture. It simply goes, faithfully and honestly, asking only that you pay attention.

And maybe that’s the real joy of owning one: in a world increasingly designed to isolate us from effort, the 1978 Porsche 911SC insists on involvement. It insists on presence. It insists that driving—real driving—is still a skill worth practicing.

Why this 911SC Speaks to Me

I am the second owner of this car. Well, 2.5 owner — my friend Hal had it long enough to use just a half a tank of gas. The original owner bought it new in Los Angeles — ironically, from the Porsche dealership managed by our friend Pete — and he drove it consistently until his death in 2022.

The original owner was a meticulous man — a successful businessman, an engineer and a pilot. He kept records of every repair, receipts for each tank of gas, and every catalog that came with the car. I found them in a pouch under the toolkit in the “frunk,” along with an April 1978 issue of Road & Track testing the new 911SC and an August 1978 issue of Money that answers the question, “Which cars hold their value best?”

The answer to this last question is obvious. An air-cooled Porsche 911 has character. Every rattle and buzz is a mystery, the controls are perplexing, and wind whistles over the windshield. But that thrum!

The sound of the boxer engine is as comforting as listening your lover’s heart. The steering is precise, and the clutch and brakes are consistent. They require — and reward — effort. When you’re finished driving it, you feel like you’ve actually done something.

Unlike modern vehicles, there are no modes. Just off and on. Stop and go. Listen and do. And that’s what I like about it.

The 1978 Porsche 911SC. Once you’ve lived with one, it’s hard to imagine wanting less.

But then you learn something new. A musician you admire actually made an offbeat choice to use something unexpected to achieve a different sound at a seminal moment in their career. In this case, that guitar would be a Gretsch 6120.

The Gretsch 6120 has always existed slightly sideways to expectation. Born in country music, adopted by rockabilly, hijacked by British Invasion modernists, and rediscovered by punk traditionalists, it has never belonged to a single genre—or a single moment.

By 1964, the guitar had already crossed an irreversible threshold. Rock ’n’ roll had gone global. On February 9, 1964, George Harrison stood on The Ed Sullivan Show with a Gretsch in his hands, and American music tilted permanently on its axis. The sound of the Beatles—jangling, declarative, melodic but defiant—was now embedded in the DNA of anyone paying attention.

Among those paying attention was a young kid in Southern California who would one day help to define American punk rock. Mike Ness has said it plainly: before punk, before the Ramones, before the Clash, he grew up on the Beatles and the Stones on his mother’s side, and Johnny Cash and American roots music on his father’s side. This matters, because it makes what came later feel less like a stylistic pivot and more like destiny.

In this context, the Gretsch 6120 fits perfectly. It is not just a guitar; it is a carrier signal. Introduced in the mid-1950s as a Chet Atkins signature, it was quickly claimed by artists who were less interested in polish than presence—Eddie Cochran, Duane Eddy, and eventually the British Invasion players who bent American instruments into something sharper and stranger.

Rockers loved the 6120’s distinctive orange glow, which remained on the model even after the western attributes disappeared. Eddie Cochran was the most notable early rock ’n’ roller to play a 6120, best known for performing Twenty Flight Rock in the 1956 film The Girl Can’t Help It. Eddy’s 6120 later defined the sound known as “twang” on several hit instrumentals during the late ‘50s.

John Lennon’s brief but consequential relationship with the 6120 came during the Revolver sessions in April 1966, when he reached for an orange 1963 Gretsch 6120 Nashville to bow to the pressure of the record company to create another hit single while the Beatles were trying to focus on recording their next album — something different, something new, something not just about love songs. That single, written and recorded in just two days, was “Paperback Writer.” Its opening riff—compressed, urgent, unmistakable—remains one of the most instantly recognizable moments in popular music. It doesn’t snarl. It speaks. And in retrospect, it speaks punk long before punk had a name.

Fast-forward three decades.

By the late 1990s, Mike Ness had survived punk in its most literal sense. Sobriety, age, and loss had stripped away posture and volume, leaving only intention. His solo albums—Cheating at Solitaire and Under the Influences—were not departures from punk so much as excavations beneath it. They reached backward into the music that formed him before distortion pedals and speed entered the picture: Hank Williams, the Carter Family, Wanda Jackson, Johnny Cash. It’s not surprising that Brian Setzer — perhaps the most well known modern player of the Gretsch 6120 — is featured as a guest musician on the song “Crime Don't Pay” on Cheating at Solitaire.

Many of Ness’ solo recordings were tracked on a 1964 Gretsch 6120 Nashville—the same bloodline as Lennon’s, separated by only a year. Same circuitry. Same Filter’Tron clarity. Same orange glow. Different chapter of the same book.

Once you understand Ness’ influences, this stops being surprising. He has been explicit about the through-line: rock only matters when it stays connected to its roots—country, blues, rockabilly, folk—and carries a little danger with it. The 6120 is uniquely suited to that task. It doesn’t hide mistakes. It doesn’t compress emotion into mush. It leaves space.

You can hear it on “Ballad of a Lonely Man” and “Don’t Think Twice.” The guitar gives the songs room to breathe—room for regret, resilience, and hard-won calm. This is not punk by volume. It’s punk by refusal: refusal to rush, to posture, to fake anything.

At other moments—“Cheating at Solitaire,” “The Devil in Miss Jones”—the urgency returns. The attack is sharper, the edge unmistakable. The same way Lennon’s Gretsch snapped to attention on “Paperback Writer,” Ness’s 6120 knows when to step forward and when to stay back. That’s not accidental. That’s lineage.

Mike Ness has said that punk, at its core, is not about how you look but what rebels inside you. The Gretsch 6120 embodies that philosophy in wood and wire. Flashy on the outside. Disciplined underneath. Honest to a fault.

Mike Ness’ Gretsch 6120 joined my collection not long ago, just before I spent an hour backstage with Ness after a show in Seattle. We talked about age, introspection, loss, and the obligation—once you’ve survived long enough—to give something back. Two old punks comparing notes.

When I pick up this 6120, I’m not chasing punk volume or P-90 growl. I’m chasing clarity. I’m learning restraint. I ignore the different tone variations offered by all the knobs and switches, find a setting I like and leave it there. I’m fine with a little twang.

That’s the quiet secret of the Gretsch 6120. It rewards restraint. It really rewards the unconventional, when the day comes when you want something different. Something distinctive. Something that pays homage to your heroes and the days when they chose something different.

And once you hear the lineage—from Lennon to Ness—you realize it was never a coincidence at all.

Note: John Lennon’s Gretsch 6120 sold at auction on March 12, 2026 for $1.27 million! Somebody values twang. :)

Any father might bestow his watch to his son. Sentimental value is priceless. But Brent’s father wasn’t just any man. Brent’s father was Barry Bishop, a legendary mountaineer, polar scientist, photographer and explorer. This legacy watch is now imbued with an impressive provenance.

Both Bishops started exploring when they were young. In 1951, while he was still an undergraduate at Dartmouth, Barry and a classmate planned and participated in an expedition to Mt. McKinley in Alaska with Brad Washburn. Reaching the summit on July 13, 1951, Barry claimed the sixth ascent of the mountain and the first by the West Buttress route. He later earned a master’s degree in geography, joined the U.S. Air Force, and became a scientific advisor to Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd at the Antarctic Projects Office in Washington, D.C.

By 1958, after he was honorably discharged from the Air Force at age 27, Bishop joined the staff of the National Geographic. Shortly thereafter, Bishop acquired a Rolex GMT-Master, Reference No. 6542.

At that time, the Rolex GMT-Master was a unique timepiece. It featured a date display and a distinctive red and blue 24-hour bezel, which could be rotated so the wearer could tell time in two different time zones. The bezel and markers, coated with radioactive Strontium 90, glowed so brightly they could turn day into night. One can imagine that Bishop, who was used to spending time in cold, dark, unforgiving climates, appreciated the luminosity and usefulness of his new chronometer, symbolizing the success he had reached at such a young age.

In 1961, Barry made the first ascent of the Himalayan peak Ama Dablam. With its soaring ridges and steep faces rising to 22,349 feet (6812 meters), Ama Dablam is sometimes referred as the “Matterhorn of the Himalayas.” This was also the first winter ascent in the Himalayas.

In 1963, Bishop was one of the first Americans to summit Mount Everest. The purpose of the American expedition was twofold: to reach the summit and to carry out scientific research programs in physiology, psychology, glaciology, and meteorology. Of particular interest were the studies on how the climbers changed physiologically and psychologically under extreme stresses at high altitudes, where oxygen deprivation was unavoidable. These studies were important to the developing U.S. space program, and among the sponsors of the expedition were the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Air Force.

On both of these Himalayan climbs, Barry Bishop wore his Rolex GMT-Master.

Unfortunately, Bishop was caught out overnight near the summit of Mt. Everest. Forced to bivouac in the open at 28,000 feet (8,535 meters), Bishop lost his toes and the tips of both pinky fingers to frostbite. This ended his technical climbing career. Though he stopped climbing, Bishop earned a Ph.D. in geography while he worked as a photographer, writer and educator with the National Geographic Society.

Barry’s son, Brent Bishop, was born in 1966. Just as his grandfather had carried his 3-year-old father on his back to the 6,684 feet summit of Mount Mitchell in North Carolina, Brent grew up scaling mountains with his father.

“I started climbing at a young age with my father and I kind of related to it. There was a lot of forced family fun as a child,” says Brent. “I got dragged up all sorts of things that were terrifying, but I was able to find my own way and I started working as a climbing guide when I was in college.”

The Bishop family adventure legacy continued, including a 10,000-mile overland journey from Amsterdam to Kathmandu in an International Harvester. Barry and his wife Lila, with 2-year-old son Brent and 4-year-old daughter Tara, crossed Europe and Asia. Then, Barry spent two years studying the culture-economics and environments of the Karnali region of Western Nepal as his family became immersed in their surroundings. Brent and his father would eventually climb together throughout the American East Coast and Rocky Mountains.

Growing up in the Bishop household was an education unto itself. “We had people like Jane Goodall at the kitchen table,” says Brent. “I remember spending an entire day with Sir Edmund Hillary watching John Wayne movies when I was a kid. He was fascinated by this American icon, John Wayne, and I’m thinking to myself, here’s the real John Wayne! He was out actually doing things and taking risks and making change in the world, not just on a Hollywood set!”

Brent distinctly remembers seeing his father wearing that Rolex GMT-Master throughout his childhood: “I remember as a child, this watch was always on his wrist.” At some point, however, the GMT-Master was replaced by a Rolex Explorer II, Ref. No. 1655, known as the “Freccione” to collectors. But Brent did not know when or why until 2024. This mystery would be solved after a chance meeting at The Explorers Club Annual Dinner in New York City, when former Rolex USA President Roland Puton excitedly told me about the day Barry Bishop came into his office to trade his old watch for a new Rolex Explorer II.

The Explorer II would have been a suitable, and highly luminous, replacement. Introduced in 1971, the Explorer II was originally intended for plumbing the depths of caves. A 24-hour hand and fixed bezel were meant to keep spelunkers or arctic explorers oriented when it could be easy to lose track of whether it was day or night. It is easy to see why Barry would be attracted to the new model: “Barry...that man loved fieldwork,” recalls his wife, Lila. “When he was working on the glacier for months, that wasn’t adventure; that was good, hard fieldwork.”

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, Barry Bishop continued both his duties with the National Geographic Society as Vice Chairman and then Chairman of the Committee for Research and Exploration and Chief of the Geographic Liaison Office. He also continued his research and service, leading Himalayan research expeditions in 1983 and 1985 and continuing to write for National Geographic. The 1985 expedition to Bhutan was a Rolex-sponsored Explorers Club Flag expedition, carrying Flag No. 200 and featuring a who’s who of American climbing royalty, including Yvon Chouinard, Doug Tompkins, Rick Ridgeway, John Roskelley and David Breashears. During this period, the Rolex Explorer II was always on Barry’s wrist.

Meanwhile, Brent’s climbing and work as a guide has taken him throughout the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Antarctic. Although it’s hard to believe, Brent’s climbing career has eclipsed that of his father.

In May 1994, at the age of 27, Brent ascended to the summit of Mt. Everest. Brent and Barry became the first father-son legacy to do so. Brent describes the experience with a self-effacing nonchalance that must be hereditary: “I ended up getting on Everest quite early. I was 26 at the time with a very small strong team. And off we went to Everest and I think that people ask, they make the point that that was quite early. But I think just being around climbing in my father’s influence for so long, it just felt normal. It did not feel like a big step for me at the time. I mean, in retrospect it was a big step but, at the time, I knew it’d be on Everest in the future. It just was earlier than I than I thought.”

To Brent, an equal achievement is the work he did to address the environmental degradation on the mountain. In 1994, Brent co-founded the Sagarmatha Environmental Expedition, an organization committed to cleaning trash off the slopes of Everest. Since its inception, the organization has removed more than 25,000 pounds of garbage from the mountain.

Barry Bishop was tremendously proud of his son’s achievements. In September 1994, the recently retired Barry and Lila left their home in Bozeman, Montana to drive to San Francisco, where Barry was to introduce Brent at a talk he was giving and the family would reunite with Tara. Tragically, their car would leave the road near Pocatello, Idaho, and roll over. Barry was killed.

“My father left us in 1994 and I had climbed Everest for the first time that spring. He was a guy that didn’t look in the rearview mirror very much. So, we didn’t really talk that much about Everest or that climb and being connected in that way, or even about me to be the first American legacy to summit Everest. He was killed in September, only a few months later,” says Brent. “So, there are all these missed conversations as I’ve gotten older. I’m sorry that didn’t take place.”

Fortunately, one other tradition was carried on from father to son: When Brent reached the summit of Mt. Everest in 1994, he was wearing his father’s Rolex Explorer II. Brent wore the watch to the summit of Mt. Everest again in 2002, when he celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the first ascent of Mt. Everest by climbing to the summit with Peter Hillary, Sir Edmund Hillary’s son, and he spread some of his father’s ashes at the summit. Brent and the watch summited Mt. Everest again in 2016, and it has seen many summits in between.

Brent explains the attraction he and his father shared for this storied timepiece: “Starting in 1991, I wore the Explorer II for all of the Seven Summits, and it has accompanied me on numerous trips to the Himalayas and other remote parts of the world. My father, a dedicated mountaineer, had a deep appreciation for exceptional gear, and Rolex truly embodies the craftsmanship, utility, durability, and design characteristic of such equipment. This is why he sought out the GMT-Master when he was young, and it’s why I cherish the Explorer II that was passed down to me as a legacy piece. Wearing this watch fills me with immense pride as I both literally and figuratively continue the family tradition.”

There is one other tradition that Brent carries on. He is the father of two boys, and both are climbers. When asked, “Do you run them up mountains when they’re miserable and unhappy?”, Brent responds with a combination of happiness and pride: “Oh, yeah. They’re both climbing and they’re good. They’re strong. They’re strong kids.”

It’s a safe bet that Barry and Brent Bishop’s Rolex has not seen the last of the Seven Summits.

Few books have shaped me as deeply as Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. I have read it more than once, actually needing it to guide me twice, but failing to act on the first occasion. I learned that a dream deferred is a dream denied, and that nothing changes unless you move.

Neil Peart’s Lonely Road Back to Life

Neil Peart is best known as the drummer and principal lyricist for the Canadian rock band Rush. What is less known is the story of his two heartbreaking losses, his passage through grief, and how he found his way back to life.

Between 1997 and 1998, Peart experienced two devastating tragedies in close succession: the death of his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, in a car accident, followed less than a year later by the death of his wife, Jackie, from cancer. Grief-stricken and emotionally adrift, Peart withdrew from public life and from Rush, uncertain whether he could ever return to music. Peart did not want to live and he did not want to die. However, he recognized there was a tiny flicker inside him, which he called his “little baby soul,” and he had to nurture this barely glowing ember by continuing to move. He had to do something to survive!

Motorcycling—long one of his passions—became both escape and therapy. Assuming the road-name “Ghost Rider,” Peart set out alone on an anonymous 55,000-mile journey through Canada, the United States and Mexico on a BMW motorcycle, his only guide being the avoidance of adverse weather forecasts and people. The road became a place where he could process grief without expectations, conversations, or schedules.

Published in 2002, the book chronicles this journey, mostly told in personal journal entries and Peart’s letters to his friend, Brutus, his longtime riding partner who was incarcerated and, therefore, unable to journey anywhere. Peart’s increasingly witty descriptions reveal his reawakening. He describes the first time he actually hears a person laugh, feels the warmth of sunlight and begins to appreciate the world around him. After a while, far from home, he realizes he can go back to the life he knew and begin again.

My Own Personal Journey

I first read Ghost Rider in 2003, after experiencing my own great loss, and it carried me through some very lonely times. Peart’s storytelling and eventual awakening to the world around him gave me hope. His wanderlust gave me a goal. It helped me find my feet again and begin moving forward.

I had purchased a BMW R1150RS motorcycle in 2002 and I had dreams of riding on cross-country trips. In reality, this was totally impractical. I was a new rider, barely skilled, and stuck in the treadmill of trying to start over both personally and professionally. The realities of not being a multi-millionaire rock musician with no family and a steady stream of royalties (a/k/a “mailbox money”) kept me chained to my desk as I climbed out of my hole. So, I picked at riding, managing trips of only a few miles here and there.

But, I was still hooked. In 2005, with the memory of Peart’s book still fresh, and after reading Long Way Round: Chasing Shadows Across the World by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, I traded the RS for a new BMW R1200GS, the same model all three had used on their adventures, in the same “arrest me red” color scheme, and I was on my way! (If only in my mind.)

In fact, 2005 was the start of a new relationship, a new house, new workspace and an expanding professional life. Over the next seven years, I barely rode the GS more than 300 miles per year, hardly more than the range on a single tank of gas. A 20-mile day was a big deal and my longest ever ride was less than 100 miles.

In late 2012, the wheels came off my life. I felt like the Mayor of Hiroshima, waking up one day, seeing a flash and saying “What the f*ck was that???” I was standing in the ashes of everything that had been, with absolutely everything I had possessed either gone or going. And then, for good measure, someone detonated another nuclear bomb beneath my feet. I was no longer starting over with nothing; I was starting over with less than nothing. In fact, substantially less than nothing. Now I knew the kind of emptiness Peart had felt, with the loss of both his wife and daughter in less than a year.

I limped through the winter, alone with my dog, unable to see a way forward. When spring arrived and the snow had melted, I sold my motorcycle in a fit of despair, giving up on my dream, firmly believing it was never going to happen. I had failed. I had dreamed big and never acted. It was over – my dream deferred was now denied – and I thought it was time to move on. I was in a much, much deeper hole than ten years before, and it was going to take a lot of work to climb back out.

The red GS was purchased by a buyer in Utah, and he enthusiastically told me how he planned to ride it to all the places Neil Peart had ridden his GS, including in Arches National Park, as pictured on the cover of Ghost Rider.

“Greeeaaaaaaat…. I could not be more happy for you,” I said, as I lied to the buyer on the phone. I could not possibly have been more miserable.

Because it was still winter in Utah, shipping the GS was delayed. I had to look at the death of a dream parked in my garage, waiting to be picked up to fulfill some other person’s dream — a dream I had also held for more than a decade but I had never acted on.

Then, a funny thing happened. One morning at dawn, with the red GS still in my garage, I woke up on the living room couch, fully clothed, with an empty bottle of Macallan 12 on the floor and my little dog at my feet. The knowing look on his face said “Check your phone.” There, on the floor, next to the empty whisky bottle, lay my phone with a message from eBay on the screen: “Your ‘Buy It Now Offer’ has been accepted.”

My what?

In the darkness of the night before, I had taken action to keep my dream alive, even though I now had no memory of what I had done.

Or, maybe it was the dog – my protector on many dark nights, and my enabler on many others. I loved that dog. He was loyal, honest, a good listener and he never talked back. This would not have been the first time, nor would it be the last, that he would silently endorse the validity of some brilliant idea I had posed to him for affirmation.

Regardless, I was now the owner of a newer BMW R1200GS, “Triple Black,” upgraded and heavily equipped with half the components in the Touratech catalog, ready for adventure.

I started immediately. Even though my health had crashed – I had lost 30 pounds in 30 days and my gall bladder was screaming for removal – I set out on a 700-mile tour of New England with a friend who recognized that I should not be left alone with whisky and my enabling dog. Except he was unable to join me on the first day and I rode by myself from west of Boston through the city and up to the lakes region of New Hampshire on the interstate, in Friday night traffic. Now I was really on my way.

For the next three days, we headed north through the White Mountains, east on the Kancamagus Highway, and then south to Cape Cod. The pain fell away and I was able to drift off to the music in my ears, the hum of the boxer engine, and the shadows cast by each day’s setting sun.

When I returned home, my doctor was furious. He refused to remove my gall bladder, angrily telling me “Come back when you are in more pain!” I never did.

Go West, Young Man

I took the black GS on longer and longer rides throughout the fall, and then I put it away for the winter. In the spring, a wise old friend half-jokingly encouraged me to ride the bike “Out West.” The dog agreed, so I bought a pickup truck, loaded the GS into the back, and set off with my son on a cross-country journey just three days after he graduated from high school. This trip, during which we crossed a time zone a day, was one of the best experiences of my entire life. Like Peart, I was moving through loss, isolation, anger, numbness and reconnection, and I was gradually recognizing the possibility of renewal. I was doing something to save myself.

Over the next five years, I rode the GS all over the western United States and Canada, covering more than 16,000 miles. My shortest ride was 300 miles and my longest was more than 2,000 miles. I rode from Sun Valley to Banff, Yellowstone to Bend, over Lolo Pass and on the “Loneliest Road in America,” halfway down the Pacific Coast, over the Rockies, Sierras, Tetons and Cascades, and through the Great Basin.

Throughout each trip, I kept myself focused on seeing what the road had to offer, how forward movement creates emotional survival, and how vast landscapes underscore human fragility and resilience. As Peart said: “I was running away to something, not from something.”

Now I have found that something. I have learned to live again.

I grew up without a father. To compensate, my mother enrolled my brother and I in the Big Brother program, where fathers or older men would sponsor boys and treat them as sons during visits once or twice a month. My brother was assigned a Big Brother who was someone a young boy yearned for in a father, a gregarious man with lots of kids who would take him to baseball games and include him as part of his family.

My assignment was different. My Big Brother was a middle-aged architect. A nice man with a pleasant wife. They were a childless couple, and he entered the program because they thought it would be fulfilling to mentor a boy.

The relationship was short-lived. Although well-intentioned, my Big Brother and his wife were ill-equipped to mentor an eight-year old like me. It had taken a long time to find me a match in the program. By then, I was jealous of my brother because he would go to baseball games and eat ice cream with his Big Brother. Do “Dad Stuff.”

My Big Brother was not interested in doing any of these things.

My only recollection of the short time I spent with this gentleman involves going to his impeccably crafted house, sitting in his study, and answering the question: “What do boys your age like to do?” I responded with an eager recitation of attending baseball games, eating ice cream, watching James Bond movies and the like. I may have even told him excitedly of Bond’s watch in “Live and Let Die,” a Rolex Submariner with magnetic properties and a whirring saw blade hidden in the bezel. I don’t remember his exact reply, but I know it included the word “no,” spoken with resignation and something akin to admitting defeat.

Nevertheless, my Big Brother cared and he tried to show me how to be a man, not a kid. He gave me a watch, “Because a man should have a watch[,]” and he emphasized that it had to be Swiss. The watch was an Anker, I believe, but the make and model are no longer important. I cherished that watch. This gift was a monumental act of kindness that I was not accustomed to. I wore it all through middle school and into high school.

But the watch was a dress watch and it was not waterproof. It did not withstand the rigors of summer camp, swimming, hiking, mountain climbing or scuba diving, which I began doing at the age of 14. The watch went with my mother when she moved to California after my senior year and I never saw it again.

I began getting to know my father when I was 18. He did not care about watches, but he understood the practicality of Harris tweed, Hickey Freeman suits, polished shoes and a navy blazer. I was still interested in underwater and the outdoors. To bridge the gap between us, my father bought me a supposedly waterproof Seiko watch to replace the Anker. I wore the Seiko all through college, until it flooded on a scuba dive, 90 feet down and near the end of my no decompression limit. I never trusted it (nor the brand) again. I still own the Seiko, even though I have not had it on my wrist in more than 30 years. I keep it because it reminds me of my father.

My heroes had one thing in common: they all wore Rolex watches. Sir Edmund Hillary, Don Walsh, Jacques Cousteau, Bob Ballard, Chuck Yeager, Scott Carpenter and multiple astronauts. Even James Bond. ESPECIALLY James Bond! A Rolex watch was specified as a necessary accessory by Ian Fleming in the original Bond novels, and the character always wore a Rolex Submariner in every movie that I devoured as a kid. I had to have one.

Naturally, a Rolex is not cheap and it took me some time to be able to afford one. When I got my first real job in 1991, I bought myself a Rolex Submariner and all was right in the world. I had arrived. I had achieved at least one childhood dream.

Next, I managed to merge my career with my growing interest in exploration. I met and became friends with most of my childhood heroes, and I began to follow in their footsteps. I dutifully wore my Rolex Submariner on all of my adventures - scuba diving, skydiving, deep submersible diving to Titanic, diving 16,000 feet deep into the Bermuda Triangle - and it served me well.

My son was born in 1996. Fatherhood is life’s greatest adventure for me. I had little guidance in parenting while growing up, and I have always tried to be the best father I can be. I wanted to do “Dad Stuff” with my son (and later my daughter), even as I was then acting as an adult in search of a childhood. I taught my son to swim and shoot, we read books about sharks and stars, went flying together, snuck rides on my motorcycle, and I took him to a rocket launch.

Little did I know, but my young son had a hero: Me.

My son also had an affinity for watches. Not just any watch, but his DAD’s watch. I discovered this in 2002 when I had a horrible motorcycle accident not far from the house. The bike was totaled and left smoking in a ditch. I was banged up and left smoking on the road, after going asphalt surfing at 60 mph and burning through my protective clothing. I was unable to walk. The neighbor called my wife and she arrived in her minivan, kids in their car seats in the back, to drive me to the hospital (because it was faster than waiting for the ambulance). My six-year old son was horrified at the sight of his father. His eyes were huge and he was visibly upset.

Long story short, my Rolex took the brunt of the impact when I hit the pavement and the strength of the watch saved me from breaking my wrist. The watch was in pretty rough shape. When my son came into the hospital room to see me, injured and covered in bandages, he said only one thing: “Dad, please take care of your watch, because I was hoping you would give it to me someday.” I was floored by this remark and it was burned into my brain.

I had the Rolex repaired — the shattered crystal replaced and the broken bezel corrected — but I would not allow the repair center to polish the deep scratches caused by the asphalt surfing from the bracelet or the case. I wanted a reminder that I didn’t have to be stupid to be tough.

The following year, I went on my second Titanic expedition and there I met a well known British diver named Carl Spencer. I was in awe of Carl’s accomplishments as an explorer, but even more so by our shared upbringing, our common heroes, and all our similarities. Like me, Carl wore a Rolex dive watch (the Sea-Dweller, which is an uprated Submariner), he had a young son who idolized him, and he planned to give his watch to his son someday. We bonded over our mutual interests and became good friends.

As I completed successive expeditions with my Rolex on my wrist, I started hearing my son’s voice in my head more and more. “Dad, please take care of your watch, because I was hoping you would give it to me someday.” I was taking more risks, and the likelihood that the watch would be broken or lost was growing. So, as I prepared to go on my third Titanic expedition, this time as the leader, I retired my original Submariner from expedition duty and I replaced it with a Sea-Dweller.

In 2009, Carl died while leading a deep diving expedition to explore the wreck of the Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic. He did not want to go. He was on the phone with me the week before saying he felt uneasy about the expedition but he felt pressured because he didn’t want to disappoint the team. I tried to bribe him with a casual dive trip with me instead, and he was sorely tempted because our boyhood heroes, Scott Carpenter and Buzz Aldrin, were going and he had never met them. But Carl went to Greece instead. He died a week later, tragically, in an accident that was totally avoidable.

In the wake of his death, Carl’s widow auctioned his watches, including the Rolex Carl wanted to give to his son. Her husband’s death had left Carl’s widow in dire straights, and the family needed the money.

When the hammer fell at auction, the watch sold for just $50 over what was then the market value for a similar Rolex Sea-Dweller in any second-hand jewelry store.

I was crushed. A family had lost a husband and a father, and — for the sake of $50 — a young boy had lost a tangible reminder of who his father was and what he had accomplished.

I immediately gave my Submariner to my son instead of waiting until he was an adult, as I had planned to do. He was 15 at the time, and he proudly wore it on our first dive trip together that year. My son treasures this watch. Giving it to him at that time — when I could still see him enjoy it — was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

My son is 29 now. He’s a fine young man, and he still wears his father’s watch. But it’s his now, and he has made his own memories with it. I would not want it any other way.

Postscript: In 2017, Ben Clymer at Hodinkee heard the story of Carl’s watch and he put out the call to see if we could find it. We did, but the owner declined to sell it back to the family, even at a premium.

All of my loved ones now have watches from my collection.

The author, a self-described “literary stowaway” on a Russian research vessel engaged in a secret search for two casualties of World War II, a Japanese submarine and a British liner laden with vast quantities of gold, devotes an entire chapter to describing one man. Ralph White is “the type of adventurer any red blooded, ten-year-old boy would admire, as if he was created by Clive Cussler or Ian Fleming.” The rest of the chapter flows from there, page after page, but it is still not enough.

As White himself said in an interview, “I was born an adult in search of a childhood. And I’ve been very successful at that.”

Born in San Bernardino in 1941 and raised in Hawaii, White learned to dive young and joined the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served two tours of duty in Vietnam as part of the legendary “Force Recon” unit. He was a knife-fighting instructor and, later, a celebrated free-fall cameraman. White made nearly 3,000 jumps, co-invented the Bell camera helmet, and captured breathtaking images from air and sea.

Over the decades, White built a singular career as an underwater cinematographer: hundreds of film and television credits, countless assignments for the National Geographic Society, and front-row seats to some of the most remote environments on Earth — from hydrothermal vents to Arctic shipwrecks. His peers recognized him with honors from The Explorers Club, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences.

But the wreck of the Titanic became his great axis.

The Mount Everest of Shipwrecks

In 1976, while on assignment in Scotland to search for the Loch Ness Monster, Ralph White, Emory Kristof and David Doubilet hatched an idea to find and photograph the most famous shipwreck in history, the R.M.S. Titanic. To do so, the three photographers realized they would have to design lights and cameras capable of withstanding the crushing 6,000 pounds per square inch pressure at the depth of wreck site.

Also present was a young geologist named Robert Ballard. Ballard would later play a critical role in the group’s planning: because of his side gig as a reservist in the U.S. Navy, Ballard could find funding.

In the summer of 1978, White and Kristof dropped a “boomerang” camera at the Titanic’s distress call position to see how deep the silt was and hopefully find debris. The device dropped a weight as it got close to the bottom, and then shot a couple of still frames as it came back to the surface. Importantly, the images revealed a lack of sedimentation and the presence of marine life, which allowed the development and testing of additional equipment to find the Titanic. Additional expeditions followed in the early 1980s, when White and Kristof were not otherwise filming the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and helping to discover and explore the world’s northernmost shipwreck, the HMS Breadalbane, which sank in the High Arctic in 1853 during a search for the fabled Northwest Passage.

These expeditions were a boon for Rolex. Although White had worn a Rolex GMT-Master in Vietnam, he had lost the watch while scuba diving. During his early years at “The Geographic,” White would wear beater watches while Kristof favored a Rolex Submariner, Ref. 5512. But, when feted for their work, they would both wear Mickey Mouse watches. This greatly annoyed T. Walker Lloyd, who had established relationships with both Rolex and the National Geographic Society. In 1978, Lloyd helped White acquire a Rolex Submariner, Ref. 1680, which he would wear for the rest of his life.

In the summer of 1985, White and Kristof joined the French-American Titanic expedition aboard the oceanographic research vessels Le Suroit and Knorr, working alongside Ballard and scientists from IFREMER. The seven-week search was grueling: black water, crushing pressure, storms, and the looming possibility of failure. Then — just after midnight on September 1 — everything changed.

As White recorded in his journal, in a note to his then partner Astrid:

“Your birthday, the 1st. Happy Birthday! Your present is at 01:05:38, 41 43 8 N, 49 56 50 W. We found the TITANIC. Congratulations. We did IT! I’ve been going 15 hours STRAIGHT. I got off watch at 00:00 local time the 1st, I was awakened at 00:45 and we got a confirmation on a number 1 room boiler at 01:05:38. Everything in the ship went bananas! It’s all there! Bob even hugged me because he could not afford the extra expense of a film crew, but thank god Ralph gambled and was there! We’ve won. We did it. It’s in the can. Confirmed forever!”

White recorded the Titanic’s moment of discovery using his Rolex Submariner. You can see the watch on his wrist as he films Ballard’s reaction when he first sees the Titanic. The watch became ubiquitous on White’s adventures for the rest of his life, normally with a small compass affixed to its steel bracelet.

White ultimately made 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site in multiple submersibles — more than any other American — and helped lead and document expeditions in 1987, 1991, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. His work shaped the IMAX film Titanica, informed James Cameron’s Titanic, and brought the world unprecedented images from two and a half miles down.

He often joked that he had spent more time on the Titanic than Captain Smith — a quip with a solid edge of truth.

Remembering Ralph

Ralph White died on February 4, 2008, leaving behind a generation of explorers and filmmakers who learned from his craft and courage.

Ironically, White never received either compensation or credit from National Geographic for his role in discovering the Titanic. Indeed, his film was confiscated before the ship reached shore in 1985, and White and Kristof were omitted from the team when Ballard returned to the wreck site in 1986. His gamble with Bob never paid off while he was alive.

He did, however, receive credit from Rolex. In 1991, the company gifted him a second Rolex Submariner, Ref. 16613, and he was provided with a specially-engraved Rolex Explorer II, Ref. 16570, for his final expedition to the Titanic in 2005. White cherished these watches. To him, they represented well-deserved recognition for his accomplishments, and he wore them proudly.

In 2022, White’s ashes made a final dive to the wreck of the Titanic. In a personal tribute, they were accompanied by my own 1978 Rolex Submariner, Ref. 1680, inside the submersible. I knew he would have been proud of having both memorials, because one did not go without the other.

White was a patient man. He knew he was always guaranteed a place on any expedition because hard work and skill trumped being cunning and having connections. He knew time worked in his favor, because reliability is essential when working in extreme environments, and those who knew him valued this attribute more than anything. He personified “The Recon Creed” of his beloved Marine Corps: “A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word and achieve what others can only imagine.”

I am proud to have known him and to have called him my friend.

Strummer had recently emerged from a long period of inactivity he referred to as his “Wilderness Years” to make exciting original music with his new band, The Mescaleros.  I was entering my own wilderness years, and I found solace in his music, both new and old.  I was kicking myself for missing Joe’s most recent local show, and I was eagerly awaiting his return so I could relive the excitement I felt when I first saw The Clash 20 years earlier in 1982.  This never happened.

For reasons I don’t clearly understand, I went into a deep dive into Joe’s story and his music.  I even cut my hair into a mohawk.  

I finally channeled my energy into researching and recreating Joe’s iconic guitar, which was famous around the world but not carefully documented.  This resulted in a 2-year collaboration with Billy Rowe, who was just starting Rock N’ Roll Relics to build faithful recreations of the guitars of his heroes.  

I performed the research and acquired the parts - all original components from ‘60s and ‘70s Fender Telecasters that found their way onto Joe’s guitar as he modified it during his years of ownership. Billy put the pieces together.  He even painted the body its original sunburst color before sourcing the exact auto body primer and black paint that Strummer used to paint over the original finish shortly after he acquired the guitar. Then, we acquired or recreated the stickers, placed them on the guitar, and wore them down to how they appeared at Joe’s last live show at Brixton Town Hall in November 2002.

Finally, in 2007, the guitar was delivered.  I took a few photos and posted them on the Internet (well before there was a thing called “social media”) and a strange thing happened.  

A member of Joe’s “Manc Posse” in Manchester, England saw the photos and he contacted me with a request.  Members of The Mescaleros were reuniting to play a tribute show to Joe.  Joe’s original guitar was in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and it was unlikely to be released to play the show in England.  Would I be willing to loan my guitar to the band to be played in the show?  

Of course, I agreed.  

A friend of Joe’s collected the guitar and hand-carried it to England, where Chris Donaghey of The Infidels filled in for Joe and played it in the show.  

Photos of my guitar appeared in “Rolling Stone,” apparently because it was mistaken for the actual guitar ensconced in the RNR Hall of Fame.  When the guitar was returned, a video was included.  To my astonishment, it showed Andy Boo, Strummer's guitar tech, and Mick Jones marveling over my guitar and how accurate it was in matching Joe’s guitar.

Not long after, Fender introduced its own “tribute” to Joe’s guitar.  IMHO, it’s “shite.” Nevertheless, if it or my guitar inspired just one person to find their way through their own wilderness years, it was worth the effort.  RIP, John Graham Mellor.  We miss you.

And yet—hidden just beneath the surface of mainstream collecting—there exists a fascinating counter-history: a world of Rolex watches made for specific organizations, available only to their members, employees, or honorees. These watches were never advertised broadly, never intended for retail display, and in many cases were never meant to circulate at all.

They are the engraved Rolexes—the presentation watches, the commemoratives, the insider pieces. And today, they are among the rarest and most story-rich watches the brand has ever produced.

The Language of the Caseback

In standard Rolex production, the caseback is resolutely plain. Almost always solid steel or gold without decoration. Just another part of a tool. This restraint is part of the brand’s identity.

Which is precisely why Rolex-engraved casebacks matter.

Although many owners would have a jeweler engrave their initials, an anniversary, memorial, or even artwork, onto the back of their personal watches, casebacks engraved by the Rolex itself were a rarity.

When Rolex itself engraved an organization’s name, emblem, or anniversary into the steel, it marked a deliberate exception. These watches were not about resale value or market positioning. They were about belonging—to a company, a unit, a team, an expedition, or a moment in time.

Across the decades, Rolex quietly produced such watches for:

• Military units and government organizations (Ex. the British Attack Helicopter Regiment, Explorer II - approximately 48 pieces).

• Exploration and scientific expeditions (Ex. Erling Kagge, Explorer II; 1986 Steger International Polar Expedition, Explorer II).

• Corporations recognizing service or achievement (Ex. Chevrolet “Diamond Jubilee Award 1911 - 1986” - unknown number).

• Sporting events and championship winners (Ex. Rolex 24 at Daytona, Daytona Cosmograph - 1 watch presented to the winner each year).

• National milestones and institutional anniversaries (Ex. “100 Years of the Panama Canal,” Yacht-Master II - 150 pieces).

Often the modifications were subtle: a logo on the dial, a serial number tied to an organization, or a deeply personal inscription on the back. Sometimes the production numbers were counted in dozens. Sometimes fewer. In nearly every case, documentation is scarce—and that scarcity is part of the appeal.

A Vanishing Practice

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rolex began retreating from these bespoke programs. As the brand’s global profile and secondary-market value exploded, the idea of customized dials or engravings became harder to reconcile with brand control and consistency. The practice stopped almost entirely in 2010, with only a few know exceptions.

Which makes the watches that did slip through—especially in that transitional era—all the more compelling.

One of the most elegant examples came in 2004, in collaboration with an institution whose values aligned almost perfectly with Rolex’s own.

The Explorers Club and Rolex

Founded in 1904, The Explorers Club has long stood as a gathering place for those who push into the unknown—across oceans, into polar ice, beneath the sea, and beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Its members have been at the forefront of human exploration for more than a century. Many of its members are Rolex testimonees, including Sir Edmund Hillary, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Ranulph Fiennes and Robert Swan; and The Explorers Club and Rolex have had a formal relationship for decades.

In 2004, to mark the Club’s centennial anniversary, Rolex Watch USA partnered with The Explorers Club on a members-only opportunity that now feels almost unthinkable.

Eligible members could order either:

• A Rolex Oyster Perpetual Explorer, or

• A Rolex Explorer II,

each fitted with a specially engraved caseback bearing the 1904–2004 Explorers Club Centennial logo.

There was no special dial. No external branding. From the front, these watches were indistinguishable from standard production models of the era. The distinction lived entirely on the back—hidden against the wrist, visible only to the wearer or someone invited to look closer.

But the logo itself was special, unique, created solely for this collaboration. In addition to the dates and the word “Centennial,” the logo included a full rectangular depiction of The Explorers Club Flag. The presence of this image created its own precedent.

The Flag

The Explorers Club Flag is one of the most revered symbols in the history of exploration. First issued in 1918, each numbered Flag represents the Club’s formal endorsement of an expedition deemed to advance scientific knowledge, geographic discovery, or humanity’s understanding of the natural world. The Flag has accompanied many of the most consequential expeditions in human history: to the summits of the world’s tallest mountains, to the North and South Poles, into the depths of the world’s deepest oceans and aboard Apollo missions to the Moon, extending the Club’s reach beyond Earth itself.

Fewer than 10 percent of the Club’s members have ever had the privilege of carrying The Explorers Club’s Flag, which makes the achievement even more symbolic. Indeed, the achievement was so rare, and the number of achievers so small, that the Club was reluctant to place a full depiction of the Flag on merchandise available to members, lest the other 90 percent have the opportunity to display the Flag without going through the same rigorous vetting process.

This reluctance eased with the Club’s collaboration with Rolex on this program in 2004.

The Explorers Club Centennial Rolex Watches

Orders were accepted only during a limited nine-month window. The Rolex-engraved watches were available exclusively to Club members — individuals whose lives were already defined by expeditions, research, and exploration — and only through a convoluted process. Members had to call The Explorers Club to place their order. After membership was verified, the Club would place the order directly with Rolex. Then, Rolex would produce the watch, engrave it, and send it to a Rolex authorized dealer near the member for delivery and payment.

Production numbers were never publicly (or even privately) disclosed. Based on the short duration of the program, my familiarity with the organizational relationship, and my own extensive research over the past 20 years, I believe the total number of watches delivered to be less than 20.

I was able to purchase three: an Explorer II for me, and Explorer II for a friend who had been particularly helpful to me, and a Sea-Dweller as a “one-off” because I was about to lead what was then to be the last expedition to explore the Titanic using deep submersibles.

Why These Watches Matter

From a collector’s standpoint, Rolex-engraved watches occupy a fascinating middle ground. They are:

• Mechanically identical to standard references.

• Visually discreet, often invisible to casual observers.

• Historically specific, tied to real institutions and moments.

• Extremely rare, with provenance often harder to trace than the watches themselves.

But more importantly, they tell stories that modern luxury rarely does. An engraved Rolex does not ask, “What does this watch say about me?” It asks, “What did I do to earn this?”

The Explorers Club Centennial watches embody that ethos perfectly. They were not rewards for sales targets or mass recognition. They were quiet markers of membership in a community that measures achievement in miles traveled, data gathered, and risks undertaken in the most remote places on our planet and beyond.

And, unlike other engraved Rolexes that seem to wind up unused in collectors’ safes before they eventually go to auction, The Explorers Club Centennial watches are actually used as the tool watches they are intended to be. I have worn my Explorer II and Sea-Dweller to explore the Titanic (twice), to film wild elephants in India, to find the Apollo rockets that launched men to the Moon, and on an expedition to the North Pole.

The End of an Era

Today, Rolex no longer offers open-ended organizational engraving programs. The era of logo dials and institutional casebacks has largely passed, preserved only in vintage examples and a handful of late exceptions.

That makes watches like the 2004 Explorers Club Centennial watches not just rare but emblematic of something lost: a time when Rolex occasionally made watches for very specific people, for very specific reasons.

They were never meant to be seen by everyone – they were meant to be used in extreme environments with nobody but the wearer knowing their true provenance.

And that, perhaps, is exactly why they matter.