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Exploring two shipwrecks, and one of them is not the Titanic

The stories of the two shipwrecks couldn't be more dissimilar. One is obscure: the sinking of the steamer Robert J. Walker in 1860 after its collision with a schooner in heavy seas 12 miles off Atlantic City. Twenty-one people lost their lives.

At 85 feet below, NOAA's Matthew Lawrence measures the Walker wreck from bow to stern. JOE HOYT / NOAA
At 85 feet below, NOAA's Matthew Lawrence measures the Walker wreck from bow to stern. JOE HOYT / NOAARead more

The stories of the two shipwrecks couldn't be more dissimilar.

One is obscure: the sinking of the steamer  Robert J. Walker  in 1860 after its collision with a schooner in heavy seas 12 miles off Atlantic City. Twenty-one people lost their lives.

The other is world-famous: the loss of RMS Titanic, the "unsinkable" luxury liner that hit an iceberg in 1912, then slipped beneath the Atlantic Ocean. More than 1,500 perished.

But both disasters also share similarities - compelling tales of death and survival as well as high-tech scientific investigations that have helped researchers uncover what happened.

Steve Nagiewicz, co-expedition leader in the underwater examination of the Walker, and James Delgado, director of Maritime Heritage in NOAA's Office of Marine Sanctuaries who helps oversee the Titanic site, will provide the latest news on the two deteriorating wrecks at 6 p.m. March 19 at the Campus Center Theatre of Stockton University in Galloway Township, Atlantic County. The program is free to the public.

"Everybody knows about the Titanic, but not everybody knows about the Walker," said Nagiewicz, who will be joined by other Stockton team members who worked on the wreck of the Walker. "They're on opposite ends of the spectrum.

"But what they do have in common is that both were found using remote sensing technology," side-scan sonar, and magnetometer equipment, he said. "A shipwreck is a shipwreck, and the Walker is no less compelling than Titanic."

Nagiewicz said the Walker was identified in 2013 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, listed in April on the National Register of Historic Places, and was mapped for the first time last summer, giving recreational divers and history buffs a clearer picture of the site.

The work was undertaken by the New Jersey Historical Divers Association; Stockton University; Black Laser Learning, a marine technology training company; the Edward Marsh Library in San Diego; and local recreational scuba divers in partnership with NOAA.

They gathered data, photos, and drawings that will be displayed in coming months at museums and on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Waterproof site maps will be produced for divers touring the wreck.

NOAA is expected to dedicate plaques memorializing the Walker during ceremonies June 20 at the Absecon Lighthouse and on the Boardwalk.

"We found the break on the ship where the schooner Fanny probably hit and sank the Walker," said Nagiewicz, former executive director of the Explorers Club and an Atlantic City High School teacher who will become an adjunct professor at Stockton in the spring. "We also found out a lot about the construction of the ship and the condition of the wreck.

"The shape of the wreck has been altered," possibly by fish nets or scallop dredges, he said. "Every wreck is somewhat destroyed by commercial fishermen."

Over the last 155 years, the loss of the steamer "has been virtually forgotten," said Dan Lieb, co-expedition leader on the Walker expedition and president of the New Jersey Historical Divers Association. Even at the time, it didn't generate a lot of interest. "It was overshadowed by larger events," including the coming Civil War, said Lieb, who mapped the Walker site. "No investigation was ever conducted."

But people today "have an intrinsic interest in shipwreck disasters," he said. "Some are only interested in the Titanic, while others are armchair adventurers who like to read about all the disasters."

Shipwrecks are different from train, plane, and car wrecks, Lieb said. "Those happen quickly and are over, even in seconds," he said. "Shipwrecks can take minutes, hours, even days.

"They are protracted events where there's more of an opportunity for heroism and cowardice," he said. "The fellows on the Walker were stuffing mattresses and blankets into the wound from being struck by Fanny."

More than 150 years later, the bedding is still lying in the bow in a murky emerald-green world 85 feet down, an eerie reminder of the 21 on the Walker who struggled and died.

Such stories of desperation were magnified in the case of the Titanic, partly because "it happened at the dawn of the 20th century and media age," said Delgado, who will give the keynote talk at the March 19 Stockton event. "It was the world's first shipwreck to hit the news in real time because of the wireless messages that went out.

"People read about it in the newspapers," he said. "Then came silence, speculation, and the arrival of the [rescue ship] Carpathia in New York, where the survivors told their stories."

Many have been drawn irresistibly to those last hours aboard the great ship. They've put themselves in the place of passengers, hearing the dull grinding noise of the iceberg against the hull and feeling the vessel shake beneath them. What would they have done when the liner began taking on water?

"People heard the heartbreaking stories and experienced the vicarious horror of being on the deck of the Titanic, or imagined being in a lifeboat, hearing a well-known voice crying out from the icy waters for help," said Delgado, who was the chief scientist for the 2010 expedition to Titanic and in charge of the first mapping of the entire site. "This tugs at us as Western civilization.

"The world we live in now began then," he said. "Titanic remains the quintessential shipwreck."

Within a year of the liner's loss, 150 pieces of music, including "My Sweetheart Went Down With the Ship," were written to commemorate the sinking. Fifty more songs followed.

The Titanic has also been celebrated and marketed in countless memorial postcards and posters, in more than 300 books and dozens of documentaries, in innumerable websites, in traveling exhibits, and in nearly 20 feature films, including James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster.

The story remains powerful in recovered artifacts like suitcases with clothing and writings still in them, Delgado said. Titanic "captures the imagination."

The human toll on the Walker was felt no less by the families of lost crew members such as Peter Conway, who penned a letter to his wife, Ellen, just days before he died. She had just delivered a baby daughter.

"May God send his choicest blessings on you, and your dear infant is in the prayer of your affectionate and devoted Husband," he wrote.