A chipped ceramic pitcher bearing the Cunard Steamship Co. seal sits on Gregg Bemis' desk. It reminds him of a larger piece of history he claims to own and the mystery he hopes to solve.
Eighty years ago, the pitcher settled to the bottom of the sea off the south coast of Ireland - debris from the sinking of the British luxury liner, the Lusitania.Bemis owns the ship, according to a federal court in Virginia. And the wealthy Santa Fe businessman wants to mount a diving expedition to explore its wreckage.
His goal is to prove or debunk theories that have swirled about the Lusitania since it disappeared under the waves on May 7, 1915. But divers say time may have run out for safe exploration of parts of the ship.
"We'd sure like to put to bed once and for all the questions raised by the rapid sinking," Bemis says.
The 785-foot liner went down in 18 minutes after a German torpedo slammed into its starboard side. Nearly 1,200 passengers and crew members died, including 128 Americans.
Survivors reported a second explosion shortly after the torpedo struck, but the cause remains speculative. Was it a secret store of munitions in the hold? Did the ship's 19 steam boilers blow up? Did the torpedo ignite coal dust in the fuel bunkers?
The ship's manifest listed rifle ammunition among the cargo. But a book by a British journalist suggests the Lusitania carried a secret shipment of high explosives.
Mystery shrouds the Lusitania's fate because of where it went down, nearly 12 miles off the coast in 295 feet of water, too deep for recreational divers to explore the shipwreck for more than a few minutes. Rough weather and treacherous tides add to the difficulty.
The ship lies on its damaged side. Much of the deck has slid onto the seabed. Fishing nets rise from the debris that snagged them. Human remains are long gone.
"You could stand that ship on its bow and half of it would be out of the water," says Gary Gentile, a Philadelphian who dove to the wreck in 1994 and was part of a group that unsuccessfully challenged Bemis' ownership claim.
A U.S. District judge in Norfolk, Va., ruled April 18 that Bemis owned the Lusitania and the contents that had belonged to Cunard - everything from the hull to dishes scattered across the seabed.
Back in 1968, Bemis helped finance a salvage dive that never came off. Eventually, he claimed sole ownership by acquiring the shares held by his partner and the man who'd bought the ship from its insurer in 1967.
But the Irish government doesn't recognize the U.S. court ruling.
Because the wreck lies within Irish territorial waters, Bemis needs to establish ownership in an Irish court, said Dermot Brangin of the Irish consular office in New York.
Bemis wants to organize an expedition next year using commercial divers, who could work for hours by using a mixture of gases and resting in pressurized chambers.
His plans remain uncertain because of the ownership question and because of the wreck's deter-ioration.
Divers say British depth charges have blown holes in the hull, and there are photos of unexploded bombs on the wreck. Bemis suggests the British wanted to destroy evidence of the Lusitania's wartime cargo.
Time has taken a hand as well. Rust dissolved the rivets holding the hull's outer steel plates.
"If she's gone beyond the point of safe entry, then it's all over," says Des Quigley, a Dublin businessman who hopes to survey the ship for Bemis this summer.
"The Lusitania is sitting on her secret. If she collapses, she will take her secret with her," says Quigley, who planned a brief descent to the wreck on Sunday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the sinking.