I kick my fins again, extending my arms in front of me like curb feelers to avoid another collision. To see anything at all, I have to place my face less than six inches away from the old relic. Arnold Barto Arnold and his assistant project director, Tom Oertling, discovered the Denbigh less than two years ago. It was probably the only time a shipwreck was found without the searchers even getting their feet wet. It's never that easy.
People spend years looking for a wreck.
What they stumbled on, and what I'm now staring at, like a near-sighted old man who's lost his glasses, is the Denbigh 's boiler. A model of the Denbigh wreck Steamships like the Denbigh were rapidly replacing sail by the middle of the 19th century. Steam generated the energy that drove the machinery to turn the propeller or paddle wheel. The same principle is used today in ships, factories and even nuclear power plants. But, as with all shipwrecks, nature is slowly reclaiming the Denbigh .