The Byssus Killer by Charles Tucker (read a book .TXT) 📗

The clue lies in the search for the Golden Fleece said to have come from a winged ram, the creation of the god Hermes. Under the auspices of goddess, Athena, Jason was charged with recovering the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes of Colchis. A special boat, the Argo, was purpose built and the crew, the Argonauts, included the hero, Hercules. Colchis was a land on the Black Sea. King Aeëtes refused to hand over the fleece until Jason completed three tests: firstly, yoke up fire breathing oxen and plough a field; secondly, plant dragons’ teeth in the field and fight the warriors that emerged from the teeth; and thirdly, kill a sleepless dragon guarding the fleece.

He was successful. Returning with the fleece, he had to overcome the songs of the Sirens and destroy the bronze man, Talos, on the island of Crete.

Homer has similar trials forced on Odysseus returning from Troy in Turkey. The classic trial is overcoming Scylla and Charybdis, whirlpools and rocks on either side of the Straits of Messina between Sicily and Calabria in Italy. This is similar to Jason overcoming the clashing rocks and cliffs entering the Black Sea (the Hellespont).

What was Odysseus doing sailing past Greece and heading north up the western Italian coast after many years away in Troy? And had Jason headed west out of Greece to Sicily where the clashing rocks of Hellespont and Scylla and Charybdis were one and the same?

In the third century BC, Ptolemy had recorded Jason and his crew returning from his Argosy dressed in golden byssus clothes. Golden byssus clothes were worth millions more than a single Golden Fleece. A trip to the Italian island of Sardinia was far more rewarding.

 Sardinia Today

On the small Sardinian island of Sant Antioco there is a Museum called the Museo Etnografico displaying the work of a lady named Efisia Murroni.

Efisia died in 2013, aged one hundred. She was described as ‘la Signora del Bisso’, the sea silk byssus master weaver.

On the same island, Chiaro Vigo is the last woman who makes byssus or sea silk articles, small dresses, bracelets and gloves in her studio ‘Museo del Bisso’. Chiaro Vigo dives in the crystal-clear waters every spring to cut the solidified saliva from the giant mussel, Pinna nobilis. She dives up to four hundred times to collect two hundred grammes of material without harming the creatures, observed by fishery protection officers.

The saliva produces the beard and filaments to attach the animal to rocks. Vigo separates the filaments to make cloth. After she has treated the cloth with lemon juice it exhibits a rich golden colour superior to gold itself. The beard, known as sea wool, is woven into garments used by fishermen because the material is water- proof. The cloth weaving skill was brought to Sardinia, according to Vigo, by Princess Berenice, the granddaughter of King Herod. She could weave the cloth so finely that it would pass through the eye of a needle.

Vigo’s most amazing demonstration is folding a pair of ladies’ gloves into half a walnut shell, so fine is her byssus weave.

Unfortunately, the weaving skill died out in ancient Egypt after the pharaohs’ reigns, and the population of the Nile delta ate the Pinna nobilis to extinction. The shell congregated in thick colonies and was too easy to catch. Sardinia, through the centuries, protected it, deeming it ‘the soul of the sea’, never to be eaten.

 Diving on the Seven Stones

The Plymouth University marine biologists and the aquarium scientists devised a plan to scuba dive over the reef in stages. They planned to put decoys ahead of the divers, retreating if anything nasty attacked the decoy. The scientists had not dismissed the old codger’s assertion that the Americans had dropped a bomb on the reef. If it was a dummy bomb it would be filled with lead. If it was an atom bomb filled with a critical mass of uranium, it would be emitting low level gamma rays. If damaged, a higher level of gamma radiation could be expected but it had to be above the natural level of radiation emitted by the granite rocks.

The Geiger counter was suspended on a rope stretched across the reef held taut between two launches. Traversing the length and breadth of the reef, the Geiger counter yielded nothing above the usual cosmic radiation. However, the instrument had not been risked over the dangerous wave breaking part of the reef. A calm day was needed. When it came, the result was surprising. A steady low-level emission above natural radiation was centred on the wreck of the Sardinian trot boat.

The scientists were buoyed up. A temperature survey above the wreck, if higher than normal and combined with a radiation source, would indicate the presence of a gamma ray emitter: an atom bomb? The temperature survey confirmed the possibility that an atom bomb was lodged in the reef.

The next critical decision to prove the presence of an atom bomb: an underwater camera, a diver, or both? The Seven Stones is made up of two rock outcrops. The wreck lay in ten feet of water between the two. In slack water between tides, a diver could swim through the outcrops and get pictures of the area around the wreck. The decision was taken.

Second thoughts prevailed. The bomb had been underwater for sixty years. The Sardinian wreck had lain there for twenty years. The bomb’s steel case could have eroded and be leaking radioactive material. The wreck could have fallen on the bomb and it, or its fifty tons of marble, damaged the casing.

 The Death Dive

Some weeks later a high-pressure weather system slowly moved in from the Azores, predicted to hold steady for ten days. The marine scientists decided to take advantage of the weather window and do an exploratory dive over the wreck. One scientist would dive accompanied