The hydrographic charts depict the Silver 

 banks as a forty-mile-square area located in the open 

 waters of the Atlantic Ocean between the eastern end of 

 Hispaniola and the easternmost islands of the Bahamas. 

 The northern edge extends in a northwest-southeast direc- 

 tion, marked almost its entire length by a heavy concen- 

 tration of coral reefs, nearly a mile wide in places. The 

 southern line of the bank is about two thirds the length 

 of the northern. The water on the banks varies in depth 

 from six fathoms to twenty. In addition to the almost solid 

 line of reefs on the northern side, the charts show a thin 

 scattering of reefs on the other three sides. 



The nearest harbor is Puerto Plata in the Dominican 

 Republic, more than eighty miles away. A hundred miles 

 to the northwest is Turks island, the first land to be en- 

 countered in that direction. Elsewhere there is only ocean 

 and more ocean, much of it nearly two miles in depth. 



According to some of the accounts we had read, there 

 was one small exception — a lone monument of coral, rising 



250 Sea Diver 



