The Sea Hunters II

Book excerpt: The second thrilling account of #1 New York Times bestselling author Clive Cusslers's real-life search for lost ships, planes, and other marvels that changed history. For decades, Clive Cussler’s real-life NUMA®, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, has scoured rivers and seas in search of lost ships of historic significance. His teams have been inundated by tidal waves and beset by obstacles—both human and natural—but the results, and the stories behind them, have been dramatic. In this follow-up to their bestselling first account, The Sea Hunters, Cussler and colleague Craig Dirgo provide another extraordinary narrative of their true seagoing—and land—adventures, including their searches for the famous ghost ship Mary Celeste, found floating off the Azores in 1874 with no one on board; the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the Titanic survivors and was itself lost to U-boats six years later; and L’Oiseau Blanc, the airplane that almost beat The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic before disappearing in the Maine woods. All these, plus steamboats, ironclads, a seventeenth century flagship, a certain famous PT boat, and even a dirigible, are tantalizing targets as Cussler proves again that truth can be “at least as fun, and sometimes stranger, than fiction” (Men’s Journal).