Photo Gallery
Below is a compilation
of photographs that depict several activities and adventures Jim
has been involved in over the years. Wearing his many hats as historian,
curator, land and sea archaeologist, researcher, deep-sea diver,
television host, museum director, lecturer, author, and storyteller,
Jim has continually broadened the scope of his professional life,
meeting countless friends along the way.
CLICK
ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT ... ENJOY!
The
early years.
Jim's love of archaeology finally led him
to shipwrecks in 1980. In 1981, while a member of the National
Park Service, he was sent to the nearby Presidio of San
Francisco to learn how to dive with US Army dive instructor
Lawrence "Dutch" Bowen. Bowen
taught Jim that there "are old divers and there are
bold divers, but there are no old, bold divers." Dutch's
training has kept Jim alive in a number of tight spots over
the years.
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Jim has been lucky to have many mentors in his life. Here
he is with Edwin C. Bearss, the Chief Historian of the National
Park Service and famous Civil War historian and author. Jim
worked for Ed in Washington, DC from 1987 to 1991, and credits
Ed with encouraging and supporting his career. Ed hired Jim
as the first Maritime Historian for the NPS, and supported
Jim's role as head of the National Maritime Preservation Program,
then known as the National Maritime Initiative. Ed is now
in active retirement leading tours of Civil War battlefields.
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While working as Historian at the Golden Gate National Recreation
Area in San Francisco, Jim led the archaeological exploration
of the 1856 medium clipper King Philip, which wrecked
on San Francisco's Ocean Beach in 1878. The veteran medium
clipper, laden with only her stone ballast, sank into the
sand after her wreck, leaving half of the hull intact. Winter
storms in 1984-1985 exposed the wreck. |
In his position as head of the U.S. government's maritime
preservation program, Jim presents a plaque designating the
Drakes Bay Life-Saving Station, in Point Reyes National Seashore,
to representatives of the National Park Service and the U.S.
Coast Guard in early 1991.
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Jim participated in the dives to identify the wreck of the
famous US Naval brig Somers, scene of the US Navy's
only mutiny on the high seas and the inspiration for Herman
Melville's story, Billy Budd. The ship sank in 1846
during the conflict between the US and Mexico, the Mexican
War. The wreck was discovered off Vera Cruz, Mexico by Jim's
friend George Belcher in 1986, and the two worked to preserve
the wreck and encourage the governments of the US and Mexico
to protect it. In 1990, Jim led the official US Government
team to Mexico to help negotiate a treaty between the two
governments and to work with Mexico's Instituto Nacional de
Antropologia y Historia, represented by Mexico's chief underwater
archaeologist, Dra. Pilar Luna, to map the wreck aboard the
Mexican Navy gunboat Margarita Maza de Juarez. Here, at mission's
end in 1990, Jim poses at the Mexican War Memorial at the
United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Ironically,
the "Somers affair" was one of the reasons
the Naval Academy was founded. Somers was working
as a training ship for young officers when the mutiny occurred,
and the resultant scandal forced the Navy to move its training
ashore.
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Jim smiles up at his wife Ann as he gets
ready to dive on the wreck of the Hudson's Bay Company steamer
Beaver at the First Narrows, or the Lions Gate, in
Vancouver Harbour, in 1993.
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Restoration
work on Ben Franklin (PX-15) in Vancouver.
Usually below the surface, here Jim is in
the air during the reassembly of the historic submersible
Ben Franklin at the Vancouver Maritime Museum - as
usual, he's hands-on with a project!
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Jim hard at work reassembling the submersible
Ben Franklin. Another great picture of Jim "on
the job" (... a job he loves to heart).
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Jim is paint-spattered and with climbing
harness ready, he is about to work atop the sub Ben Franklin,
bolting on deck plates in the summer of 2003.
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While Jim waits atop Ben Franklin,
a crane prepares to lift and lower the heavy tower over him
so he can bolt it into place during the submersible's restoration. |
Exploring
Gold Rush San Francisco's Buried Ships, a 30 + year project.
One of Jim's best friends is urban archaeologist Allen Pastron.
Al first invited Jim on a dig to explore the buried Gold Rush
hulk William Gray in downtown San Francisco in February
1979, and since then they have worked on a number of sites
together, including a sailor's boarding house that burned
in the earthquake of 1906, William C. Hoff's store, which
burned and fell into the bay on May 4, 1851 - its nearly intact
remains were a great dig they collaborated on in 1986 - and
most recently in September 2001, when Allen invited Jim to
be his maritime consultant and help excavate another buried
Gold Rush hulk, the ship General Harrison, which
also burned in May 1851. Allen is San Francisco's premiere
archaeologist, and has dug up much of the old city from prehistoric
sites to Gold Rush ships to much of the waterfront of the
late 19th and early 20th century. His firm, Archeo-Tec,
has also done work in other parts of California. |
The half-burnt hulk of the 1840 ship General Harrison
emerges from the landfill in the heart of San Francisco's
Financial District at the corner of Clay and Battery Streets
in September 2001. Jim was invited by friend Allen Pastron
to join Allen's team from his company, Archeo-Tec,
to excavate and analyze the hulk and its cargo, which had
burned in a major fire in May 1851 that destroyed most of
Gold Rush San Francisco and its waterfront.
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Jim worked on the General Harrison dig daily with
field supervisor Rhonda Robichaud. They have continued to
work together for the last four years to analyze the General
Harrison site and write a massive several hundred page
report with Allen Pastron - which is due out by the end of
2005! Jim thinks Rhonda is one of the best archaeologists
he has ever worked with, and hopes to someday work on another
buried ship with her and Allen. |
Jim
goes along on the St. Roch II Voyage of Rediscovery in
the Northwest Passage.
The Sea Hunters dive the wreck of the Arctic exploration
ship Fox in Querquertersuaq, Greenland, the last resting
place of Franklin's famous vessel.
In 2000, Jim participated in the St. Roch II Voyage
of Rediscovery, an epic recreation of the Northwest Passage
voyages of St. Roch, Canada's famous Arctic exploration
vessel and centerpiece of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, where
Jim has served as executive director since 1991. Not content
with raising funds and profile for the voyage, Jim had to
go along - adding a search for the wrecks of explorer Sir
John Franklin's lost ships from his 1845-1848 expedition,
a sonar mapping of the wreck of Maud, and a field
reconnaissance of the passage. Here he is, in an Royal Canadian
Mounted Police marine detachment uniform, after a landing
off the shores of King William Island in search of an elusive
wreck said to lie just off its shores and visible only from
the air. While the trip was amazing and Jim enjoyed his time
with RCMP on the voyage, alas, no trace of Franklin's ships
were found on the voyage. |
Jim gears up to dive the wreck of the Arctic exploration ship
Fox in Querquertersuaq, Greenland, while filming
an episode of The Sea Hunters. Jim, with Mike and
Warren Fletcher, explored the ice-flattened remains of the
tiny steamer, famous for its role in determining the fate
of ill-fated Franklin expedition. Owned by Lady Jane Franklin,
Fox, under the command of Francis Leopold McClintock
surveyed the Canadian Arctic archipelago in 1857-1859 and
returned with traces of the lost expedition, including the
only written note from the lost explorers, which told of Franklin's
death and the abandonment of his ships by the survivors. |
Jim heads out to the dive site of the wreck
of Fox in Greenland with Mike and Warren Fletcher. |
Jim poses on the deck of the tiny fishing boat Mary West
as they pass through a field of icebergs while The Sea
Hunters sail cross Greenland's Disko Bay. |
The
Sea Hunters investigate the wreck of HMS Doterel in
Chile, Jan 2005
Jim talks via dive radio to Mike Fletcher while The Sea
Hunters explore the wreck of the British gunboat HMS
Doterel, which exploded and sank off Punta Arenas, Chile in
1881. This recent (January 2005 adventure) was The Sea
Hunter's southernmost adventure to date, at the tip of
South America in the Straits of Magellan. It was also the
first show filmed in the fifth season of The Sea Hunters. |
Jim sails around the southernmost tip of continental South
America at Cape Froward in the Straits of Magellan. |
Jim and the host of ShipwreckCentral.com,
Christine Barker, prepare for a jet helicopter flight across
the tip of Patagonia to hook up with The Sea Hunters
at the start of season five. |
The
Sea Hunters visit New Jersey to search for the remains of the US
Navy airship Akron, and follow the trail along New York's East River
to the site of test dives of Julius Kroeh's Sub Marine
Explorer.
Jim and Mike examine a piece of light aluminum alloy girder
from the wreck of the US Navy airship Akron, which
crashed and sank into the Atlantic off New Jersey in April
1933. Only three men survived the crash, but another survivor
was crew member John Lust, who remained behind in the hospital
after a bad car crash. The Sea Hunters, working inside
the Akron's hangar at Lakehurst, New Jersey, are interviewing
Mr. Lust before they head out to see to try and find the lost
dirigible's remains. Sea Hunter John Davis pores over the
ship's records while Mr. Lust joins Mike and Jim in discussing
the construction of Akron.
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Jim with Sea Hunters Mike and Warren Fletcher, pose on the
banks of New York's East River at the site of the 1865-1866
test dives of Julius Kroehl's Sub Marine Explorer.
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Jim
travels to Benicia and readys to film once again with Monte Markham.
And he visits Clamp, a diver support and salvage vessel used
in atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946.
Jim films with veteran Hollywood actor and producer/director
Monte Markham board the famous icebreaker USS/USCG Glacier
in the "mothball fleet" in Benicia, California for
a production for Monte's Perpetual Motion Films. Jim has previously
guest hosted on Monte's "Great Ship" series, as
well as Perpetual Motion's documentaries "Chinatown"
and "Kaigun: The Imperial Japanese Navy."
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Jim poses with friends Klaire and Monte Markham on board the
icebreaker Glacier while guest starring in a documentary
for Monte's Perpetual Motion Films. Monte is best known for
his extensive career on stage, film and television, including
the films "Midway" and "Return of the Magnificent
Seven," the Broadway production "Irene" with
Debbie Reynolds, his series "The Second Hundred Years"
and as the second "Perry Mason," as well as regular
and guest starring roles in a number of series, including
"The Golden Girls," "Baywatch," "The
Six Million Dollar Man," and "Star Trek." Jim
loves working with Monte, who he credits with "teaching
me how to act on television." Any mistakes, however,
are Jim's and Jim's alone.
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Jim poses on the foredeck of the former US Navy dive support
ship USS Clamp (ARS-33), a much decorated veteran
of World War II and a diver support and salvage vessel used
in the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. In 1989
and 1990, Jim dived the sunken fleet at Bikini with the National
Park Service's Submerged Cultural Resources Unit. They were
the first divers to reach some of the wrecks since Navy hardhat
divers from Clamp had visited them in 1946. In 2005,
while touring the "Mothball Fleet" at Benicia, California,
Jim recognized Clamp and asked permission to visit
the ship. |
Jim works with local diver/historian Dave Gartshore
while searching the waters of Lake Ontario near the old Picton
Range for Avro Arrow test models fired over the lake by Nike
rockets during the 1950s. |
Jim and Dr. Willi Kramer, the German military's chief underwater
archaeologist, discuss a dive on the WWI German cruiser Dresden
with Sea Hunter Mike Fletcher as he explores the wreck off
Chile's Isla Robinson Crusoe. |
 Jim
takes a moment to relax at the stern of a dive boat with fellow
Sea Hunter and Sea Hunters' producer John Davis while off
the coast of Nova Scotia. John is a great friend who, along
with Clive Cussler, selected Jim to be the host of The
Sea Hunters. A former teacher, fisherman and now a veteran
film producer, John previously produced the series Oceans
of Mystery. |
Jim and fellow explorer and friend Dr. Joe Valencic explore
the wreck of Kroehl's Sub Marine Explorer
in Panama, a mystery wreck they first encountered while sailing
with Zegrahm Expeditions (www.Zeco.com)
as lecturers on a near-circumnavigation of Central America
in 2001. |
Jim and
fellow Sea Hunter Mike Fletcher interview Dr. Torao Mozai,
the "father of underwater archaeology" in Japan,
while filming at Takashima, site of the Mongol Invasion of
1281. In the early 1980s, Dr. Mozai and his team discovered
the first traces of the invasion fleet, sent by Kublai Khan
to subjugate Japan and lost to what Japanese legend calls
a divine wind or "kamikaze" that destroyed the invading
ships.
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Dressed in a fireproof Nomex suit, Jim climbs into
the Mir 2 submersible onboard Akademik Msistlav Keldysh before
a dive to Titanic in August 2000.
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"It's
only a flesh wound," Jim laughes with The Sea Hunters
in Panama after slicing himself open on the Sub Marine
Explorer.
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Jim
is dwarfed by the stern of the composite-built clipper ship
Ambassador, beached and wrecked on the shores of
the Straits of Magellan in Patagonia. |
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Jim
investigates the 'tween' deck of the clipper ship Ambassador
in Patagonia. |
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Diving
on Russalka, Baltic Sea, July 2005
Jim
and fellow diver prepare to drop 150 feet down into the Baltic
to dive the monitor Russalka. |
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Jim
helps Mike Fletcher gear up for a dive on the Russian monitor
Russalka off the coast of Estonia and Finland. |
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Jim
gears up to dive Russalka while Marc Pike films.
It was hot, hot, hot on this trip! Over 30 degrees Celsius
most days.
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Monument
to the lost sailors of the Russian monitor Russalka
in Tallinn, Estonia. |
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Jim
and fellow archaeologist Vello Maas, from the Estonian Maritime
Museum, monitor Mike Fletcher's deep dive 250 feet down to
the bottom of the Baltic during investigations of Russalka. |
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Jim
returns to the dive boat after diving on Russalka. |
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