SCIAA's letter of February 2, 1996, was written to assure Dr. Spence that he, not NUMA, would be credited with the discovery of the Hunley but only if the wreck was indeed within the area Dr. Spence filed with the Federal District Court in 1980. The reasoning for crediting Dr. Spence would have been both logical and sound. Dr. Spence's area is so small that a complete magnetometer search of it  would take less than three hours. (Note: It has since been proved that not only was the Hunley within Spence's area, both the center point of his original filing with the Army Corps of Engineers for where Sea Research Society was to salvage the Hunley and the center point of the "X" on Spence's chart in his book were within the allowable error for GPS as it was still being broadcast by the time that the government report on the Hunley was published. In fact, the government symbol for a wreck location would have been approximately 10 times as long as the discrepancy, if plotted on NOAA's Chart 11521 Charleston Harbor & Approaches. SCIAA's promise, as that is what it effectively was, to Spence was not kept.)

Dr. Spence's site map, which he filed with SCIAA, GSA, Navy, etc. in 1974, was centered in 27' of water and Dr. Spence kept insisting it was there even though at NUMA's 1995 press conference, Clive Cussler, who writes fiction, showed real pictures of the wreck, but glibly claimed it was in only 18' of water. A depth of only 18' would have meant the wreck was well over a mile from Dr. Spence's location and would have meant Dr. Spence was wrong. Dr. Spence wasn't wrong, Cussler was lying about the depth. (Note: I am using the term lying, only because Cussler was quoted as saying he "Lied")

Spence believes that, had Cussler admitted to the wreck's true location (i.e. which had already been published in Spence's book), the Press would have immediately credited Spence, not Cussler or NUMA, with the discovery.  By lying, Cussler received a year of favorable press before the truth was discovered. By the time the truth finally came out, over a thousand newspapers had carried stories crediting Cussler and NUMA with the discovery of the Hunley.

Cussler's self described lie was exposed by reporter Schuylar Kropf of the Post and Courier after he learned that the actual seafloor depth at the wreck matched with that at the center of Dr. Spence's published location for the Hunley and not with Cussler's press releases. It was good sleuthing on Kropf's part. It would be nice to see someone follow Kropf's lead. Like the web of lies, the truth is so complex, it could mean a Pulitzer.

Another reason for crediting Dr. Spence with the actual discovery, versus saying he was just a good researcher and was lucky (which is what Cussler seems to contend), is that Spence's area is centered offshore of the Housatonic. Until the discovery was confirmed, Dr. Spence's offshore location went completely against conventional wisdom, which was that the Hunley had survived the attack and was lost on her way back to land, which would have put her inshore of the Housatonic. Therefore, it logically follows that Dr. Spence's location wasn't an educated guess based on research, but the result of a real discovery. In fact, if Dr. Spence had selected his location on archival research, he would never have centered his area where he did. Not only is Dr. Spence's location for the Hunley centered offshore of the Housatonic, much of the same area had been unsuccessfully searched by the Navy in 1864 and 1865. The Navy had searched for 500 yards around the Housatonic, but had failed to find it. It is actually within that distance. At the time of the Navy's search, the Housatonic's location was clearly visible and virtually all of the sub's structure would have still been above the seafloor and it should have been an easy target for the Navy's drags.

Dr. Spence is a member of both Mensa and Intertel (an even higher IQ society), and is an excellent researcher. He had researched the Hunley extensively before finding it and even more before filing for a permit to salvage it. For Dr. Spence to ignore the archival documents and claim it was in within the area the Navy had searched (which it is) on the unlikely hope the Navy had simply missed it defies logic. The only reasonable explanation of why Dr. Spence went against the historical record and conventional wisdom is that he truly believed he had actually found it. Otherwise, when Cussler produced pictures of it, Dr. Spence would not have continued to say it was at his location (which it is) nor would he have insisted Cussler was lying (which he was). Dr. Spence would simply have faded into the background and hoped that people had forgotten he had once claimed it was elsewhere.

Additionally, Dr. Spence had followed standard procedure when he had filed his location for the Hunley location as an area, rather than as a single set of coordinates. Part of the reason for filing shipwreck locations as areas instead of pinpoint coordinates is because, until quite recently, the generally accepted methods of establishing locations at sea and then plotting them on a chart had limited accuracy. Errors of a couple hundred yards were extremely common. In fact, the National Oceans & Atmospheric Admistration's 1992 AWOIS position for the Housatonic is approximately 230 yards west of where the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey first plotted it in 1865, and over 500 yards west of where NUMA reported finding the Housatonic in 1981. Incidentally, NUMA's 1980 and 1981 positions for the Housatonic were approximately 800 yards apart. It is errors like those which necessitate using an area rather than a single set of coordinates to both practically and legally describe a wreck's location. A 500 yard radius is actually small, not large when you take all factors into account.

If one plots the extremes of the margins of error a single point becomes an area. Additionally, areas prevent claim jumpers, who might not have a magnetometer, from instantly going to and getting on a site. Unfortunately for Dr. Spence, the NUMA diver's had a magnetometer. They also had knowledge of Spence's claim and his area, as Dr. Spence had written about his discovery in his book Treasures of the Confederate Coast, which was published by Narwhal Press in February of 1995.  That book not only told of  Dr. Spence's discovery of the Hunley, it included a portion of a NOAA chart with his site marked on it. Spence had published his annotated chart in the mistaken belief that when someone finally went to check it out, it would provide the proof that he was the discoverer. Instead Spence's chart was simply used by NUMA as a map to get to the site.

Dr. Spence's location for the Hunley was described in court papers as a 500 yard radius centered at 79 degrees46 minutes 30 seconds longitude west and 32 degrees 43 minutes 3 seconds latitude north. (Note: for comparison, the salvage claim for the gold rush era steamer Central America, had a three thousand yard radius.) The relatively small size of Dr. Spence's area had not only been acceptable to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. General Services Administration when Dr. Spence was dealing with those agencies in the 1970s, the presiding judge in Spence's 1980 admiralty case thought it was so precise that he temporarily sealed the court records to prevent looting.

Perhaps the big question is not whether Dr. Spence found it first, but why neither SCIAA nor the Hunley Commission have publicly acknowledged that the wreck is within Dr. Spence's area. With all of the highly visible work that has now been done at the site, there is certainly no legitimate purpose in not acknowledging it. 

Despite Amer's letter, SCIAA officials have not credited Dr. Spence with the discovery as promised. Perhaps that is because Hunley Commission chairman Senator Glenn McConnell once threatened to take away SCIAA's State funding. With the Senator's threat still looming in the background and millions of dollars in funding are thus at stake, it seems doubtful that Amer or any other SCIAA official would ever want go against the Senator's wishes. From Senator McConnell's public statements, he apparently wants Clive Cussler and NUMA to be credited with the discovery. But why would he want that, if Spence was the discoverer? The answer is simple. Like SCIAA, the Senator also has a huge conflict of interest.

One might say Senator McConnell has a hundred thousand reasons to credit Cussler. After the Senator, who is chairman of the Hunley Commission, asked Dr. Spence to donate his discovery rights to the Hunley to the State (and Dr. Spence did so with South Carolina Attorney General Charles M. Condon signing the agreement) and after the Senator officially asked Dr. Spence to lead the State's verification expedition to the wreck (and Dr. Spence agreed), Cussler was quoted in the Post and Courier as threatening to give one hundred thousand dollars to the Senator's opponent in the next election. Instead of reacting in open defiance to Cussler's outrageous threat, the Senator actually called Cussler and, according to NUMA diver Ralph Wilbanks, "kissed ass for half-an-hour."

Because of the Senator's subsequent actions, one might wonder if Cussler's published threat was meant as a "reverse bribe." If it was a "reverse bribe," are "reverse bribes" legal or illegal? Even more important, was it legal for the Senator to let a "reverse bribe" change his actions? Did switching sides mean that the Senator was guilty of accepting a "reverse bribe?" I don't personally know, but I am curious. What kind of man (even a politician) would have not expressed outrage when faced with such a threat? Why did Senator McConnell, with no new reason other than the threat, abandon Dr. Spence (who had, at the Senator's own request, given up his rights to the wreck which has been valued at over twelve million dollars) and then support Cussler (who, by his own belated admission, had lied to the Press, had intentionally withheld the true location information from the State, and threatened the Senator)? Do you think it was Cussler's publicized offer to give $100,000  to the commission the Senator heads, or that it was Cussler's publicized threat not to donate the money but to give the $100,000 to the Senator's opponent, or do you think he changed just because Cussler was rich and famous and could be a valuable ally, or can you think of a any good or benign reason whatsoever for the Senator's switch? Would you ever intentionally vote for such a politician? Would you ever trust such a person to represent you again? Do you trust his decision not to credit Dr. Spence?