After two unsuccessful expeditions in the North Sea, Clive decided NUMA should concentrate on a search closer to home. The riddle surrounding the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was a natural fit for Clive - a Civil War buff with an affinity for shipwrecks. “The more I read about the Hunley, the more I was hooked. Here was a mystery with a thousand clues but no conclusive leads.”

During the Civil War, Union General Winfield Scott proposed a naval blockade surrounding the Confederate States to prevent them from receiving or shipping trade goods, supplies, and arms. The blockade was so effective - cotton exports were reduced by more than 95 percent - a wealthy southern businessman, Horace Lawson Hunley, financed the construction of a submarine. The “fish boat,” fabricated from an iron boiler, was forty-feet long and forty-two inches in diameter. Fitted with two conning towers, dive planes and a pair of crude snorkels, the H.L. Hunley carried a crew of eight. The captain, standing with his head in the forward conning tower, steered and navigated. Seven men, sitting on a wooden bench, turned a crank connected to the submarine’s propeller shaft.

Operating from a dock in Charleston Harbor, the boat proved more dangerous to its crews than the enemy - thirteen men died in training accidents, including the sub’s patron, Horace Hunley. General P.G.T. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate forces at Charleston, considered duty aboard the sub so perilous he wanted it scrapped, but the South was desperate.

Under the command of Lieutenant George E. Dixon, the H.L. Hunley sailed into combat on February 17, 1864, and managed to embed a charge in the hull of the USS Housatonic, a 200-foot steam and sail-powered sloop with a crew of 155. Reversing direction, the charge was detonated, sinking the Union ship and killing five of her crew. Although there were reports that a pre-arranged lantern signal was displayed by the Hunley, the submarine vanished.

The search for the Hunley began even before the war ended and there were countless tales of sightings, often embellished with “Nine Skeletons at the Wheel.” In the 1870s, showman P.T. Barnum offered $100,000 to anyone who could find the Hunley. As the years passed, the submarine was forgotten until the celebration of the centennial of the War Between the States. The chronicle of the Hunley and her brave crew was told in books, magazines, and on television. A group of students from a Charleston technical school presented the Charleston Museum with a full-size replica of the Hunley, based on the limited reference available at the time.

NUMA’s first expedition to find the Hunley set sail during the summer of 1980. The crew included old hands: Doc Edgerton, Peter Throckmorton, Bill Shea, Dirk Cussler, Walt Schob, Wayne Gronquist, and Admiral Bill Thompson. Also aboard: diver Dana Larson, archaeologist Dan Koski-Karell, psychic Karen Getsla, and an assortment of wives and girlfriends.

“Our first search for the Hunley,” Clive says, “was in many ways as botched as the original search for the Bonhomme Richard. We were headquartered in a rundown motel, the search boat was a scow, and our crew was much too large. It turned into more of a vacation than a serious search, and I wasn’t really surprised when we didn’t find the Hunley. I’ve always affectionately recalled this expectation as the Great Trauma of ‘80.”

A year later, Clive and NUMA were back in Charleston. “Walt Schob found a big, comfortable house on the beach at Isle of Palms,” Clive says. “I chartered a dependable vessel owned by Harold Stauber, a guy who knew the waters around Charleston like his own living room.” During the previous summer’s follies, the team had managed to eliminate a two-mile long grid close to the shore. NUMA was now going to concentrate its search near the area where the Housatonic was attacked.

Joining the team for the first time were Ralph Wilbanks and Rodney Warren, two underwater archaeologists connected with the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA). Run by the University of South Carolina, the SCIAA regulates and issues the permits required for anyone looking to search for treasure or artifacts in South Carolina waters.

“Unlike the previous year,” Clive says. “The equipment ticked away without missing a beat, the weather cooperated with smooth seas, and the only injuries were sunburn, seasickness, and hangovers. Although we did not find the Hunley, we discovered five Confederate blockade runners and three Union ironclads.” During a post-search interview, Clive announced, “We don’t know where the Hunley is, but we know where it ain’t.”

NUMA would not return to Charleston until 1994. “I can’t really explain why,” Clive says. “Perhaps I’d developed a mental block or just wasn’t in the mood.” During the ensuing thirteen years, NUMA roamed the world searching for wrecks in other waters. The party atmosphere and fun-loving throngs of the early expeditions were replaced with a tight-knit group of professionals and dedicated amateurs. Successful surveys included the discovery of the Lexington, a steamboat that burned and sank in Long Island Sound in 1840, with the loss of 151 lives, and the Zavala, one of the small fleet belonging to the Republic of Texas navy. Run aground at Galveston Bay in 1842, the remains of the Zavala were discovered buried twelve feet under a parking lot.

The Leopoldville, a Belgian liner converted into a troop transport during World War II, was torpedoed by a German U-boat on Christmas Eve 1944. More than 800 American GIs perished when the ship went down. NUMA found the Leopoldville in 160 feet of water off the port city of Cherbourg, France.

Not all of NUMA’s searches involve shipwrecks. On April 3, 1933, the USS Akron, a 758-foot long rigid airship of the U.S. Navy plunged into the frigid waters of the Atlantic. Only three members of the seventy-six man crew survived. In 1986, NUMA located the “ship of the air’s” galley stove and twisted beams in a 700-foot debris field twenty-seven miles off Beach Haven, New Jersey.