A Deadly Path To Treasure
Published by Robert C. Moran at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Robert C. Moran
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter 1, The Adventure Begins
Chapter 2, Solitary Confinement ...Mind Games
Chapter 5, Cold Weather Detachment
Chapter 6, A Dream. The Treasure Ship
Chapter 7, History of the 1715 Treasure Fleet
Chapter 9, Mel Fisher Joins Kip Wagner
Chapter 10, The Swedish Schooner “Astrid”
Chapter 11, Sand Dredging in the Keys
Chapter 13, The Trouble with Treasure
Chapter 14, The Grumman Widgeon
Chapter 15, The Bronze Cannons
Chapter 16, The “Northwind” sinks
Chapter 19, The Smuggling Days
Chapter 20, The “Santa Margarita”
Chapter 23, A Tennessee Horse Farm
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He's had encounters with drug smugglers, landed his plane in
jungle airstrips and fought modern day pirates. He's faced an
armed robber and only he walked away alive.
Robert C. "Bob" Moran is the individual authors create as the hero in their novels. The difference is that he actually lived through these adventures and is still around to write about them. He’s been shipwrecked at sea, surviving five days in a lifeboat with little food or water.
His lifeboat landed in Cuba just after the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev missile crises and he was arrested as a spy and saboteur and sentenced to face a firing squad by Fidel Castro.
He’s discussed treasure hunting with the Queen of Spain, socialized on the beach at Nice, France with Elizabeth Taylor and drank champagne in Villefranche on the French Riviera with Errol Flynn.
The author is shown here with his Grumman Widgeon amphibian seaplane at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.
This is the true story of the incredible adventures of one man that led him to be part of the richest Spanish treasure finds in the history of the New World. It's estimated that the total value of the 1715 and the 1622 Spanish Fleet treasure recoveries could approach $800 million dollars and more is still being found by the divers today.
The Spanish galleons Atocha and Margarita were found in the 1980's by Mel Fisher and his "Golden Crew." The story has been the subject of numerous National Geographic print and television specials and also one major Hollywood production starring Cliff Robertson and "Mash" star Loretta Switt.
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Capt. Bob Moran's, "A Deadly Path To Treasure ", has something for everyone. Do recounts of cold war intrigue interest you? Does being a political pawn after being washed up on Castro's shore grip you? How about flying fast aircraft by the seat of the pants on normal and somewhat dubious missions? Have you ever read a first person account of how the fastest draw walked away to tell the story?
The above stories and many more are laced throughout the book. Oh, I didn't mention the quest and discovery of TREASURE, sunken treasure, the real thing. Capt. Moran is more than a treasure hunter, he is a treasure finder. His book is the latest installment of books being written that convey the work, play, frustrations, rewards, and the heartbreaks associated with the search and discovery of the doomed 1622 fleet sister galleons " Nuestra Senora de Atocha " and the " Santa Margarita ", located near the magic island of Key West, Fl.
The book is well written, and hard to leave unattended until finished. The photographs are as remarkable as the stories themselves. The CD format is unique and easier to read. I liked adjusting the fonts to a larger size and supersizing the pictures. When I joined Treasure Salvors, I missed meeting Capt. Moran by just a few months. I heard legendary stories about him from the crew. I finally met Bob in 2010. When he told us he was working on his book. We all prodded him over the last year to get it done. It was worth waiting so long to meet him, and it was well worth waiting for the book. It is another link to the puzzle as to what Treasure Salvors Inc. really was! This belongs in your library. They are stories of a giant, written by a humble man.
How about Volume 2 Capt. Bob? Randy " Hambone " Barnhouse.
Just in from sea Bob. Read your book while I was digging holes on the Atocha. I really enjoyed your life story and what a life it has been. I enjoyed seeing you when you were here. Captain Andy Matroci.
Bob, Received the book/CD today and did a quick speed read. Need to go back at my leisure and do a proper job of reading it. I really enjoyed your writing style. Clean, no bull shit or artifices. Bill Diaz
Bob, I had 3 long airplane flights this week and read your DVD/book on my Kindle (converted it to a .mobi file). What a great story…and what an adventurous life you’ve had. It must have been very entertaining, after the fact, to mull over some of those situations you were in…easy to laugh about them after the fact!!! Anyway, you’ve made a great contribution to the history of Treasure Salvors…and I appreciate that (so will many others). I will add this to my website tomorrow and send a general email to the entire Sunken Treasure Book Club. OK if I send out your address???? Anyway, congratulations on a great work!!!! Dave Crooks
Capt. Bob Moran’s book ‘A Deadly Path To Treasure’, is an insight to an incredible life of which most people only dream about. The author puts the reader in the first person as they flip page after page. This is a marvelous read which should be in any armchair treasure enthusiast’s or seasoned treasure hunter’s library. Capt. Curtis William Erling White
Great book Bob! An easy read. What a life story. You are an original member of "The Wild Bunch"! A must read for any Atocha buff too. Bill Pearson
"Bob just finished reading it and I must say you have led such an interesting life. I had no idea you had gone through so many adventures. Thanks for the read." Karen Hargreaves
This is one of the best books I've ever read. Joy Warshauer
Bob. This is a great read. I cannot put it down! Or should I say, turn it off. Are you (or do you) have this book in print?? Ben Costello
Bob Moran is a true adventurer, a true treasure hunter and the "Real Deal." "A Deadly Path to Treasure" covers the career of this truly interesting pirate, and tells the "real story" behind finding the huge Atocha treasure. A must read for any genuine lover of adventure. Wayne Gales, author.
Okay, finished the book/DVD. I loved the color photos that are probably much easier to get in this format rather than paying for color printing in a book.
The book was extremely interesting and, I imagine, mostly true. (I have to trust you on the pre-1980 stuff)
This book not only describes the treasure hunt, it is about the treasure hunter. Bob’s life as shown here let’s everyone see what has been known to some degree all along. Treasure hunters are just a little different than most people. Bob seemed to have a knack that if his life got too mundane, he was able to spice it up a little, almost to the point where he wished he hadn’t. I loved it! Laney Southerly
An absolute must read for all sunken treasure hunter “wannabes.” Captain Robert Moran will set your fantasies on fire and reveal the sometimes brutal truth of treasure hunting. Robert gives fantastic historical details concerning the lost Spanish Fleets. Read about the exciting discovery of the "Atocha" and "Margarita" and take a look at the photos of the bounty. Brenda Middlebrook.
The Golden Rule. “He who has the gold, makes the rules!”
The links in this gold chain from the Margarita shipwreck could be opened up and spent like money.
Gold and emerald jewelry. Gold coins and rare china from a 1715 shipwreck.
This book is dedicated to my compatriots, the men and women of Treasure Salvors, Inc. who showed by their dedication and sacrifice, that anything is possible if you believe that:
“Today is the Day.”
There have been a number of excellent books written about the 1715 Fleet and 1622 Atocha and Margarita treasure finds and all have been from the authors own perspective and experiences.
I’ve always felt that I had my own story to tell from my own point of view. I thank my friends and family members who have encouraged me for so many years to write these memoirs.
I want to thank my good friends Don Kincaid, Pat Clyne and John de Bry for their generosity in furnishing many of the wonderful photos in this book. Thanks also to my friend Jeff Hanauer for his expert retouching and computer enhancement of some of the faded photos and slides that have survived for so many years in my musty old albums.
Front Cover: 1715 Fleet shipwreck 8 escudo gold coins. Photo by John de Bry. The Center for Historical Archaeology.
Photos of 1715 treasures by John de Bry
Photos of Atocha and Margarita treasures and activities by: Don Kincaid, Pat Clyne, Syd Jones and the author.
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A True Story of a Lifetime of Adventure.
Chapter 1
It was December 1962. The 50 year old 110 ft. ex Coast Guard buoy tender Shrub, lay at anchor off the Ragged Islands in the lower Bahamas chain north of Cuba. I had just spent over two hours underwater trying to fix a rudder that was making an ominous thumping sound every time the boat rolled.
This is similar to the ex-Coast Guard buoy tender “Shrub.”
My partner, Jack Browne, and I had picked up the ship on the Miami River six months earlier. We had spent a lot of time and not enough money trying to get her ready for this trip to the Dominican Republic.
Jack and I met in Bimini, Bahamas earlier that year. My then partner, George Hudson and I were running our dive charter boat through the Bimini harbor entrance when I looked down and saw an airplane on the bottom of the channel in about 15 feet of water. That was a startling sight.
Later, I saw Jack sitting at a table in a local Bimini bar. Since he was the only other non-native guy in the place, I started a conversation. That’s when I learned that it was his Seabee amphibian seaplane that was sunk in the channel.
On my next trip to Bimini the following week, I noticed that the plane was gone and upon running into Jack in the same bar later, I learned about the unusual method he had used to re-float it.
Jack had enlisted the help of a local fisherman and his boat. When they got over the plane, Jack tied one end of a line to the stern of the boat and then dove down and tied the other end to the bow cleat on the plane. Upon surfacing, he told the fisherman that the next time he went down, he wanted the guy to count to 10 and then take off and keep going towards Chalk’s seaplane ramp half a mile away on shore.
Jack made his dive down to the plane and got in the cockpit. The fisherman took off at high speed as instructed. The fisherman, however, wasn’t prepared for the sight of this big orange and white apparition that came surging up out of the water, piloted by Jack Browne.
This so startled the fisherman that he chopped his throttle and the plane promptly dove straight back to the bottom. Jack told me that after he got the fisherman settled down, he was able to use this technique to finally work his way back to the seaplane ramp.
I asked Jack how the plane sank in the first place and he told me he had punctured the hull on a reef nearby and was taxiing towards the seaplane ramp but didn’t make it before the plane sank.
Over the next few months, I brought Jack the parts he needed to make repairs to his plane. The Bahamas has a high import tax on boat and airplane parts, so I had to smuggle them in. My charter business and tropical fish collecting was slow and we supplemented our income by buying cases of tax free scotch wholesale in Bimini, then bringing them back to Miami where we sold them at discount prices to the bartenders along Miami Beach. They would skim by refilling their bar bottles, then get rid of the non-tax stamped bottles, misleading the owners and the tax men in keeping track of sales.
Jack later flew the plane to Puerto Rico. Apparently he didn’t get all the sea water out of the plane’s tanks because he had to make three forced water landings on the way. He drained water out of the carburetor each time and then took off again.
Jack was a well known name in the diving industry. He held the world deep diving record for awhile and invented the popular “Jackie Browne” shallow water dive rig, which was named after him.
I ran into him again along the Miami River, which is a great place to meet unusual characters. He had just returned from the Dominican Republic, and planned to return again to get signed leases from the government. He told me about this scheme he had to take over the lobster fishing industry by leasing all the government owned ice houses in the country, but he planned to do some treasure hunting on the side.
Jack asked if I wanted to go in with him as a partner and showed me the 100 ft. ex Coast Guard buoy tender, Shrub, which a friend of his had just given him. My job was to put a crew together and get the vessel into sea going condition. That seemed simple enough. I had always wanted to do some treasure hunting anyway. I had no idea what I was getting into.
My decision to cast my lot with Jack was costly. My partner in the charter boat wasn’t pleased when I asked for my $3,500 loan back. He came by the Shrub dock one day and took a hammer to the hood of my Sebring Twin Cam MGA sports car. It got ugly after that and my crew and I ran him off.
I finally got my money back by putting a lien on his boat and having the sheriff seize it.
During our fitting out period, I would concentrate on the Shrub and getting a crew together, while Jack roamed up and down the river wheeling and dealing. He was a master at it. He had a sincere demeanor that engendered trust in people. They usually gave him anything he needed with just a promise of pay back sometime in the future.
Jack was 46, and had an insatiable appetite for women, though he had a very attractive wife, Betsy, who owned a dance school in town. I helped her out once in while with her Friday night dance parties, having once been a dance teacher in Coral Gables several years earlier.
The Miami River was a hotbed of Cuban revolutionary intrigue at that time, which was shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. I had mentioned to a crewman that my cousin was a gun collector, so one of my Cuban crewmen brought one of his buddies by one day.
This guy was looking for a .50 cal. machine gun and wondered if I knew where they could find one.
It’s illegal to own these things as a private citizen, but my cousin Roger was a dealer so I gave him a call thinking he might know where to find one. Sure enough, he had one.
I didn’t like Castro. And Jack really hated Castro. In fact Jack had lost his converted PT boat in Cuba when Castro seized it after his takeover of the country. I figured I’d do what I could to help out the anti-Castroites.
I drove a couple of them up to Stuart, Florida, where they bought the gun from Roger for about $700.00
I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months and then there was an article in the Miami Herald about some revolutionaries shooting up the harbor in Havana from a speedboat. My Cuban worker later told me that it was our gun that did the job.
The days spent on the Miami River were quite an education for me. The drifters came and went, usually working just long enough to buy a bottle.
“Willie” was typical of the crew I hired. He was good with refrigeration equipment, and one night after having a little too much to drink, he confided to me that he was an ex-con and had picked up the knack of safe-cracking, while in stir, from a cell mate and was waiting for the right opportunity. He even paid me the dubious compliment by saying, “Bob, if you ever want to pull a job, let me know. With your coolness and brains, we would make a great team.”
We decided the “Shrub” needed a shakedown cruise to check everything out before leaving for the Dominican Republic. It was nearly a disaster. I had crewmen Willie, wharf rat, Cliff Burns, and young 17 year old Steve Baird for crewmen.
We anchored up off Plantation Bay south of Miami. Jack and I went ashore to visit Art McKee, who Jack had met several years previously. I consider Art to be the first generation of modern treasure hunters.
Art had just undergone a very scary experience when his car went off one of the Keys bridges during a heavy rain storm. He ended up in the water, pretty banged up, with both shoulders dislocated. He managed to make his way to the mangrove lined bank of the waterway and wedged himself among the roots to keep from being swept out to sea on the outgoing tide.
Fortunately, rescuers found him the next morning.
Art McKee was born in Bridgetown, New Jersey. He was an adventurous boy, but a reader as well, especially of books by treasure hunters and divers, such as, “On the Bottom,” by Commander Ellsberg and “I Dive For Treasure” by Lieutenant Harry E. Riesenberg. I had also read both of these books as well.
He graduated from high school, but did not go on to college, instead working at various jobs, including summers as a lifeguard at a lake in South Jersey.
In 1934, when he was 24, a massive storm struck the town and destroyed the lake. In addition, the bridge that connected east Bridgetown to west Bridgetown was severely damaged.
A hard-hat diver was hired by the city to survey the damage, and he hired McKee to tend his lines. McKee continued to work for this diver on other projects along the Delaware River, and eventually learned how to do hard hat diving himself.
Around 1936, an injury to his left knee forced McKee to move to Florida, so that he could exercise the knee all year long by swimming in the warm Florida waters.
He got a job in the Florida Keys, as chief diver on the underwater pipeline that delivered drinking water from the mainland at Homestead (where McKee was based) through the hundreds of tiny islands that made up the Keys, to Key West.
McKee spent two years at this work, repairing the 15-inch dia. underwater pipe as needed, perfecting his skills with the hard hat.
When not working, McKee spent his time exploring the reefs, and supplemented his income by supplying local gift shops with coral and marine specimens. Then he started salvaging material off the many shipwrecks that dotted the coast.
The Capitana: The first treasure wreck -- McKee was 28 years old in 1938 when he first began to search for treasure wrecks. A commercial fisherman, Reggie Roberts, told him that he'd seen cannon "sticking out of an old pile of ballast rocks down by Plantation Key."
McKee dove the site, and brought ashore various indecipherable artifacts which turned out to be silver coins. After research, he learned that the site was that of the Capitana el Rui, the flagship of the Spanish treasure fleet of 1733, sunk by a hurricane in the Florida Straits that year.
McKee, along with friends, excavated the wreck for some years. They excavated twenty different sizes of cannon, more than a thousand silver coins dated before 1733, silver statues, religious medals, candlesticks, pewter mugs and plates, jewelry, buttons and buckles, navigation instruments, daggers, swords, pistols, cannonballs and grapeshot, broken crockery, ship's blocks and bits of rope.
McKee wanted to place these artifacts in a museum, but didn't have the capital. He started various related sidelines - ferrying tourists out to the wreck site to watch divers working, and then later, allowing tourists to go down to the site in a hard hat. In 1949, when McKee was 39, he had enough funds to build a museum called “McKee's Museum of Sunken Treasure.”
In addition to the Capitana, McKee and his associates found and excavated nine of the twenty-two ships lost in the 1733 hurricane. However, in 1960, McKee's claim to the wrecks in this area was challenged by rival treasure hunters, the “River Rats” consisting of Tim Watkins, Olin Frick, and other divers, operating aboard a boat named the Buccaneer.
McKee went to the state to attempt to enforce his rights, as he'd leased the area from the state. He learned that the wrecks were three- and-a-half miles offshore, and the state only had legal authority within three miles, so he could do nothing legally to keep rival treasure hunters from the wrecks in his "leased" area.
After stopping his excavations on the 1733 shipwrecks, McKee spent some time exploring the sunken city of Port Royal, where he and Ed Link worked together on an expedition there in 1956. (Robert Marx would earn his early fame with this site.)
The Genovès was a 1730 Genoa-built 54-gun frigate, loaded with 3 million pesos of gold and silver that left Havana in August, and sank near the channel between Serranilla and Pedro Shoals, on Banner Reef.
Local inhabitants salvaged much of the treasure and other materials at the time, however, treasure hunters, including Art McKee continued to search for it in the hopes that there was more treasure to be found, launching an expedition in 1962. Ed Link was also part of the expedition, but it was not a success and they didn’t find the ship.
McKee would return with another expedition years later with treasure hunter Burt Webber as a part of this group, however, again, the ship wasn't found. In 1979, just before he died, Art McKee did in fact find the Genovès.
Several days later, Jack Browne went off in our small boat to get laid somewhere. (I marveled at his appetite.) His excuse was that he needed to do some more scrounging for equipment we needed.
Everything went fine for a couple of days. It was nice to get off the Miami River. We put some lobster traps in the water strung end to end instead of one at a time, just to soak them. A problem arose when we had no way to pull them up when they got heavy from soaking and we lost half a dozen traps.
The second night, the wind came up and we started to roll in a swell. The old wooden Shrub had sat at the Miami dock for four years and the seams above the water line had opened up. Especially the ones exposed to the sun on the port side that had been away from the dock.
We were rolling pretty badly and started taking on a lot of water through the dried out open seams. Our pumps kept plugging up with debris and weren’t keeping up. I decided we had to get out of there so I cranked up the engine, raised the anchor and set out for Miami with my crew of three. The rolling lessened underway and I put in a call to the Coast Guard about our predicament.
They told me to turn on my searchlight so they could find me, then they finally met us with some pumps. They towed us into Miami and we tied up at Government Cut, got the leaks stopped and eventually pumped the boat out.
The next week was spent caulking all the seams above the waterline so we wouldn’t get caught like that again.
Jack visited a local dive shop and soon a number of diver types showed up looking to join the expedition. There was Johnny Kliner, who ran the pool at a local motel, where he gave swimming and diving lessons. He brought along two friends, Jim Brown and Tommy Booker. Though not divers, they both seemed eager and Tommy had some welding experience.
Dick Apakian showed up one day assisting an electrician who was working on our equipment. He knew a little about electronics, so I asked him to join us. “Sure,” he said, “as long as I can bring along my friend. He’s a good cook.”
Work progressed well and soon supplies flowed aboard. I had no idea where some of the stuff was coming from, but I was too grateful to question any of it.
Three weeks later, we left for the DR. I had tried, without success, to sell my Sebring MGA Twin Cam sports car, so I loaded it aboard. I figured it would come in handy in the Dominican Republic.
One friend of the electrician even donated a live heifer cow and some chickens, which we loaded aboard. At least we would have some fresh meat, though I doubted if anyone even knew how to butcher a heifer.
We left the dock in December 1962, with Jack, me and a crew of seven. Jack was captain and I was the engineer and second in command. The crew was a mixed bunch with no particular skills. We took what we could get since we weren’t paying anything until we got to the Dominican Republic and started working.
We set a course east initially for Bimini in the Bahamas. The Gulf crossing was uneventful but very nerve wracking for me. I had Cliff Burns to watch the engine room when I rested, but I was having trouble with Kliner and his two cronies. I couldn’t get Kliner to do anything. He professed ignorance at any job I gave him He felt that since he came aboard as a diver, and had contributed some dive equipment he shouldn’t have to do anything. His two boys acted like they were working for Kliner. I later found out that they were both jailbirds. This was an impossible situation aboard ship, but I couldn’t get Jack to assert any leadership to help straighten out this dilemma.
Traveling south from Bimini, we crossed the Bahama Banks and entered the Old Bahama Channel. My thoughts went to the old Spanish Galleons that once sailed this route returning to Spain laden with loot from Mexico and South America. Our base of operation was going to be Samana Bay on the north east coast of the Dominican Republic. I thought it should be easy to explore Silver Shoals, a group of reefs, just to the North and the site of William Phipps’ successful treasure recoveries in the 1600’s.
We stopped overnight at Cay Lobo lighthouse and welcomed the Bahamian lighthouse keeper aboard for a drink. The next day we encountered several Cuban fishing boats and traded them some canned goods and cigarettes for a couple of groupers. Jack wanted to grab their boats in retaliation for the converted PT boat that Castro had seized from him after Castro’s take over in Cuba, but Dick Apakian and I talked him out of it.
We weighed anchor and continued our journey to the southeast. That early evening I was in the galley with Cliff when we started to hear a thumping sound coming from below our feet in the rudder area. The following morning we anchored on a sand bank in about 60 ft. of water and about 20 miles from Ragged Key in the Lower Bahamas. I slipped on a mask and jumped into the clear blue Bahamian water. Plunging down the length of the wooden rudder, I noted that one of the straps holding the rudder had broken loose, letting the rudder move around. It was going to be tough to fix, but Cliff set about fashioning a new strap.
I didn’t have much help underwater, since Johnny Kliner, the guy we brought along to help with diving, spent his time hiding behind the rudder, terrified of a curious 5 ft. barracuda. I hadn’t been able to completely fix the rudder by nightfall and was frustrated, not wanting to give up until it was fixed.
A howling storm came up out of the northeast that night with winds blowing at 30 to 40 knots. The boat started pitching and swinging. I was concerned about a kink that I had seen in the anchor cable earlier. I heard a loud crack like a rifle shot, as the steel cable snapped and we started drifting with the wind. Jack ran to the wheelhouse and I to the engine room.
I cranked up the engine and Jack turned the lever controlled steering hard to starboard as he attempted to bring the boat into the wind. I watched in horror as the big surplus military steering motor kept winding the large chains on the tiller. The automatic stop, which shuts off the motor, had jumped over the stop point and the motor continued winding. The motor lifted itself and the base it was mounted on, opening up the hull planks underneath and water started gushing in through the broken planks. I knew the ship was doomed. There was no way we could hope to patch that hole or pump out that much water coming in so fast. I told Cliff to crank up the large deck pump motor, hoping it would buy us more time.
I ran up to the wheel house to tell Jack what was happening and he should come and take a look. We went back to the engine room and we both agreed it was time to abandon ship. I went down in the knee deep water and cut the intake hose on the big generator so it could help the bilge pumps by sucking water from the engine room instead of the outside sea water.
We passed the word to the crew and some of them tried to launch our 26 ft. wooden surplus navy lifeboat. The boat was normally moved with our main deck boom, which was now inoperable.
Unfortunately, the lifeboat was just sitting on the portside forward deck with no way to launch it except to push it in the water as the Shrub started listing to port and the deck became awash. The waves kept depositing the boat back on deck, each time they got it into the water beating up the bottom of the lifeboat’s hull on the Shrub‘s deck fittings. Jack was in the wheel house trying to get out a radio Mayday, but we were in a pretty lonely part of the Bahamas and we only had a standard VHF radio with limited range.
I felt no fear or panic at this time, only a heightened sense of awareness and an urge to see that everybody got off safely. I gave orders for the cook to put together an emergency supply of food and water, and then went up to my cabin. I put on my wet suit, and threw a few things into a duffel bag including my favorite sports jacket, an underwater light and a dive mask.
I paused for a moment. It was quiet and peaceful there after the bedlam on deck. I felt a little guilty looking after my personal welfare at this time. I had a fleeting thought that if I just lay down in my bunk, everything would be fine.
I’ve read of men who, during the peak of a storm, have hid in their bunks, or in some remote quiet part of the ship, far from the noise and impending disaster.
When I stepped back on deck I saw Kliner and his two buddies trying to untie a stack of Styrofoam sheets we had on the deck. I told them to forget about them and concentrate on getting the lifeboat into the water.
The sheets of Styrofoam went flying away like huge white seabirds. I thought, they would have had a hell of ride if they tried to use them for flotation.
Jack was acting more forceful now, ordering a man to get spare tools into the lifeboat and another to get some gasoline from a drum on deck for the lifeboat motor. As the Shrub listed far enough to place the port side to the lee and partially underwater, some of the crew were finally able to get the lifeboat into the water.
Our sense of relief was short lived; however, as we realized that our lifeboat was filling with water. The crew started bailing with any thing they could get their hands on. Unfortunately, the cook had loaded some of the fresh water aboard the lifeboat in open water pails. These were the first to be used for bailing.
We didn’t seem to be making much headway and I knew every-one would be exhausted soon. I decided to put on a mask and see if I could find the leaks. I grabbed the underwater flash light that I brought with me leaving the ship, tied a line around my waist and jumped in. It didn’t take me long to find the holes. I came up and yelled for some rags. Somebody went into my duffle bag, took out my favorite sports jacket, ripped it up into pieces, and handed them to me. I vaguely thought the cloth looked familiar as I was stuffing it into the holes.
I shined the light downward momentarily and saw a wild melee of feeding white tip sharks that were attracted by the commotion of the sinking Shrub and the struggling heifer and chickens. I didn’t look down anymore.
It was tough work maintaining my position under the bobbing boat, while stuffing cloth into the half dozen or so holes. After patching what I could, I hung on the side of the lifeboat, with sharks swirling under my feet, unable to get the attention of any of the frantically bailing crew in the boat.
I was out of breath and couldn’t yell over all the noise. I didn’t have the strength to pull myself in and the thought crossed my mind, this would be a hell of a way to go. All it would take is one of those white tips to bite me and the rest would be on me in a flash. The open ocean white tip is one of the most dangerous sharks and the same type that decimated the survivors of the navy ship, Indianapolis when it was torpedoed by a Jap sub in WWll.
Finally, someone remembered and pulled me aboard. I was totally exhausted and couldn’t even take my turn bailing for the rest of the night. Jack had heart problems in the past and may have suffered another mild attack during the night. He was unable to do anything. Our youngest crewman, 17 year old Steve Baird, turned out to be a hero. He bailed almost constantly through the night while others complained and shirked their turn at bailing. The character of our crew was starting to show. We would see more of this before it was all over.
The next day, I asked for a volunteer to get in the water and see if he could plug more holes so we didn’t have to bail constantly. Kliner refused but young Steve Baird put on the dive mask and jumped in. Before he could even get started, the white tip sharks, that had been following our lifeboat, were making passes at him and he came flying out of the water.
I decided the answer was to fix the leaks from the inside, so we tore up the interior flooring to get at the holes. This worked pretty well and the bailing chores were manageable after that.
Jack suggested we throw the engine over board, since it wasn’t working and was just extra weight. This was a tough job, but we were able to do it after stripping it down to manageable pieces. It also allowed us easier access to the holes beneath the engine. We then used the plywood engine cover as a makeshift sail.
We were sure somebody would spot us. We tried to signal a navy plane with the shiny bottom of a food can as it flew high overhead nearly everyday at 8:30 AM. I guess it was on its way to Miami from the navy base at Guantanamo Bay, on the south eastern tip of Cuba, but the pilot never noticed our frantic signals.
The Shrub sank at the white circle and we landed in Cuba at the red circle.
Our stocks of food and water weren’t good as most of the water got thrown overboard during the frantic bailing. We did have a few cans of fruit and vegetables though, enough for awhile providing we weren’t adrift for more than 3 or 4 days. I was hoping the fishermen that we had traded with the day before were still around.
It was around the middle of December and the nights were very cold and rough. Waves would splash into the boat, keeping us soaked and chilled to the bone. I was lucky since me and two others had put on our wet suits before we sank. Some of the guys had nothing but thin T-shirts and shorts on and many of them were also seasick. The plywood sail seemed to be working somewhat and it gave us hope that at least we were underway. We hoped that we were drifting towards Cay Lobo, the Bahamian light house we had anchored at several nights previously. Time would tell.
Every day, we worked on patching the leaks from inside the boat. The fourth night we spotted a distant flashing light and assumed it was the Bahamas Cay Lobo light house. All the next day we drifted toward a distant speck on the horizon. We finished up the last of our meager rations, assuming we would be safe ashore soon. The fifth night saw us much closer to the flashing light and soon we heard the breaking sound of a reef. Our trailing sounding lead line started picking up the bottom at 30 ft. and we lost our rudder as we were carried across the reef into a quiet bay.
Jack threw out our little anchor so the tide wouldn’t take us past the lighthouse. We signaled with our flashlight and were puzzled when all the lights in the lighthouse went off. Kliner and Booker volunteered to swim ashore and get help. This was the only thing they ever volunteered to do. They reached shore with no trouble but as they were walking up the beach, they nearly stumbled over a dead 12 ft. hammerhead shark that had just been caught by someone a few hours earlier.
This gave them some uneasy moments when they considered what it could have done to them as they swam in. Shortly after their encounter with the shark, they looked up to find themselves staring into the muzzles of rifles being held by two determined uniformed soldiers. The boys explained to the soldiers in sign language and “pidgin” English that there were more of us out in the boat needing help.
Meanwhile, a lively discussion was ensuing in the lifeboat about where we were. Most just said they didn’t care as long as it was dry land. Our questions were soon answered when a small row boat appeared with two armed Cuban soldiers in it. They seemed a little suspicious at first, but their manner softened somewhat when they saw the sorry condition we were in and the state of the boat.
They ferried us in two at a time. I was the last to leave and for some reason I decided to take along the boat’s battery. I had to leave it at the dock though, as I was too weak to carry it any further. We were brought in to what was once a large old fort. We learned later that we had landed at Nuevitas lighthouse.
The Cuban soldiers were friendly, giving us dry clothes, though we had to return them later after they took us to Camaguey. They shared their meager rations of guava, crackers and coffee. A pig pen was just outside the window where we ate and this solved the garbage disposal problems for the cook, since he just tossed the leftovers, what little there were, out the window.
The Cuban soldiers were rural type militia. Some were probably fishermen. They understood and sympathized with our predicament as “shipwrecked” sailors. Later we speculated that had they been fanatic Castroites, they probably would have shot us coming ashore and then claimed we were caught in the act of sabotage.
The Cubans let us wander around the fort and Apakian found the radio room. He tried to get out a message to the U.S Coast Guard that we were in Cuba, but they stopped him before he could get through. Another time, the Cubans got very upset when they saw a boat approaching and borrowed Jack’s binoculars to watch it, since they didn’t have any of their own. At my urging, Jack gave them his binoculars as a token of our gratitude when we left.
The next morning they told us that they were taking us out by truck. Communications were difficult because none of them spoke English and I was the only one that could speak a little Spanish. As we waited for the arrival of the truck, the Cubans began firing a heavy .50 cal. machine gun into the bay where we had anchored the lifeboat. They stitched a row of bullets completely around our boat. I think they were trying to impress us with their marksmanship and combat readiness.
The truck finally arrived, but instead of taking us out the regular road, they used a circuitous route out a little traveled trail that couldn’t even be called a road. Nearly all of us spotted some strange looking structures hidden in the palm trees in the direction of the main road, however. The Cubans were going to a great deal of trouble to prevent us from seeing a secret installation of some sort. They had two soldiers carrying rifles walking in front of the truck and told us that they were just looking for turtles. Occasionally, the driver blows the horn, as if to warn someone of our approach. Several times he takes a wrong turn and has to back up. I doubt if anyone has used this trail in months.
Later, we put our heads together and came to the conclusion that there were missiles, antennae and radar dishes hidden in the palm trees.
This was December 1962, shortly after the “Missile Crises.” of October and the confrontation between President Kennedy and Soviet Union Premier Khrushchev. Our landing in Cuba couldn’t have been at a worse time. Seeing the military installations vividly brought that home to us. We finally reached water again, where we were loaded into a small boat and taken across a bay. During the journey we spotted a large Russian ship loading cargo from a sugar mill. Upon reaching shore, we were taken to a jeep standing in the road with no driver. We had to push it to get it started. At one point they transferred us to another single jeep with a soft tire. Imagine this! 9 of us and 3 guards, all leaning to one side so the tire wouldn’t go completely flat.
We finally made it to the City of Camaguey and were taken to lunch. Rosario, one of our guards, managed to eat two fish and six eggs. I guess he was eating that good because his superiors told him to have us well fed and he was including himself on the tab.
Back in the jeep, we pass by what appears to be pineapple plantations. Groups of shacks resembling migrant farm worker quarters are everywhere and each time we stop, we are the subject of intense curiosity, but no open hostility.
Later we pulled into a militia headquarters where we would be staying that night. We roamed around looking at the communist propaganda all over the place. They had class rooms, black boards, and visual aids. Everything to convince the young militia that communism was their salvation and American capitalism their enemy.
We were taken to the mess hall where the menu was rice, beans and some kind of meat. Our stomachs were so shrunken that we couldn’t eat very much. We met “Rocky” after eating. He interviewed each of us briefly and then he and several officers, who both spoke good English, took me, Jack, Dick Apakian, Steve Baird and Kliner into town to show us what socialism had done for their country. The rest of the crew just wanted to sleep. The Cubans were quite proud and were constantly engaging us in political discussions. They pointed out a school house and said that it had been a whore house during Batista’s time. They had done away with all the cat houses, they said. We stopped at a hospital to get Steve Baird and me some asthma medicine. The hospital seemed short on medicine and equipment, but we got what we needed. Apparently, asthma is very prevalent in Cuba. We passed several churches and we asked about services. “They are not holding services” Rocky said.
We were shown several new housing projects and Rocky explained that the rent was 20% of the worker’s salary and after 20 or 30 years, they owned their own apartment. (Of course, the apartment building would have been a rundown ghetto by that time, if it was even still standing.)
As we drove through the downtown area, I was struck by the lack of merchandise in the store windows. One furniture store had just a few stark pieces of a plain wooden table and chairs, vainly spread out to fill the showroom window.
We returned to the Camaguey barracks and were shown where to sleep. It was crowded, but we weren’t guarded, to our surprise. The next morning we were loaded into a panel truck and with Rosario and another guard, we headed west towards Havana. The back door was not locked and we could have easily jumped out since both guards were in front.
The Cubans drove like maniacs. They must have a lot brake trouble because they were always on and off them. We really didn’t feel like prisoners at this time and had visions of staying at a nice hotel in Havana while we waited for a flight back to Miami.
At one point the truck broke down and Cliff helped the Cuban guard work on it. During this stop, Rosario handed me his Kalashnikov rifle while he went over in the bushes along side the road to take a piss. The guards finally had to hail another vehicle and rob a part off it so we could continue on our way.
About half way to Havana, we stopped again to change vehicles. This time we had 4 new guards and two panel trucks. Suddenly, we were prisoners. This time they herded us into the trucks, and locked the doors. The new guards weren’t friendly at all.
We drove through the night and at about 5:30 AM, just as the sun stuck red fingers across the sky, we pulled into a walled modern building compound. It was Havana G-2 Headquarters Prison, and it was going to be our home for the next 68 days.
****
Chapter 2
Solitary Confinement – Mind Games
We never got to see much of the complex, though I did see an old concrete wall that surrounded the new prison that seemed ideal for use by a firing squad. We were hustled into a large room on the ground floor of one of the buildings. We were all tired and surly after the long ride. Jack Browne, with one last attempt at bravado, strode arrogantly to the head of the group. “Get Camaguay on the phone” he bellowed, spitting imaginary tobacco from his tongue. A nervous habit he picked up as a result of a diving decompression accident he had years earlier. “We want the same kind of treatment we got there.”
A sleepy guard looked past Jack at the armed guards behind us. “Get all their valuables. Put them in envelopes.” he said in Spanish. “Listen here.” said Browne, his voice rising. “I’ve been here before, three years ago you guys took my boat away from me and I want it back. I want to talk to Castro.”
The guard didn’t bother to even look up. ”Have them fill out the cards” he said. “Name, age and finger prints. Take them across the hall for mug shots.”
We all fell silent. Some of the men had been in American jails and the routine was frighteningly familiar. After the formalities, we were led upstairs and each put into a solitary, 6 ft. X 9 ft. cell with a shower pipe protruding from the wall for washing and under it, a hole in the floor for a toilet. As I was led into my cell, I turned to the guard and said. “We’re just shipwrecked sailors, why are we being treated like this?” He just waved me silent. “All the hotel rooms are filled,” he said, smiling.
The interrogations went on for the next ten days, but they were not all the same. The Cubans quickly eliminated the ex-convicts, the cook, Cliff, the wharf rat, and Kliner the wannabe diver and wannabe karate expert after just one interview.
Dick Apakian had told them at first that the boat was loaded with electronics when it sank so they wanted to talk to him some more about that. He didn’t bother to tell them until later that the electronics were nothing more than a bunch of used televisions that his boss had donated to us. Apakian later proceeded to convince them that he was totally crazy.
Young Steve Baird was a target because they thought he would be vulnerable at his age and could be brainwashed. Jack Browne was too intractable and noisy so he was interviewed only once.
I was considered a leader of the contingent and obviously a C.I.A. agent. I spoke a little Spanish, my name, Moran could be Spanish, and one of the cards in my wallet listed my occupation as private investigator, one of the jobs I had held during one of my stays in Miami.
One night after Steve was interviewed. He called out to me from his cell and said. “Bob, you better get rid of your beard because they just showed me a picture of a counter -revolutionary they’re looking for and he looks just like you!”
Now, how the hell do I get rid of my beard, I thought. I sure couldn’t ask the guard for a razor. The next day, when they brought lunch, I kept the spoon. First, I tried to sharpen the edge on the concrete floor of the cell, but that didn’t work. Next, I broke the spoon in half, sharpened the edges, and used them like a pair of scissors. It worked! I labored all day, clipping away until the beard was nearly gone.
When the guards saw me they were really upset. They tore my cell apart looking for a razor. They found the broken spoon in the pocket of my prison uniform, but never guessed that was what I used to shave with.
My first interrogation by an English speaking Russian officer was not unpleasant. He concentrated on my background and the ship sinking details. He tried to determine exactly where the Shrub had sunk. I wondered why they always interrogated us at night. Years later I read this quote from Che Guevara’s diary."Always interrogate your prisoners at night." Che commanded his prosecutorial goons. "A man is easier to cow at night, his mental resistance is always lower." In his book, Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions during the first year of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track him down in Bolivia and was the last person to question him, says that Che during his final talk, admitted to "a couple thousand" executions. But he shrugged them off as all being of "imperialist spies and CIA agents."
Then things got unpleasant. For my third session, they brought me into the interrogation room and this time there were some extra people. In addition to the same interrogator and guards, Che Guevara sat in one corner of the room and Raul Castro in the other. I didn’t recognize either at the time but it was later, after I got home and saw their pictures that it dawned on me who they were. The two were silent, never saying a word, but I felt their hostility. I knew they were important just by the way the other guards deferred to them. Raul Castro was not distinguished looking and looked like any other soldier, but Che Guevara looked just like he did in the poster of him later seen around the world. In fact, he looked a bit like the Mexican comedian Cantinflas. He had a beard and wore the customary military uniform that they all wore. He had piercing eyes and I believe he would have pulled the trigger himself in any firing squad. I later learned he was instrumental in thousands of executions of people who did not accept the new rulers of Cuba. Here is a quote from his diary later termed the “Motorcycle Diaries:”
“Hatred as the central element of our struggle!...Hatred that is intransigent….Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine…We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism, rivers of blood must flow! The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas (Americans) are fit only for extermination. We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm! The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”
"We must create the pedagogy of the paredon, (firing squad.)" Che instructed his Revolutionary Tribunals: "We don't need proof to execute a man. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate."Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any enemy that falls in my hands! My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!"
Wow! I’m lucky this guy didn’t put a pistol to my head right then. I learned later that Che Guevara was Castro’s chief executioner. If I had known all this at the time, I don’t know how I would have handled it.
The Russian interrogator started out by saying, “Senor Moran, we do not think you are who you say you are.”
“Who do you think I am?” I retorted.
“We think you are a CIA spy that uncovered one of our men who had infiltrated the Bay of Pigs invasion force when they were training in Guatemala” he said. “You had him executed.”
“I’ve never been in Guatemala” I replied.
“Guatemala!” he corrected my Yankee pronunciation in a raised voice.
Then they paraded in a guy dressed in a freshly laundered prison suit. I noticed that he was wearing the same type of military shoes that the guards wore.
Is this the man?” The interrogator asked the witness. “Si” he replied. They said a few more words in Spanish that I didn’t understand, but I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I could see where this was going.
Then one of the officers stood against the wall, looking at me angrily, he pointed to his chest and then to the wall on either side of him, as if bullet holes. “Manana,” (tomorrow) he said, “You go to the wall.”
They yanked me roughly up out of the chair and took me back to my cell. I was dumbfounded.
I began thinking how I would go down fighting when they came for me. I knew about the three American men who had been executed by Castro for their part in the Bay of Pugs invasion a few years earlier, so I had no illusion about them not shooting me just because I was a U.S. citizen.
There was another American named Paul Hughes, who had been one of Castro’s original revolutionaries, but had a change of heart and began working against Castro. He mysteriously disappeared in Cuba.
I didn’t sleep that night. Thoughts went through my mind about my past, how I could have gone in a different direction in my life. I had even visited Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on board the USS Salem once. We anchored in the harbor for some R&R. We could visit the base there but couldn’t go into town because several drunken sailors had pissed in the fountain surrounding a statue of one of their former Latin heroes, Simon Bolivar and the town was off limits to U.S. navy personnel. I did manage to catch a few sharks fishing off the stern of the ship at night.