❖ Cannon Hunters Expedition –– Seattle to Cozumel Island ❖ 1966

Hunting treasures of the deep off Mexico,
divers returned to a fishing boat with underwater finds.
Cannon Hunters Association of Seattle, WA.
Expedition date of 1966.
Photograph from the archives of
Saltwater People Historical Log©

Janice Krenmayr, Seattle Times, 7 August 1966 ▼

"Cozumel Island, according to early Spanish colonizers, was the Rome of the Mayan kingdom.
      The remains of causeways, they wrote, could be seen traversing the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. From the great city of Chicken Itza, they fled across the sea to Cozumel, hanging 12 miles offshore like a jewel in the Mayan crown.
      Pilgrims from all over Mexico and Guatemala visited Cozumel as a sanctuary, to seek advice or remission of sins from an idol which like the Greek oracle of Delphi, gave mysterious replies. 
      Tourists in the past few decades have flocked to see the ruins of Chichen Itza. Until only four years ago, Cozumel remained a forgotten sanctuary, her coverlet pulled over a brilliant past. 
      The island has been 'discovered' and is drawing modern pilgrims, seeking unusual vacation spots.
      So CHAOS, the Cannon Hunters Association of Seattle went to Cozumel to dive and locate cannons from centuries-old wrecks. I went along to discover the forgotten sanctuary like a modern pilgrim.

On the beach at Akumal

      Only a hundred yards distant from my door was a solid, impenetrable wall of green. Who knows what lay behind that forbidding, green grille? Long forgotten Mayan temples, hidden in their jungle shrouds?
      Cozumel was the cradle of the Latin American conquest.
      Juan de Grivalja was the first navigator to set foot on Mexican soil at Cozumel in 1518 and to open a friendly intercourse with the natives.
      Pablo Bush Romero, explorer, and director of CEDAM, the Mexican underwater exploration association, which was cooperating with our CHAOS expedition, made us feel like modern conquistadores as we sipped cool drinks on the hotel dining patio overlooking the ocean.
      Romero has made many rich finds as head of CEDAM by searching the remains of ships which followed Cortez into the Caribbean seas.
      'You have no idea of the rich possibilities of this area, it is virtually undiscovered.' 
      'There is not even a passable trail across Cozumel Island, and there are Mayan temples and cities throughout Yucatan that remain to be explored.
      'A man from your own area, Robert O. Lee, of Portland, led a team of scientists across the Yucatan jungles last year and discovered many new ruins.'
      CEDAM divers, in another activity, brought up more than 15,000 items from the MATANCERO wreck, described as the riches find."

Janice Krenmayr, Seattle Times, August 14 1966 ▼

Hewitt Jackson,
Cannon hunter expedition from Seattle, WA.,
 snorkeling at Cozumel 1966

The great day had finally arrived. CHAOS was going on its first treasure hunt.
      Gathering at the hotel dock on Cozumel Island, were a motley looking crew, bags bulging with suntan lotion, masks, snorkels, cotton gloves, and long winter underwear for protection against sharp coral.
      Duffle bags stuffed with camp gear were piled in the hold of the 32-ft auxiliary sloop. Cases of beer and soda were packed in ice by the hotel, with sandwiches and fruit.
      We sailed southward for a point opposite Cozumel on the Yucatan mainland.
      Shortly after noon, the captain anchored behind a long reef donned mask and snorkel and jumped into the sea. Manuel and Alfonso, our happy crew boys, helped with tanks and weight belts. We watched Melicio, the captain, bobbing close to shore, then saw him raise a hand, and point down. 
      'Aqui!' he yelled. Here it was.
      Over the rail went Clark, head hunter, Cannoneers Leeds, Cliff Worner, and Dr. Jim Carver jumped after him. Al Salisbury, Jane and Hewitt Jackson and I watched from aboard.
      In ten minutes, the four cannoneers were back, hanging on the ship's dinghy and chattering like magpies.
      'Did you see that anchor? And that cannon!' They're enormous!
      'Two cannon, they're welded together in the coral.'
      Salisbury, Jackson, and I could stand it no longer. We jumped in with masks and snorkels.
      All afternoon the men swam and dived, bringing up chunks of coral with buttons, pins or beads they had seen glistening.
      The afternoon's take grew –– pins, buckles, buttons, earrings, cuff links, handles. 
      It had been a rich day for the treasure hunters when we finally called a halt to our first day of diving and turned into Akumal, a quiet sandy cove fringed by waving palms where we camped overnight.

Jance Krenmayr, Seattle Times, August ? 1966 ▼

"Members of the CHAOS, Cannon Hunters Association of Seattle expedition to Cozumel Island were back in Seattle with deep suntans and treasures from the deep.
      'It was a dream come true, and the most memorable experience I have had' said Donald R. Clark, head hunter and chief of the expedition.
      Clark, Seattle advertising and public-relations man, is the son of the late Donald H. Clark, who founded CHAOS in 1949 with the whimsical purpose of hunting and recovering ancient cannon. It had gone international, counting 1,500 members in 31 nations, and more than 500 ancient, muzzle-loading cannon have been recovered since 1949.
      Cozumel Island, a few miles off the northeast tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, was the site of the beginning of the Spanish conquest of Latin Americal. Its surrounding waters have disclosed many shipwrecks.
      Though the wrecks we visited have been thoroughly explored and most of the important artifacts recovered by CEDAM, the official Mexican underwater and archeology organization, our CHAOS group received full cooperation from CEDAM with permission to dive and recover what 'goodies' were left.
      The booty which our CHAOS team brought back in its two weeks of sea scouting included about 20 small crucifixes, a couple of boxes full of trade beads of various colors, which were carried by old merchant ships, some cuff links and earrings, buttons, fragments of spoon and knife handles, buckles, pins, and many promising chunks of coral.
      Clark brought up the first crucifix, the first five minutes of diving over the wreck of the MATANCERO, off the Yucatan mainland.
      The MATANCERO was believed to be a Spanish merchant ship, which sank about 1741, and is, according to the Smithsonian Institution, the richest sunken ship ever explored in America."


Krenmayr writes of long ago forgotten jewels in the Mayan jungle? What an amazing discovery has been made very recently under the forest floor in nearby Guatemala. No cannons but lots and lots of excitement ––
Results from the research using Lidar technology, which is short for "light detection and ranging", suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilization more akin to sophisticated cultures like ancient Greece or China. BBC News February 2019 Click here.
      
      

  

❖ Hewitt Jackson's Historical Drawings

Marine artist Hewitt Jackson, 1975,
at Oregon Historical Society.
He did the drawing of the SANTIAGO 
and other historic vessels in their collection.
Original photo from the S.P.H.S.©

Building ancient ships is the occupation of Hewitt Jackson, former seaman and marine draftsman, then a full-time artist.
      H. W. McCurdy purchased one of his paintings of historic vessels, the BEAVER, from the 1963 "Changing Scene in Seattle" art show at the Museum of History and Industry and presented it to the Seattle Historical Society for the permanent collection. He commissioned another, the EXACT, also for the museum.
      Earlier, Victor Denny, president of the society, purchased Jackson's picture of the United States sloop of war DECATUR from the 1961 show, for the collection, and an anonymous donor did the same with Jackson's 1962 entry, the DISCOVERY.
      Thus the museum has been supplied with accurate views of four vessels that had important roles in Puget Sound history. The schooner EXACT brought the first American settlers to Alki Point, the DECATUR protected Seattle during the Indian War, the BEAVER carried supplies and furs to and from the Hudson's Bay Co Post at Fort Nisqually and the DISCOVERY was flagship on Capt. Vancouver's Voyage of Exploration. It anchored off Bainbridge Island for several days in 1792.
      Jackson's nautical research for his pictures is almost equivalent to preparing a thesis. He has accumulated approximately 100 books on ship architecture, manuals of masting and the like.
      Jackson lived in Kirkland and worked on a drafting table, surrounded by volumes, correspondence and coffee cups and subject to interruption by any of his six children or the dog. His tools are fine crayons, pen and ink and watercolors.
      "It's a compromise medium in order to permit a lot of detail that would be overpowering in oils," he explained.
      Before Jackson ever touched pencil to paper, he consulted books and diagrams and written letter queries. He did not give credence to everything he read or was told about a vessel, nor did he trust the proportions and rigging in ship pictures allegedly made from memory. He wanted to know the vessel's use when first built and the depth at high tide of water on bars it passed over. He made a thorough inquiry into the gear and handling, reading logs of voyages whenever they are available.
      When Hewitt had enough material assembled, he drew the idea sketches, showing the ship pointing into the wind, broadside or viewed from the stern. He may have made nine drawings before he is ready to start the final painting. He saved those, and as he accumulated more information, he made additions and changes to increase their accuracy. 
      He filled a commission for buyers in Oregon who desired Captain Gray's COLUMBIA, Vancouver's ender CHATHAM and Captain Baker's JENNY, all of which visited the mouth of the Columbia River in 1792.
      In order to be certain of backgrounds as they were before modern changes, Jackson not only consulted profiles in the oldest Pacific Coast Pilot but twice he sailed along the Washington shore, making photographs. He returned to the Lower Columbia in September to accompany John McClellan, Longview publisher, and historian, on an expedition to trace by water, Lieut. William Broughton's small-small voyage from the Chatham's anchorage to the vicinity of Vancouver.
      "I armed myself with old charts and used rocky outcrops and high places for bearings, as these will not be distorted," Jackson said. "The CHATHAM's compass was affected by iron deposits, the river course has changed greatly and the channel as shown in Vancouver's maps was full of errors. I had to plot anew where Broughton's ship lay."
      On reading journals kept by officers of the CHATHAM, Jackson found they did not hold their ship in any high esteem. He was entertained by references to "our tub," the old pot" and less flattering descriptions.
      Jackson's experience in professional cartography is of help in his artistic enterprise. He worked at mapping when in the Army and during the years he was employed at the U of WA in the department of oceanography. As a boy, he had some experience on survey crews.
      Jackson never studied drafting or art, though he has taught the former. He grew up on the east side of Lake Washington when Bellevue was the home of the last American whaling fleet. Going to sea in 1926, he turned naturally to making pictures of sailing craft.
      He painted contemporary vessels in which he had shipped until about 1950, his attention was drawn to accounts of Vancouver's DISCOVERY and he wanted to do a likeness of her. Obtaining sufficient descriptive information was more difficult than he expected, but the experience taught him how to proceed on other unfamiliar vessels.
      Jackson made about 20 paintings of the DISCOVERY and they are scattered over world. When he fills an order for one of them, he puts in from a week to a week and a half on the picture itself, using the fruits of his previous research. 
      For the EXACT, he studied old systems of measurements as applied to some 300 vessels, comparing them with the known dimensions of the EXACT until he arrived at the correct hull form of an East Coast schooner capable of crossing West Coast river bars.
      He also profited from data gathered by several ship experts, fellow members of the P.S.M.H.S., and had the benefit of recollections of Captain Everett Coffin, a descendant of one of the owners.
      Similar painstaking work went into Jackson's other historic pictures. He obtained plans of the CHATHAM from the British Admiralty. The JENNY had to be approached as a hypothesis, based on the fact that she was fitted out originally for the slave trade. For the BEAVER, Jackson benefited from a set of prints resulting from a National Parks Service study.
      Lately, a new use has developed for nautical research of this type. Museums are requesting models of historic vessels, so Jackson has prepared a series of plans for each ship he has done, arranged like a naval architect's presentation.
      He has lately started to set down facts about the DAEDALUS, Vancouver's store ship, the best sailer of the three British vessels. As she was the initial ship to enter Grays Harbor, Jackson expects to get her on the drawing board soon. He is also putting out feelers for construction data on early Spanish craft that touched the Washington Coast. [as depicted in the above photo taken a few years later.]
      There is no end to this sort of thing, once a person starts. Jackson has found, in the course of corresponding with museums and ship experts, that there is an upsurge of curiosity about old ships and a great number of persons are trying to find accurate information about them.
Above text by the late, great author/historian Lucile McDonald, published by The Seattle Times, 1963.