Bone Deep. Gina McMurchy-Barber

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      That night I had a hard time sleeping, and it wasn’t because of the lumpy sofa. First I’d been expelled from my room, and then I got reamed out over some crumby old broken teapot and cups, followed by Aunt Beatrix’s snide observations about my sloppy posture and lack of fashion sense. If that wasn’t bad enough, I got shrieked at again just before bed when Aunt Margaret found out the towels she gave Aunt Beatrix were the wet and dirty ones I’d used for cleaning the bathroom.

      How was I going to survive two weeks of this? I needed to find a way to stay clear of Great Aunt Beatrix and Aunt Margaret. I was actually glad there was school the next day. Just then I remembered my class had a field trip in the morning to the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Maybe by the time I got home everyone would be calmed down.

      “Welcome,” beckoned a pretty young woman as we stepped inside the museum. Usually on museum field trips we got retired grandmothers who led the tours, but this one wasn’t old at all, maybe mid-twenties. “I’m Amanda Marsh, your guide today here at the Vancouver Maritime Museum. If I can just get you to leave your bags here we’ll get started in the main gallery by viewing the museum’s pride and joy — the St. Roch — a schooner built a hundred years ago.” We followed Amanda into a high ceilinged room filled from top to bottom with an old sailing ship. Its size took me by surprise and I felt dizzy looking up to the tip of the mast.

      “How did they get this ship inside the building?” TB asked Amanda.

      “They didn’t put the ship in the building. They built the building around it. A lot simpler, don’t you think?” Amanda told us more about the St. Roch’s history, like how it used to be a Royal Canadian Mounted Police ship. Then we got to go aboard. As I looked over the deck and up to the top of the sails I thought about the sailing lessons I’d taken the summer before. We only got to sail tiny skiffs, but the instructor, Vic Torino, or the Tornado as we called him, had a really nice boat he took us sailing on. Even though he was a seriously weird guy, I did learn a lot of things, like how to maneuver the rudder and set the sail, how to read the gauges and maps, and mastered at least eight different kinds of knots.

      As we toured the St. Roch, Amanda told us stories of adventure and danger of the old seafaring men of the past. We learned about Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver too. Vancouver surveyed and mapped the West Coast in the late 1700s. We learned that his navigational charts helped to open up the Pacific Ocean to a lot of other explorers and put the West Coast fur trade into high gear.

      “Being an explorer was an adventurous lifestyle, but it was dangerous too and took men far from their homes and families for long periods of time,” explained Amanda.

      With everyone at home so mad at me, the idea of sailing away on a ship sounded like a good plan. Maybe not for months or years, but a couple of weeks would be nice. By the time I got back Great Aunt Beatrix would have gone home, the broken china forgotten, and things back to normal. Just then I had an idea. “Are we going to learn anything about sunken ships?” I asked.

      Amanda smiled at my question. “You’re jumping ahead of me, but as a matter of fact we are going to learn about a field of study that involves sunken ships. Can anyone tell me what archaeology is?”

      Amanda’s question caught me by surprise, but my hand shot up. When it comes to archaeology I’m practically an expert. That’s because one of my best friends is an archaeologist. Her name is Dr. Edwina McKay, but I call her Eddy. I helped her with two professional investigations — the first involved digging up the remains of an ancient Coast Salish man in Crescent Beach where I live. And the second was rescuing a disturbed burial in the historic cemetery of Golden — it’s one of those old railway towns in northern B.C. On top of that I’m a regular subscriber to Dig magazine and I’m a member of the Crescent Beach Archaeological Society.

      “Archaeology uses things people made, or the places they lived and worked, or even their bodily remains to learn about humankind’s past. These artifacts are often in the ground, so you have to dig them up — but not like you’re digging for treasure. It has to be done carefully — there’s a method to it.”

      “That’s a great definition of archaeology,” said Amanda. “So do archaeologists only recover artifacts in the ground?”

      “Most often, although artifacts might also be found in places like caves or old temples or even out in the open if the soil has eroded away.” I was thinking of where I lived again. In Crescent Beach, lots of people have found things that belonged to the early Coast Salish right on the surface, like arrowheads, hammerstones, and scrapers. It’s not surprising since they lived in the area for about five thousand years.

      “So where do things like sunken ships fit in to your definition?” Amanda asked. I admit I didn’t know much about how sunken ships and archaeology went together. “Have you ever heard of underwater archaeology? It’s a branch of maritime archaeology.”

      TB snickered. “Looks like Indiana Jones Junior still has a thing or two to learn,” he whispered. If I wasn’t so keen on listening to Amanda I might have planted a big red welt on the back of his neck as a souvenir of our field trip.

      “So just how do you dig under water?” I asked, completely focused on this new idea. “Moving all that sand and soil would make it pretty cloudy and hard to see anything. And when you find artifacts — how do they get to the surface without damage? And what about properly recording the site?” I was glad when Amanda laughed, because I could tell that my teacher, Mrs. Sparrow, was about to hush me for asking so many questions.

      “It’s nice to have a student who is so enthusiastic. And those are all good questions. For obvious reasons excavating a maritime site is quite different from those done on dry land. However, there are several aspects that are the same. Like the site would need to be surveyed and its position recorded, some kind of a grid set out to mark the area of study, and in some cases sediment would need to be moved — perhaps by a special vacuum system that filters out the water but catches any objects sucked up. And because it’s important to document and record as much information as possible, a good underwater camera and waterproof paper and pens come in handy.” Then Amanda looked at me and winked. “Of course the first thing an underwater archaeologist would need to know is how to scuba dive.”

      By the time I got home that day I could tell the cat was out of the bag. Aunt Margaret was curt, Mom quiet, and Aunt Beatrix, who was drinking tea out of a mug, clicked her dentures resentfully the whole night until she went off to bed — my bed. But I didn’t care because I’d had a great day. Even sleeping on the sofa couldn’t spoil it. As I was dozing off I thought about what Amanda said about anyone serious about underwater archaeology would have to learn to dive. Tomorrow I’d pick Eddy’s brain and then afterwards I’d figure out how to get Mom to let me take scuba diving lessons.

      Chapter Two

      “If it’s underwater archaeology that you’re interested in you should meet my friend, Philip Hunter.” That’s what Eddy said when I called the day after the field trip to the Maritime Museum. Then just a few days after that we were walking down the halls of the archaeology department at Simon Fraser University to meet him. As we passed open doors I got goose bumps after catching glimpses of students and professors working. In one room someone was hovering over a tray of small broken pieces of pottery; in another a lady was holding an aged bone in one hand and comparing it to a similar one on a skeleton hanging on a pole.

      When we came to a closed door I read the small name plate: Dr. Philip Hunter, Chairman, Underwater Archaeology Department. My body tingled as Eddy knocked.

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