In the book, “Sunken Treasure: Six Who Found Fortunes” Robert F. Burgess
describes an incident in 1960 when the veteran treasure salvor Art McKee, Jr., fended
off a group of competing salvors trying
to plunder the wreck of the Capitana, which
McKee was authorized to salvage. He
used a demonstration of force with a bangstick to make the claim jumpers back
down. A bangstick is essentially a 6-foot long pole
with a 12-guage shot gun shell on the end, spring loaded to fire when the stick
was thrust into an object, like a menacing shark. The incident is captured in the Shipwrecks
and Sunken Treasure coloring book.
“Naturally, when word got out that McKee held an exclusive
salvage lease from the state of Florid to work not only the Capitana, but a number of other old
shipwrecks scattered between Cape Canaveral and the Upper Florida Keys, rival
treasure hunters bristled.
Eventually, it led to outright confrontations.
McKee had the situation largely to himself for so many
years, he was used to the idea that a few rival treasure hunters would by
trying their luck of the Capitana the
moment he left the site. This was no
real problem until after 1950 when scuba gear became more widely available. Here now was a simple, portable, inexpensive
diving rig that no longer required a compressor on a surface craft. The diver was free and untethered to dive
where he wished. …Now he was daily aware that the growing competition was
anxious to move in on his operation. One
example of how extreme the situation became occurred in 1960….
McKee heard some ugly rumors. He learned that a group of rival treasure
hunters calling themselves the River Rats…planned to give McKee some trouble
about the Capitana.
McKee had no idea what they were going to do, but he planned
to keep a sharp eye on his lease holdings.”
As Burgess tells the story, the confrontation occurred one
day when the River Rats boat aboard their boat the Buccaneer, made their move on McKee.
“Looking over the Capitana,
he saw that the cannon and the marker (which established his lease with the
state of Florida) were missing. Before
he could notice anything else, however, five scuba divers—the whole crew of the
Buccaneer—were coming down on him.
As they fanned out and approached, McKee backed up until he
was against a huge mahogany timber he had put on the wreck to dress it up for
the movies.
Thinking that they were going to pull off his mask and rough
him up a bit, McKee did the first thing that came to mind.
He put up his hand like a traffic cop.
The menacing divers stopped in their tracks.
McKee did not want to use his bangstick on any of them, but
he patted it. He turned around, and as
he explained…’like a damned fool, instead of getting six feet away, I chocked
the pole down to 3 feet and hit that damned timber as hard as I could with
it. It went whoom! Jammed my mask down
and bloodied my nose!’
When McKee looked around, just one diver was left. All he saw were the fins of the others
heading back to their boat.
‘I looked back at this guy and he was still there, crouched
down…and I could see a big question mark over his head, you might say,
wondering . . .’
‘So I patted this bangstick again. I only had one shot, but he didn’t know
that. I started toward him and he took
off fast. So there I was. I had all the confidence in the world,
walking on down that wreck.’”
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