In May, I attended an Explorers Club meeting in Miami where Capt. Tim Taylor was the guest speaker. Capt. Tim’s talk was about his exploration of Pulley Ridge, which at 225 feet is North America’s deepest coral reef. It’s located northwest of the Dry Tortugas.

Our meeting led to my application for membership to The Explorers Club, which requires participating in a club-sponsored expedition. So Capt. Tim invited me aboard his vessel during a four-person dive expedition to an unexplored cargo schooner at 219 feet. Capt. Tim referred to the wreck as the HMS Surprise as we had absolutely zero data on her.

When I stepped onboard R/V Tiburon in early June, Capt. Tim turned to me and said "You’re going to run the ship." When I composed myself and got into captain mode, I realized that this was going to be Capt. Tim’s first chance in a long time to focus just on diving, a luxury he told me later he had not experienced in more than 20 years.

So here I was, on vacation, skippering the 70-foot Tiburon for an important research dive. My reward for the 11-hour watches was the occasional stop at a pristine dive site known as Sherwood Forest, communing with huge groupers that greeted me nose-to-nose, one after another.

At 65 feet, Sherwood Forest has the most pristine corals left in North America. Capt. Tim’s discovery of this reef last year gained him a fellowship to The Explorers Club, an honor that puts him in the company of explorers such as Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong. Founded in 1904 by a group of the world’s leading explorers, The Explorers Club’s mission is to preserve the instinct to explore.

Which is what drove me to the group in the first place. I spent this entire winter and spring stuck on the docks of Ft. Lauderdale, keeping M/V Thunder in pristine condition for her someday sale, waiting, showing the boat, waiting, showing the boat again. I needed to get out on the water.

I arrived at the research vessel to a flurry of last-minute activity with a film crew setting up an editing studio on board. I was quickly put to work removing an old rusty freezer and installing a new one. The process of loading a ton of supplies, water and diesel had all 13 crew walking like zombies by the time we fell into our bunks at midnight.

The mission’s focus was for two dive teams to each spend 30 minutes on the wreck at 219 feet. Team A, consisting of Capt. Tim Taylor and Doug Rice, used rebreathers. Team B, Richard von Trapp and Kelly Felton, used a mixture of helium, oxygen and compressed air.

Diving to this depth requires an almost military-like rigidity to procedure. Every piece of equipment is checked and double checked before a diver gets in the water. Each diver has a safety diver to help him suit up, check equipment and prepare for the dive.

Now multiply that by four.

Capt. Tim’s briefing the first few days boiled down to: There will be no heroes. Divers who do not come up to the 50-foot line for decompression cannot be rescued. The divers accepted that they were on their own. There was to be no panic or reaction if someone didn’t ascend. The death was to be accepted, and everyone agreed.

In the middle of this bluntness were Capt. Tim’s two young children, 8-year-old Brooke and 10-year-old Garret. Both accomplished divers, they helped when they could by fetching gear, learning the process and being kids. After the divers were in the water, Brooke • who can free dive to 40 feet and has custom scuba gear to fit her petite size • caught sight of a pod of spotted dolphins. Within about 2 minutes, she and Garret were suited up and in the water to play.

Day One had me cranking over the mains at 0430 for our six-hour run to the dive site. Locating the wreck with DGPS and sonar was not as painful as I had expected, but getting the buoy anchor aligned perfectly on the wreck was, as the current was a solid 1.8 knots. The first day’s attempts to get divers to the wreck were met with only 3 minutes of bottom time.

We packed it in at 1530 for the two-hour run to Fort Jefferson, the only place in the Dry Tortugas to anchor for the night. I enjoyed snorkeling around the wall of the fort, surrounded by purple fan coral and schools of snapper.

On my return to Tiburon I found Brooke and Garret feeding two 450-pound Goliath groupers off the swim step. It looked as if these guys could swallow me whole but I could not resist attempting to hand-feed them. My persistence was met with an ear-popping crunch as one chomped a mahi-mahi head down with one gulp.

Day Two had us on the wreck by 0900. The divers looked like Apollo astronauts, suited up with hundreds of pounds of cumbersome equipment. The goal of each daily dive was 30 minutes at 219 feet, requiring a whopping 2 ½ hours of decompression: 60 minutes at 50 feet, 40 minutes at 30 feet, and 60 minutes at 20 feet.

As captain, my job was to watch for each diver’s inflated orange bag that was deployed at the 50-foot decompression stop. During this time, we often had pods of spotted dolphins wanting to play and, of course, crew who wanted to swim with them. Not only did I have to keep an eye out for the divers, I had to keep track of a half dozen more swimmers. All the while, I’m in charge of the boat that’s floating free with the current, props turning. No stress for me there. I thought this was supposed to be a vacation.

Of course, I was working with an incredibly talented crew. Capt. Tim’s brother Andy is an F-16 fighter pilot, as well as the lead photographer. Divers Richard and Kelly are both Army officers. Diver Doug is a real estate developer from New York. Safety diver Pat, retired from the Library of Congress, handled our documentation, and was the tender driver, too. Safety diver Jacqueline, a licensed captain and registered nurse, was also the ship’s cook. Currier is a veterinarian and was responsible for handling the decompression times, monitoring the safety divers’ activities and acting as my look-out on the flying bridge.

I, too, brought some expertise to the mission. With a background of sailing on wooden boats and a lifelong interest in history, the team relied on me to help identify the wreck, the type of vessel, its approximate age and the nature of the cargo. The wreck’s cargo of hardwood timber, chain and pipe gave us clues as to her age. Combined with the shape of the hull, bronze fasteners and copper sheathing, we figured the boat went down at around 1880. Further laboratory evaluation of the bronze, wood and copper will paint a clearer picture of the vessel’s age and hopefully determine her identity.

But perhaps the coolest part was flying The Explorer’s Club flag No. 53 over the wreck. This flag was with Lincoln Ellsworth on his trans-Antarctic expedition in 1933. In 1990, it traveled down the Maymecha River in northern Siberia on a canoeing expedition, and in 2005, Capt. Tim flew it over Sherwood Forest. Armstrong and Hillary had similar flags on their expeditions. These flags go where no one has gone before and it was exciting to part of it. Which begs the question for me: Where next?

Capt. David Hare runs the 70-foot Delta expedition yacht M/V Thunder and is a regular contributor to The Triton. He is currently looking for a captain’s position on a yacht over 100 GRT. Contact him at david@hare.com.