He quickly passed the second cannon bay and dropped to the third. He swam quickly. He’d already chosen his destination.
“Where are you headed so fast?” Tom asked.
“The aft hold.”
“What did they store in the aft hold?”
“The ship’s gold.” Sam said it like a kid exploring buried treasure.
“I thought you wanted to date the ship, not loot it?”
“We can do both, can’t we?”
He descended to the sixth floor. And followed it as far back as he could. A solid hatch barred their way. Sam looked around for something heavy. A single cannonball had rolled down into the room behind him. He turned around and reached for it. The increased weight wreaked havoc on his buoyancy, and he carefully adjusted his BCD to compensate.
Sam returned to the hatch. He slowly swung the old cannonball at it. The hatch obliterated on impact.
The silt had stirred and visibility was less than a couple feet. Sam entered the room feeling with his hands for any obstructions. They found something solid and he stopped to see what it was.
“Tom, I found the treasure chest.”
Tom swam in from behind him. “Thanks for kicking up all the silt.”
There was no way he would be able to remove it. Sam had to open it. He shoved his dive knife into the side of the lock. It broke immediately. He then pried it open with his bare hands.
Behind him, Tom shined his flashlight directly on the old treasure chest.
It was empty.
Chapter Thirty Four
Sam checked his dive computer. He had used a little more of the Heliox than he should have by now. He often used the oxygen and helium mix in deep water dives which otherwise would be prone to complications caused by nitrogen saturation. He shook his head at the reading. He shouldn’t have entered the wreck at all without prior planning, but had always wanted to dive a British Man-O-War.
“How’s your gas levels?” Sam asked.
“Fine, but let’s not dawdle.”
“Okay, I’ll follow you.” Sam watched Tom swim past the damaged hatch. Waited until he cleared it, and then followed.
He followed Tom’s dive light up the two vertical chambers they had come in through. And then something fell. From what he could see it was part of the wooden structure supporting the cannon bay doors. Not that it mattered what it was — what mattered was it was now falling towards him and sending millions of tiny silt particles into the immediate area around him.
The entire wreck became a whiteout.
“You okay Tom?” Sam asked.
“I’m fine. You?”
“I’m all right, but the place is now a complete whiteout.” Sam ran his hand along the florescent guidewire until it stopped.
He carefully inspected the severed end. Something had cut it in two. Sam shined his flashlight around. Panic and claustrophobia was rising quickly. He set his emergency spool — tying it to the wooden shard directly below him. If he was going to get lost, he was going to make certain that he can make it back to where he started at least.
“You okay Sam?” It was Tom’s reassuring voice. Asked like a casual question about what’s taking him so long. Tom was a better wreck diver than Sam would ever be, but even so, the man knew exactly how dangerous the situation was.
“Yeah, I’m all right. It’s a complete silt out here. And my guidewire’s been severed.”
“I’m coming back for you. I’ve switched my strobe light on. Let me know when you can see it.”
Sam let himself ascend. Carefully feeling his way through the ship. “Copy that.”
A few moments later his hand reached through an opening. Tom caught it and gripped it and pulled him through.
The water above was much clearer. “Thanks,” Sam said.
Once out of the Man-O-War the two quickly made their way towards the surface. Stopping at the ten-foot mark to swap to the spare dive tanks and perform a decompression safety stop.
Sam swore. “I forgot to get a sample of the wood so we can carbon date the ship.”
Tom grinned. “I wouldn’t worry about that. I found this.”
Tom opened his hand. Sam looked at it. Something glowed inside — a gold coin dated 1721.
Chapter Thirty Five
Sam removed his dive tanks and stripped his wetsuit.
Elise came through the door. “You’re going to want to see this. I’ve finished making calculations based on the movement of water over the Bimini Road.”
“And what did you find?”
“I know how it is used to create rogue waves,” Elise replied. “Follow me to the mission room. My laptop’s set up and I’ll show you the hydrology and wave prediction reports.”
Sam stood up to follow her. “How?”
“Through constructive interference,” she replied.
Tom slipped on a V-neck. “What the hell’s that?”
Sam began explaining as they walked up the stairs. “The basic underlying physics that makes phenomena such as rogue waves possible is that different waves can travel at different speeds, and so they can ‘pile up’ to build larger waves. Constructive interference allows two waves to join and form a resultant wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude.”
Elise entered the mission room and sat down. “In basic terms, each wave travels at slightly different speeds. If they share a similar frequency, they can stack up on top of each other. In nature, it’s not a particularly unusual event for two waves to combine, but in rare circumstances, three or more waves combine with each other. The result is that the final wave height is exponentially larger.”
“Okay, but how does the Bimini Road change any of this?”
Elise took a deep breath. Swallowed. “Because I just ran wave prediction software over the top of the recreated seafloor including the Bimini Road, based on the underwater survey that Tom kindly obtained for me.”
“And the results?” Sam asked.
“The strange rectangular blocks that make up the Bimini Road serve to adjust the speed of the waves. It slows the faster ones and speeds up the slow ones until all of the waves align.”
Sam grinned. “That proves it. The Bimini Road is artificially creating rogue waves!”
Elise looked pleased with herself. “Want to see it?”
“Absolutely,” Sam replied.
Elise pressed play, and the computer-generated wave prediction showed the waves flowing from the north east, along north Bimini Island and striking into the Bimini Road. With limited swell, the thing made very little changes to the subsequent wave height. But as the swell increases, the force striking the Bimini Road increased the height of the wave exponentially.
“Show me a projection with six feet of swell,” Sam said.
Elise clicked on the computer and then typed the initial wave height and pressed play. The swell increased to ten feet once it struck the Bimini Road.
“Okay, what about ten feet?”
The two of them watched the projection. It now produced a twenty-five-foot wave.
Sam wasn’t convinced it would make a deadly rogue wave. “Okay, go twenty feet. Let’s see what that does.” He watched the computer aided program run its course. Sam held his breath. Swallowed. And then said, “That’s a hundred-foot rogue wave right there.”
“You were right,” Elise replied.
“Only I wish to hell I wasn’t.”
Tom looked concerned. “I hate to burst your bubble and all, but if this is correct — why have rogue waves only recently become a problem in the area?”
“I can answer that,” Elise replied. “It’s missing a keystone.”
“What keystone?” Sam asked.
She handed him a picture of a very large rectangular stone. “This is what it would have looked like.” Elise then handed him the ultrasound image of the entire area, with a marking in front of the first rectangular stones to form the Bimini Road. “It would have gone there. Without it, the waves never match up. But once you include the keystone, the waves then all run together.”