On March 3rd of this year, a team of shipwreck hunters announced that they had found the remains of the Amiable, a 100-foot long supply ship that had sailed from France under the command of the explorer Renee Robert Cavalier Sieur de La Salle. La Salle established one of the first colonies in Texas after mistaking the coastline around Matagorda Bay for the mouth of the Mississippi River. The discovery of the Amiable, which sank in 1685, came roughly a year after the recovery of La Salle's flagship, La Belle. The Amiable was located using advanced techniques that included aerial magnetic surveys, a supersensitive metal detector capable of picking up even minute magnetic activity, and Global Satellite Position System technology. According to news reports, the assistance of an outfit called the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) was instrumental in finding the shipwreck. Who is NUMA? They are a nonprofit group of shipwreck hunters, founded by novelist Clive Cussler, who when he isn't searching for lost shipwrecks, spends his time writing about searching for them.

This wasn't Cussler's first shipwreck hunting adventure in Texas, though. Back in 1986, the author was searching for the wreck of the Zavala, a Texas warship that participated in one of the more thrilling escapades of the Republic of Texas navy. In 1840, Commodore Edwin Moore, leading a force consisting of the Zavala and two other warships, steamed up the San Juan Bautista River to the provincial capital of Tabasco, aimed his ship's guns at the city, and demanded that the mayor hand over $25,000 or Tabasco would be leveled. The ploy worked, and Moore's ships steamed back downriver $25,000 richer. The Texas navy, it seems, was always being short-sheeted by the Texas government, and this wasn't the first time Commodore Moore had to resort to creative means to find money to pay his crews and repair his ships.

But on the way back to Galveston, Zavala ran into a terrible storm and suffered extensive damage. The ship was run aground in Galveston harbor and left to rot. Not only was the ship's location forgotten, but the section of the harbor where it lay was filled in and became a part of the waterfront warehouse district. Almost 150 years after she was abandoned, and after expending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on his search, Cussler finally found the Zavala: in a parking lot, buried under 12 feet of asphalt and landfill.

Cussler wrote in his memoir, The Sea Hunters, that despite his success and his affection for the Texas navy, his memories of the Texas adventure weren't all that warm and fuzzy. After he located the Zavala, Cussler was invited to meet then-Governor Mark White. During the meeting, Cussler presented Governor White with a historically accurate, detailed scale model of the Zavala, which he'd paid a sculptor several thousand dollars to build. On accepting the model, White supposedly looked up at Cussler and said, "Did you build it?"

Apparently Cussler didn't appreciate being mistaken for a humble model-builder instead of being credited as an intrepid shipwreck hunter. "I'm outta here," Cussler told the Governor of Texas: According to witnesses cited in the memoir, the Governor shrugged his shoulders after Cussler left and said, "I guess he's in a hurry to build another model."

(6/1/98)

Texas Historical Commission: latest press releases on Amiable

Clive Cussler/NUMA site

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