Amelia - 7. page

Central Pacific Edition

Opening Night

Mermaid Vigilance Arrives in Operations Area

Our week-long transit has brought us to a featureless spot in the remote Pacific where the Amelia Earhart search will finally resume. Last night at around 2000 local time Mermaid Vigilance reached our first transponder deployment point, and a baseline of two beacons was dropped. We spent the next two hours surveying the
baseline, then the REMUS AUV was lowered off the stern. A smooth night launch was followed by hours of waiting as the AUV dropped to the bottom more than 18,000 feet below and began its assigned search pattern.

The REMUS OPS team was pleased with the event, and are certainly happy to be able to start collecting data. Many slow, long hours will follow as we patiently track the vehicle’s progress and await completion of the pattern.

The AUV is expected to surface late afternoon, scheduled to ensure our first recovery since sea trials a week ago will take place in daylight hours. Meanwhile, we will plan to lay and survey additional transponders and continue to add to the search pattern. As soon as REMUS returns and is safely lodged in its cradle the “pit stop” will begin. Data download will commence, batteries will be swapped, and the vehicle will be prepared for another launch.

Down to Rockland Way

A Cap’n Joe Sea Story

While a fishin’ outa Portland on the ol’ Eastern rigged draggah MustHe (not her real name, it’s just what we called her — her registered name on her State-o-Maine paper is Why Must He Suffer) we’d often steam down the coast aways to work the channel between Maine and Nova Scotia, a disputed borderline at the time but generally reliable for fair to middlin’ fishin’ on black-backed floundahs. Well we had a breakdown — not unusual on the ol’ MustHe — and was forced to veer off into Rockland t’ fetch a part and get her fixed up some.

Young Manley Doherty was the skipper and a very able (if somewhat excitable) fisherman. I was deckhand/cook. Enoch Johnson sailed as the engineer, of sorts, and Old Man Manley (yes, Young Manley’s pa) was aboard as the twine man. He was my mentor and a highly respected net guy up and down the whole New England coast. He was simply the best. But like a lot of fellas in the fish biz Ol’ Manley tended, on occasion, to over indulge in the demon rum and thus generally didn’t have many long term berths. So that’s how he ended up aboard the ol’ brokendown MustHe with his son. Old Man Manley called Young Manley “Boy.”

We rounded the Rockland Harbor sea jetty at about 0900 and shortly after were made all fast at Frank O’Hara’s fish dock. We all had our chores: Capt’n Manley was going to head to the Greyhound Bus Station to get the needed condenser part that his wife, Miss Betsy, was sending up from Portland (Manley had called her via the marine radio operator). Enoch was going to see if he could scrounge up some oil diapers and a few extra rags. I was going to the store to buy some more salt pork. I thought I had enough but wasn’t going to take any chances as this is used in about ninety-two and a half percent of my fixin’s. And, on very direct orders to Old Man Manley, Young Capt’n Manley said:

“Pa, you stay aboard. Work on that cod-end, it needs some seizing re-done. Don’t leave now for any reason. We’ll all be back by noon and we’re shoving off then so you stay aboard, ya hear?”

Well you can kinda guess what happened next: We all returned shortly after 1100 and Old Man Manley was not to be seen. We did a search of the MustHe, and she being just shy of seventy-two feet of wooden fish boat the search didn’t take all that long. Young Manley was up the ladder two rungs at a time and just a cursin’ a somethin’ fierce all the while as he was headin’ right two-blocked to the Hotel Bar (it opens at 0600 to accommodate the local tradesmen) to fetch his Pa. But Old Man Manley t’weren’t there neither! Back to the MustHe comes Young Manley still a cursin’ up a gale-o-breeze but not quite as loud as before having got a bit winded on the roundtrip, I suspect. Soon as Young Manley is back aboard he goes into his captain’s mode: “Fire her up, Enoch, we’re outa here, ta hell with that damn ol’ man anyway!”

Legends are born like this: We cast off from Frank’s fish dock and headed outbound past the Rockland Harbor sea jetty. Enock Willard and I were getting a mugup in the galley. Just as we rounded the jetty Old Man Manley comes in through the hatch, soaking wet, and says: “Damn! I wish you fellas had backed her off a might, I had a hell of a time catching you!” I think at the sight of the Old Man, Enoch keeled over and I was taken some hard astern myself. I finally managed to stammer: “Manley you mean to say that you jumped off that quay and swum aft’a us and hauled yerself aboard?” And Ol’ Manley smiled at us and says: “Aya, I’s here ain’t I?”

This story spread down the coast quicker than a dungeon-blue–thick o’ fog on an easterly breeze.

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Central Pacific Edition

The Sailing Yacht Sauvage

Alan’s Ticket to the Central Pacific

One of Mary Crowley’s (Ocean Voyages Inc. – Sausalito, CA) favorite yachts is the 60-foot Sauvage. The sailing vessel was designed for charter and expedition cruising around the world, and it will be bringing Alan Eustace out to our operating area from the island of Funafuti in a few days time. The crew of Sauvage are sailor’s sailors. They enjoy extensive global cruising to the most remote areas of the Pacific ranging from tropical lagoons to the Aleutian Islands. Mary and Ocean Voyages are proud to use this capable yacht for special expeditions and to share the joy and experience of ocean sailing.

This fine yacht was design by Jean Francois Andre and built in Brazil. Her unique centerboard design allows good access to sheltered shallow anchorages. Captain Didier Wattrelot is a fabulous sailor, born in France, with over 30 years experience as captain. In his youth, he did a single handed non-stop crossing from Polynesia to the Falkland Islands through Cape Horn aboard a 38 foot cutter. After running a variety of charter vessels and luxury yachts, he decided to build his own vessel for exploring wonderful areas of our water world, thus Sauvage was launched.

Sophie, his wife, is an equally amazing sailor. Born in France, Sophie did her first Atlantic crossing at the age of nineteen. She also worked on a variety of maxi-yachts and charter boats. She is a great first mate, hostess, cook and linguist. Sophie has gathered lots of recipes from all over the world and enjoys keeping her guests and crew well taken care of in all regards including cuisine. She also loves sports and is extremely proficient at all water activities. She can paddle canoes, windsurf, surf, kayak and is an expert at standup paddle boarding.

Chloe, their daughter, was born in 1990 and has been raised aboard Sauvage. She began helping as a stewardess, cook’s assistant, deck hand and leader for hikes and dives. She is a certified scuba diver. She is also a credentialed chef and has been deck hand, hostess and chef on luxury sailing yachts.

Nino, born in 1992, has also been raised aboard Sauvage. He is a qualified diver and he is now a certified engineer who works aboard mega yachts.

As a special occasion and opportunity to spend time together, the four family members will all be on board Sauvage during the Eustace Earhart Discovery Expedition. We look forward to seeing them when we rendezvous sometime around March 5th.

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Central Pacific Edition

The Search

Where to Send the REMUS?

No matter what you are seeking, be it lost car keys or a Lockheed Electra, two conditions must be satisfied: you must be able to see what you are looking for, and you must look in the right place. WHOI’s REMUS 6000 has the sensors to detect the Electra, provided we send it to the right place. Today the analysis team gathered to review the body of analysis work we have conducted over the years to give a search area to the REMUS team to plan their survey.

Forty years of research by Elgen Long, pilot, aircraft investigator, and author of Amelia Earhart: Mystery Solved form the basis of solid information about Amelia’s disappearance. Aeronautical analysis of Earhart’s fuel consumption was performed by Dr. Fred Culick of Cal Tech. His analysis confirms that Amelia ran out of fuel right around the time of her last radio transmission, which is consistent with her own assessment that “gas is running low.”

A series of radio messages were received by the Coast Guard cutter Itasca in the preceding two and a half hours that tell us a lot about what Amelia was doing. Though the messages make it clear that she was desperately trying to find Howland Island and went down in the ocean nearby when her fuel ran out, the details are open to some interpretation. Because of this, the point the Electra went down is uncertain.

But the radio messages tell us more than just words. Led by Chief Radioman Leo Bellarts, the radio operators on Itasca recorded the strength of the signals they received. Engineering analysis of these radio transmissions can determine her distance from Howland Island. This work has been led by Tom Vinson and Rod Blocksome of Rockwell Collins, with the support of a cadre of radio engineers from the Collins Amateur Radio Club. The CARC team has invested over 4,000 hours into this endeavor, including a number of experiments to compute sea-wave propagation, measure performance of vintage radio equipment, and determine antenna patterns, among others.

Another clue in the analysis is visibility of the island. Howland Island is very small with little elevation, and Amelia would have been looking into the rising sun. Scientific analysis of visibility distance under the conditions of Earhart’s flight was performed at MIT Lincoln Labs among others. Elgen flew the approach himself to judge visibility under similar circumstances.

Using this information, navigation reconstruction of her final flight and statistical “renavigation” analysis has been done by Nauticos using techniques proven to be successful in other searches. This approach used a “decision tree” to explore a range of assumptions in the flight scenario. In a second technique, called a Monte Carlo analysis, Jeff Palshook of Nauticos explored four million computer-generated paths to generate a search area. A third approach developed by the CARC team did not assume any path at all, but rather considered the basic statistics of the problem and created a probability map. All three of these analyses rely on the radio range analysis performed by CARC. All are in excellent agreement.

Taking into account all of the uncertainties of the problem, the Electra should lie on the seafloor near Howland Island, somewhere in a region of about 1,800 square miles. This is a large area – half again the size of the State of Rhode Island, and around 18,000 feet deep. Over prior expeditions, almost 85% of this area has been searched.

Our meeting concluded with firm direction for the REMUS search team to pick up where we left off and complete the search for the Electra.

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Central Pacific Edition

REMUS 6000

WHOI’s Autonomous Deep Water Search System

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) REMUS 6000 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) represents the latest in advanced deep water search technology. Unlike a towed sonar or an ROV which are tethered to a surface vessel by a long and massive cable, AUVs swim freely and can operate with great efficiency. REMUS can dive to a depth of 6,000 meters (nearly 20,000 feet) and can stay down nearly a full day before it must return to the surface for fresh batteries.

Before a dive, called a sortie, the vehicle is given a mission plan by its operators specifying a search pattern and what sensors to use. Once in the water, REMUS is on its own and must navigate, follow terrain, and avoid obstacles autonomously. If something goes wrong, it must sense the problem and take action to return safely to the surface without human intervention.

The system has proven to be highly reliable. Greg Packard, lead engineer for our Amelia Earhart search expedition, says the REMUS on our expedition has performed 223 successful dives since it was launched.

The AUV can carry a number of sensors, principle of which are a sidescan sonar that can image a wide swath of seafloor with acoustic pulses, and an electronic still camera with strobe lighting. Its sophisticated navigation system includes an inertial system that senses accelerations and an acoustic Doppler sonar that senses velocity. For precision navigation, the system operates within a network of acoustic beacons that act like an underwater GPS. Also, REMUS can communicate with the surface ship to provide tracking and status reports. Unfortunately, it is impossible to send a lot of information over acoustic links, so the operators must wait until the vehicle returns to the surface and is recovered aboard to download sonar and optical imagery for analysis.

Greg is supported by engineers Neil McPhee, Mark Dennet, and Christopher Griner who must wrangle the 12-foot long one-ton torpedo shaped vehicle out of the water using an articulated launch and recovery frame. Once on board, the system is winched into a container van where the team immediately begins preparing it for the next dive. Sonar data is downloaded; the camera is swapped with the spare (so images can be downloaded in the lab); the batteries are swapped for a freshly charged set; and a new mission sortie plan is uploaded into the vehicle’s memory. Within two hours, the system is ready to be launched on another dive to the deep.

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Central Pacific Edition

Interview: Leo Bellarts

Chief Radioman, Coast Guard Cutter Itasca

by Captain Elgen Long

On April 11, 1973 I interviewed retired USCG Lt. Leo G. Bellarts who was Chief Radioman on the USCG Cutter Itasca when Amelia Earhart was flying into Howland Island from Lae, New Guinea during the morning of July 2, 1937.

I was a Petty Officer First Class Aviation Radioman in the U.S. Navy during WW II, and had learned the navy’s procedures as Bellarts had known them in July of 1937. As WWII expanded to include countries from all around the world that joined the Allied Forces the many procedures their radio operators used had to be modified and incorporated into a single unified system. Major changes had been made, “Z” signals had been eliminated and replaced with “Q” signals, the names and meanings of signal flags were changed, terminologies like “No Smoke” were forbidden, and a new phonetic alphabet had to be learned.

Leo Bellarts was able to tell me of the radio events that occurred during the morning of July 2, 1937 using the old 1937 procedures and terminology, and I was able to understand exactly what he was saying and what it meant.

Bellarts told me that at 0758 Itasca Ship Time, Amelia Earhart had called the Itasca on 3105 kilocycles and said the following:

“We are circling but cannot hear you. Send a signal on 7500 kilocycles either now or on the scheduled time on half-hour.”

Bellarts added that Earhart’s signal was S-5, and was the strongest signal they ever received from her. Bellarts also said from the strength and sound of her signal he was sure she was close-aboard (very near), and no one was going to tell him, after listening to radios eight-hours a day over many years, that he couldn’t tell when a radio signal was coming from a transmitter that was very close by.

In fact he said, “I actually did go outside and stand right outside the radio shack and started listening like mad thinking well I’m going to hear a motor any second.” Earhart’s radio signals sounded to him like she was coming in “like a ton of bricks.”

Leo was so pleased that he could talk to someone who knew the procedures and understood what he was talking about, that he loaned me the original radio logs so I could make copies of them. An audio-tape of the interview with Leo Bellarts and copies of the original radio logs are in the Amelia Earhart Archives.

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