In the 1940s, in waters around Bermuda, Teddy started hunting shipwrecks. He says he did it for adventure and treasure, while simultaneously working as a commercial fisherman—“to buy gas and groceries.” Between 1948 and the mid-1950s he estimates that he found 100 wrecks and treasures—17th-century Chinese jars, Spanish gold, the jewelry of the doomed. “The easiest part is finding it,” he says. “The hardest part is finding a way to sell it.” In the wreck of an 18th-century French ship he found a cargo of lignum vitae, a strong wood used for shipbuilding. It’s still useful. Teddy recently donated some of the wood to the U.S. Navy for restoring the U.S.S. Constitution, the famed Old Ironsides. Teddy’s latest venture is the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, which is scheduled for launch in mid-1997. The purpose of the institute is to “advance the knowledge and understanding of the ocean, from the surface to the deep ocean floor.”
On Mystique, Teddy advances knowledge of good food by catching and cooking fish. It all begins with cutting bait, drawing a chorus of albatrosses and other seabirds. |
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