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Barry Clifford Discovers Buried Treasure

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(page 6 of 8)

Clifford calculated about $300,000 start-up costs. That would buy ships, crew, housing, and salary for a first summer expedition. At first he contrived to raise the money among his best friends. Several of them jumped at the chance to be part of the adventure. Rob McClung, by then the chief of police in Aspen, was tired of arranging security for ex-presidents and visiting TV stars. Eventually he quit his job, liquidated his assets, and came back East to help his college buddy try to raise the Whydah. A friend of McClung's, a superior court judge named John Levin, also joined the entourage. Together; Levin and Clifford devised a scheme to finance the project through what Clifford ambiguously called the selling of "inside stock." Clifford told me he sold 25 shares of "inside stock" at $10,000 a crack to acquire his start-up money.

As a business venture, betting on the weather may offer a safer return than an underwater treasure hunt. But for certain investors in a high income bracket, a treasure hunt can be irresistibly alluring. The idea of a good tax shelter is to find a place to dump a large chunk of capital quickly preferably into a venture that has little or no chance of making money anytime soon.

Also, there is the adventure element, the idea that being part of something like a treasure hunt, even vicariously, hearkens back to an age when men battled for their destinies with their hands as well as their wits. I asked Clifford if this was how his operation worked -- essentially the way Mel Fisher conducts his company -- and Clifford, smiling wanly, shook his head.

After some false starts looking for investors and a decent research vessel, Clifford saw an ad in the National Fisherman for a 60-foot research vessel called the Vast Explorer II, which had once belonged to the U.S. Navy. To Clifford it seemed like an answered prayer. He flew to South Bristol, Maine, and offered the owner $80,000 for his $160,000 boat. Over the next summer Clifford had the engine of the Vast Explorer rebuilt and a new generator installed. "It's now worth about $200,000," he told me. "It's probably the company's largest capital asset."

The state of Massachusetts entered Clifford's life not long after he announced he had located the Whydah, and the permit squabble ensued. Before the board issued Clifford his digging permit, he was required to have an on-site, full-time, board-approved field archeologist to oversee the step-by-step recovery of artifacts and report directly back to the board. Clifford attempted to acquire the services of Duncan Mathewson, Mel Fisher's longtime associate.

The board rejected Mathewson almost the instant his name was mentioned because of his association with Fisher; who, as one board member described it, "has a well-earned reputation for devastating every site he works on. There was no way we were going to allow Fisher or anyone associated with him to dig off the Massachusetts coast." Mathewson, however; suggested a possible replacement, Edwin "Ted" Dethlefson, a man with impeccable credentials, the newly elected president of the Society for Historical Archeology. Dethlefson, a Harvard-educated biological anthropologist, held relatively liberal views about salvaging shipwrecks, but his scholarly mien and academic credentials satisfied the board. He was approved.

At first Dethlefson and Clifford struck a verbal agreement that the archeologist would represent Maritime Underwater Surveys in all hearings and meetings with the state board. Dethlefson wrote a 30-page proposal describing the history of the shipwreck, plus a general statement of the recovery procedures that would be followed. Clifford flew the gray-bearded archeologist to Colorado to meet investors face to face, to chat about the project, to drum up support. Clifford made it clear to these investors that Dethlefson would be calling the shots to make sure everything was done right. "Barry kept saying we were going to start any day now -- this was late winter -- as soon as the weather broke. Everything, he said, was ready to go," said Dethlefson.