Word: sanding
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Between the two sections of the ship, the Woods Hole scientists found a large debris field littered with artifacts: a copper kettle polished by sand particles in the deep-sea currents; three of the ship's safes; a porcelain doll's head; a patent-leather shoe. Most of the ship's woodwork had been devoured by marine creatures. Amid the debris were at least four of the Titanic's huge boilers; an unbroken porcelain coffee cup rested on one of them. Says Ballard: "It must have fluttered down like a leaf and settled on the boiler, which had come crashing...
While one diver, armed with a hammer and chisel, began chipping away around a copper ingot, trying to loosen it from concreted sediment, another culled the bottom, scooping sand with one hand and drawing it into a suction tube held in the other. Suddenly, something metallic flashed in the dim light filtering through the water. It was a piece of gold jewelry that had remained hidden from sight for 34 centuries. In the next several minutes, the team members uncovered more jewelry, a quartz bead, broken arrowheads and pottery shards, which they stored in a red-and-white plastic container...
...called mailboxes, and placed them over the propellers of one of Fisher's tugs, in effect directing the ship's backwash straight down and forming a clear vertical column of water extending to the sea floor. The mailboxes not only improved visibility below but washed away silt and sand. Fisher's divers have been further equipped with an air lift, a long plastic tube that clears sand away with a blast of compressed air. Still, the search was arduous--and costly to Fisher, both financially and emotionally; in 1975 his oldest son, his daughter-in-law and a crew member...
...silver coins, gold dust, and artifacts; the Whydah's bell alone has been appraised at $5 million. Clifford, who has meticulously studied the manifests and other records of the 50-odd ships plundered by the Whydah's captain before his ship sank, estimates that the loot still in the sand is worth $380 million more. It includes 500,000 to 750,000 silver coins, 10,000 lbs. of gold dust, a casket of "hen's-egg-size East Indian jewels" and some African ivory...
Well, this season's big moneymaker appears to be a Motownesque ditty called "Sledgehammer" by erstwhile art-rocker Peter Gabriel. As summer swill singles go, "Sledge" is a real doozy, the slowed-down tempo perfect for dancing (or doing anything else) in a sand dune. Perhaps if "Sledge" was a Van Halen song, I could really get excited. But coming from Gabriel, one of few rock performers who writes intelligent and adult material, this song and most of So hit me about as hard as a three-day-old Miller Light...