This is a computer searchable transcript of Captain Jack Parker's sworn affidavit of January 23, 1997 relating to a magnetometer survey and other work he did with Dr. E. Lee Spence at the site of the wreck of the Civil War submarine Hunley. Parker mentions a snag which Spence dove on, examined, and believed to be the remains of a buoy which had once marked the wreck of the  Housatonic. Parker says the snag was "reasonably close" to a buried anomaly which they had detected during a magnetometer survey of coordinates Dr. Spence had plotted for an object he had found in 1970 and which he believed to be the wreck of the Hunley. It should be noted that Parker makes it clear that the snag and the buried anomaly were not the same object. It was not until the summer of 1999 that the snag was examined by SCIAA and Navy archaeologists. Those archaeologists apparently agree with Dr. Spence's tentative identification of the snag as a buoy. Since  this affidavit was sworn to before a notary in 1997 and the snag is "reasonably close" to the Hunley despite historians long held, but incorrect belief that the Hunley would have been a considerable distance inshore of this location, Parker's affidavit can be viewed as additional evidence that Spence did discover the Hunley. It should also be noted that all of Spence and Parker's field work attested to in this affidavit was completed well prior to fiction writer Clive Cussler and NUMA making their first trip to the site and that was approximately 15 years before NUMA and SCIAA allegedly discovered the Hunley.

AFFIDAVIT BY JOHN C. PARKER JR.

My name is John C. Parker Jr., I am a resident of South Carolina and live at 8503 Hwy. 17-N, McClellenville, SC, 29458.

Although I am unsure of the specific date, I met and became business partners with Dr. E. Lee Spence in the winter of 1979. One of the first projects we undertook together was a search for the Civil War submarine Hunley.

According to Lee he had first found the Hunley when it was partially exposed in 1970. Obviously there is no way that I can vouch for the work Lee did prior to my meeting him and I can not in any way verify that he did see the Hunley at any time.

However, shortly before meeting me, Lee and Captain Walter O’Neal of the 86’ shrimp trawler Walter & Daphne, had obtained a Proton One magnetometer manufactured by J.W. Fishers Electronics. Using my boat (a 19’ Mako) and Lee’s ranges, we went to the site where Lee said he had previously found the Hunley. We set out four large orange colored buoys to delineate the search area. Within a relatively short time, we located a magnetic anomaly. Because of the pattern and intensity of the readings we were obtaining, we both felt the anomaly was a single object and that it was large enough to be the submarine. We made a number of passes crisscrossing back and forth across the site to more closely pinpoint and buoy the anomaly. Lee dove down to check it out. When he resurfaced he said that nothing was exposed. We were both convinced that the magnetic anomaly we had located was the Hunley, but that it was completely buried.

While anchored directly over the site and using a hand held compass, I took bearings to the two nearest Coast Guard channel buoys (numbers 4 and 8) and to the Sullivan’s Island lighthouse and several other visible landmarks (including the Isle of Palms water tank). Whatever paper we had brought with us had either gotten too wet to write on or had blown overboard and I wrote the magnetometer readings and the exact bearings and ranges down on my shirt. I can still see it in my mind, it was a pale yellow “Polo” shirt. The shirt was lost in hurricane Hugo.

A short time after we did the magnetometer survey, Captain Walter told us that he had snagged something while trawling in the general area of our anomaly. Since Captain Walter had recorded the snag’s location via radar and/or Loran-A lines of intersection, and no chart then existed that clearly showed the geographical location where those lines would cross, and our position had been recorded via compass bearings, ranges, and angles, we could not verify that Captain Walter’s snag was at the exact same location as our magnetic anomaly. However, we hoped that the snag and our anomaly might be the same object and that it was now exposed by the shifting of the sands.

The next day, Captain Walter took us to the site of his snag. Once on location it became obvious that Captain’s Walter’s snag was reasonably close to the magnetic anomaly that we had previously found and believed to be the Hunley, but we still weren’t sure how close because Captain Walter’s position simply showed where the wheelhouse (and thus the radar or Loran unit’s antenna) was positioned when he snagged the object, while the actual snag would have been a couple of hundred feet behind his boat.

Captain Walter then rigged a cable between his two outriggers and proceeded to try to re-snag his object. I was in my Mako acting as a support boat and I later learned that when the cable caught a piece flew up or snapped off his deck winch and struck and cut Captain Walter’s hand. The wound was not serious, but it made us realize just how dangerous it was to intentionally snag a wreck with a steel cable. Had the cable parted the recoil of the whipping end could have sliced a person in half.

Fortunately the cable didn’t part. Lee suited up in diving gear and followed the cable down to the snag. When he resurfaced he told us that the snag was heavily encrusted with marine growth and that it stuck about two feet out of the sand. He said that it did not look at all like the object that he had seen many years ago, but because of the proximity to his original find he wanted to investigate it further.

Sometime in the winter or early spring of 1980, we returned to the site in an effort to examine it and buoy it as part of a court claim against the wrecks of the Hunley and Housatonic that Lee was preparing. The magnetometer wasn’t working (it had frozen earlier that winter) and we didn’t have loran or radar aboard my 19’ Mako so we were reduced to searching with a grappling hook and drift type drags. We quickly realized that it was not at the intersection of our ranges for the buried object we had tentatively identified as the Hunley and it took us a number of trips to relocate it.

To give you an idea of the dangers we faced while doing this work, I would like to point out that we were well past the jetties so the seas were far rougher than one would encounter in the harbor and my boat was simply an open boat with relatively little freeboard and a single outboard engine. On some days it was so rough that white caps were actually breaking over the bow and we couldn’t turn and put the stern to the waves because the stern was cut low for the outboard. At times our prop would come completely out of the water and spin madly with the reduced resistance.

On our way back from one trip a plug came loose flooding the boat’s double hull. Water was spouting out of the deck through bolt holes. We were afraid we wouldn’t get back to shore before we sank. We barely made it back to shore.

On another trip to the site, Lee recovered a Civil War era bottle which he thought most likely came from the wreck of the Housatonic. On that trip the weather was so bad that Lee got separated from the boat and was carried away by the currents. By the time I spotted him, pulled up the anchor, got the prop cleared of a fouled buoy line, and restarted the engine, he was almost out of sight. Had I not found him, Lee probably would not have made it to shore. In fact, the same day I rescued Lee, it was so rough that two boats, about the size of mine, overturned in the harbor and I heard that one man was drowned.

When we finally relocated it with a drift type drag, Lee fanned some of the sand away and discovered that the buried portion was only lightly encrusted and that it had an extremely unusual pattern of iron plates and rivets. It was so unusual that Lee sketched out the rivet and plate pattern on our chart to show me. The cut of the iron plates made it appear that, whatever it was, it needed the strength of riveted iron, yet still had to be as light as possible and water tight. With this new knowledge, and because of its location, Lee speculated that it might be part of a buoy that had once marked the wreck of the Housatonic. If so, it was crushed or twisted out of shape, however, another possibility was that it was actually the bow of the Hunley and that it had been torn loose or upended by a trawler after Lee’s original find. That second possibility was intriguing but considered less likely because, according to Lee, the Hunley’s bow was said to have been made of cast iron, not rolled plates, and furthermore the cut of the plates and the rivet patterns did not match anything in the sketches and drawings of the Hunley.

More importantly, Lee still stood by his belief that the object he had seen in 1970 and the anomaly he and I had located in 1979 were one and the same. I can not vouch for the location of Lee’s 1970 object but we did find the buried magnetic anomaly with ranges Lee had obtained or calculated before we did the magnetometer survey. The buried magnetic anomaly, which we both believed to be the Hunley was definitely located within the 500 yard radius area that Lee described in sworn documents and filed with the Federal District Court in 1980. I know this because Lee and I met with attorney George Sink to discuss our work in preparation of those papers.

Prior to February 19, 1997, when Lee called and asked me if I was willing to make a statement about my roll in the above work, Lee had not been in touch with me for over ten years. Lee asked me to mention our lack of recent contact so it would be clear to the reader that this affidavit is not made on the basis of close friendship.

This affidavit is given of my own free will and is true and accurate to the best of my recollection.

Attested to at Charleston, SC, by 


_______________________________________
John C. Parker, Jr.


Sworn to before me this _____ day of January, 1997


_______________________________________
Notary Public for the State of South Carolina
My Commission Expires: