and we all searched the area carefully, hoping to come 

 across other evidences of the wi'ecked ship. 



By the end of the afternoon we were convinced that, 

 as in the other wrecks we had found on the same reef, 

 whatever may have lain there originally had long since 

 been swept away in the powerful tidal flow of decades. 

 There were left only about thirty heavy cannon and a 

 scattering of rock ballast. The cannon, Ed said, were mostly 

 British carronades of the early nineteenth century. The 

 metal detector had failed to reveal any hidden metals in 

 the coral and sand which surrounded them. 



We returned to the protected waters behind the reef 

 to anchor for the night, our search at an end. We had 

 found no sign of the copper wreck; yet we felt sure that 

 it was upon this very reef that Captain Phips had found and 

 salvaged it. Could we but look long and hard enough, 

 we might still come across some trace of it. 



But we were now convinced that if either the Genuees 

 wreck or the copper wreck should be found on these outer 

 reefs, they long since would have been swept clean of any 

 worth-while artifacts. As to the plate wreck, it was prob- 

 ably buried in the shifting bottom sands of the Lily bank, to 

 be revealed only at some rare moment when an unusually 

 disturbed sea might uncover it briefly. It was scarcely 

 probable that fortune would favor us to such an extent. 



We put Jane, Barney and Dick Burrows ashore at 

 West End the following afternoon. The Criles planned to 

 catch the plane from Nassau to Palm Beach on its semi- 

 weekly stop at Grand Bahama, for Barney had to be in his 

 operating room in Cleveland the following morning. Dick 

 was to hop an island freighter for Nassau. This left Ed, 

 Clayton and me to crew Sea Diver across the Gulf Stream 

 to Miami, where we planned to meet Mendel Peterson the 

 next morning and then proceed to Art McKee's wreck in 

 the Florida keys. 



120 Sea Diver 



