
DATE: Saturday, September 20, 1997          TAG: 9709200303

SECTION: FINAL                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: ASSATEAGUE ISLAND                 LENGTH:  104 lines

WRECK HUNTER MAY HAVE FOUND REMAINS OF PRESIDENTIAL YACHT.

The computer screen shows a squiggly line that looks like the track of a heart monitor.

But suddenly the line erupts as though it might go through the roof of Ben Benson's research boat as it inches along the coast less than half a mile from the beach.

It's the magnetic signature, Benson believes, of a ship loaded with history: a presidential yacht that ran aground in stormy weather off Assateague in 1891 and was ripped to pieces by waves.

The Despatch was the pleasure craft of presidents Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Alan Arthur, Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison. It had been visited by dukes, emperors, lord chief justices and other notables, and was once, when built in 1873, called the ``largest and handsomest yacht afloat.''

When Benson, president and owner of Sea Hunt Inc., began hunting for historic and possibly treasure-laden ships off the treacherous Assateague Coast, he found more than he bargained for: several other ships and now the Despatch, lying submerged in sand and silt for more than a century.

His finely tuned magnetometer, which measures magnetic fields from objects containing metal, shows the outlines of the grand yacht, lying right where it went down. Time has probably caused it to collapse on itself, but it lies largely in one mass 22 feet beneath the surface.

``I think we're going to find some really interesting artifacts, perhaps gifts from heads of state, a compass, a steering wheel,'' he says. I'm not seeing scattered pieces. It's lying largely in one mass.''

Benson found the Despatch by accident. Although accounts of the day pinpoint the location of its sinking, history seems to have forgotten.

Virginia, greatly respectful of its history on land, knows little about what lies just offshore, state officials acknowledge. John Broadwater, a one-time state underwater archaeologist, doesn't doubt that Benson has found the presidential wreckage. ``It's probably a good bet,'' Broadwater says.

The Despatch, a schooner-rigged steamer, was on its way from New York City to Washington by way of Hampton Roads, the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River.

According to news accounts, the boat was to pick up President Harrison and Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Tracy for a visit to the naval proving grounds on the Potomac.

The ship's lieutenant was quoted as saying that he mistook the orange light from the Assateague lighthouse for the offshore red light on the Winter Quarter Shoals lightship. It was a mile-and-a-half mistake, leading the ship onto dangerous shoals near the island.

At 3 a.m. Oct. 10, the wooden ship ran aground and began to break apart.

``I knew no power on Earth could save her,'' the helmsman related.

A witness, in a letter to The Baltimore Sun, said, ``The whole beach for over three miles is strewn with wreckage and it looks as though hundreds of people are along to observe every new object of interest which floats ashore.

``One man rushes down to clutch a box of cigars, another a box of candles, another a can of ham.''

All crewmen were saved, even if they had to spend the night shivering on what the publication Illustrated American called ``one of the most inhospitable-looking places on the Atlantic coast.'' They were compelled to sleep ``in a place not fit for dogs.''

There's certainly more than big iron boilers left, although they're giving Benson's sensitive instruments the biggest jolts.

As with many things just out beyond the waves, local stories keep them alive.

A fisherman told Earl Novak, a fisherman who has been helping Benson, of an elderly resident who talked about swimming out to play on one of the boilers at low tide when he was a child.

And there was the man Benson spoke to last week whose father found an ornate table base in the surf. It now sits in the man's living room under a marble table top. Inlaid bird's-eye maple, rich and dark, gives it quite a presidential look.

There's no inventory of what else might be there, just hints from electronic instruments.

The crew of Benson's small boat drops a long white probe that looks like a rocket off the stern, then plays out a 100-foot-long black cable. Almost immediately, one of the two computer screens in the cabin comes to life.

``Now this one's going to be something,'' says Benson as the site's coordinates begin to line up on his screen.

``There it goes! Right off the chart!'' he exclaims. ``This is gigantic. It has to be several tons of iron.''

Then there's a second magnetic jolt, almost as big as the first, a likely indication of a second boiler.

The computer remembers each incident and eventually, when the material goes to a super-computer in Texas, will show a mosaic of the bottom that resembles a hallucinogenic finger painting.

``You know what's amazing about this thing, we're talking less than half a mile,'' Benson says as he guns his boat toward what he believes to be the burial ground for the Juno, a Spanish treasure ship.

The Juno, which sank in storms in 1802, may have waited on the bottom for nearly 90 years for the Despatch to come along and keep it company.

``It's not particularly treacherous here,'' Benson says. ``It makes you wonder what else is off these barrier islands.'' ILLUSTRATION: Shipwreck illustration and ship photo courtesy of the

Mariners' Museum

The Despatch, a yacht used by five presidents, sank off Assateague

Island 106 years ago. This sketch, from the Illustrated American,

accompanied reports of the wreck.

Photos The Depatch: Yacht of 5 presidents

Graphic

Map

Wreck believed to be yacht Despatch.