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Tracking a Civil War mystery. Searchers comb Rancocas Creek for a submarine
By Edward Colimore
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
One of the searchers fell in the mud, breaking a metal detector and losing his footwear. He turned back wearing only his socks.
Others barely escaped muck up to their knees but pushed on yesterday through the jungle of cattails and duckweeds, hoping to solve a 140-year-old mystery] there in the mound. I don't have any reason to believe it's not there."
Shortly before low tide yesterday, Smith and other members of the party began trudging across treacherous, vegetation-choked marsh. A few were forced to turn back. Pattanite lost his shoes in the mud and broke a metal detector when he fell in the mud. Several others sank into the marsh almost up their knees but kept going.
But an hour after the search began, the two searchers in the kayaks made an intriguing find.
Nancy Mason, 52, of Belvidere, N.J, a descendant of Alligator commander Samuel Eakins, and Bob Donahue, 57, of Delanco, paddled up a tributary - within a few dozen yards of the other searchers - when they came upon a high, narrow mound.
They called to the others for a metal detectors but the only one they had had been broken earlier. What's more, the parties were unable to connect because of the muddy conditions.
"The mound was suspicious," said Donahue, a customer-service analyst for the Postal Service. "The water ran on both sides of it."
Donahue exited his kayak to investigate.
"It was solid," he said, unlike most of the marshy ground around it.
Mason took a photo of Donahue on the mound - located at same site where Pattanite had played on a mysterious cylinder 40 years earlier.
"I wondered if this was it," Mason said. "There's something there that caused that."
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By Edward Colimore
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
One of the searchers fell in the mud, breaking a metal detector and losing his footwear. He turned back wearing only his socks.
Others barely escaped muck up to their knees but pushed on yesterday through the jungle of cattails and duckweeds, hoping to solve a 140-year-old mystery] there in the mound. I don't have any reason to believe it's not there."
Shortly before low tide yesterday, Smith and other members of the party began trudging across treacherous, vegetation-choked marsh. A few were forced to turn back. Pattanite lost his shoes in the mud and broke a metal detector when he fell in the mud. Several others sank into the marsh almost up their knees but kept going.
But an hour after the search began, the two searchers in the kayaks made an intriguing find.
Nancy Mason, 52, of Belvidere, N.J, a descendant of Alligator commander Samuel Eakins, and Bob Donahue, 57, of Delanco, paddled up a tributary - within a few dozen yards of the other searchers - when they came upon a high, narrow mound.
They called to the others for a metal detectors but the only one they had had been broken earlier. What's more, the parties were unable to connect because of the muddy conditions.
"The mound was suspicious," said Donahue, a customer-service analyst for the Postal Service. "The water ran on both sides of it."
Donahue exited his kayak to investigate.
"It was solid," he said, unlike most of the marshy ground around it.
Mason took a photo of Donahue on the mound - located at same site where Pattanite had played on a mysterious cylinder 40 years earlier.
"I wondered if this was it," Mason said. "There's something there that caused that."
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