could be prepared for it. He urged us to hurry back and 

 continue our search for the flagship. Ed, disappointed at 

 having to leave at this time, promised a swift return. He 

 had already cabled Mendel Peterson of our find and looked 

 forward to his joining Sea Diver for the following weeks. 

 Pete would then come back to Haiti with Ed to make a 

 more positive identification of the anchor. 



Some five weeks later, after an adventurous interval 

 at the Silver shoals and their vicinity, Sea Diver was an- 

 chored once more in Cap Haitien harbor. Among her 

 crew was Mendel Peterson, who had come aboard during 

 a stopover at Turks island. 



No sooner had the party completed formalities with 

 the customs than they headed for Army headquarters, 

 where the anchor still reposed. In the clear sunlight of 

 the drill yard, Pete subjected the ancient relic to a minute 

 inspection, as he wielded calipers and chisel and tape. 



It unquestionably dated back to the time of Columbus 

 and could very well have come from the admiral's flagship, 

 he said. He noted that the crescent shape of the arms 

 placed it before the seventeenth century, when V-shaped 

 anchors were first made. 



The anchor was almost completely oxidized, he 

 pointed out, with only an eighth inch of sound metal left 

 at the core of the three-inch cross section. It must have 

 lain in salt water a very long time to form a coating of 

 calcerous matter an inch and a quarter thick. For compari- 

 son he cited the anchor from the Looe, which had gone 

 down in the Florida keys in the eighteenth century, yet 

 had less than a quarter inch of coating when found. 



Of course, Pete said, our anchor could have been lost 

 by one of the ships which accompanied the admiral on 

 his second voyage to Hispaniola in 1493. There was no way 

 of knowing. If the anchor in the Port-au-Prince museum 



Search for the Santa Maria 223 



