Treasures of the Confederate Coast: The 'Real Rhett Butler' & Other Revelations
Spurred on by childhood tales of pirates and adventure, internationally known shipwreck expert, E. Lee Spence, found his first shipwrecks at the age of twelve. He has since found hundreds of wrecks and has worked on everything from Spanish galleons and pirate ships to blockade runners and Great Lakes freighters.Always an adventurer, Dr. Spence has traveled to a wide range of countries including such places as Hong Kong, Vietnam, the Philippines, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, El Salvadore, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Colombia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Canada, England, Holland, Italy, Germany, Spain, and France. He has explored castles, palaces, shipwrecks, ancient ruins, secret tunnels, and subterranean and underwater caves.He has been shot at, buried in cave-ins, trapped in fishing nets, pinned under wreckage, run out of air, lost inside a wreck, and bitten by fish while pursuing his quests.Finding himself the target of an extortionist, he "borrowed" over a million dollars worth of original prints by famed wildlife artist John James Audubon in an unsuccessful effort to save the life of his child. Afterwards, he voluntarily turned himself in along with the art which was the only concrete evidence against him. Charged with theft, he was unjustly imprisoned, but was finally pardoned. Legally, the pardon means he was never convicted.A man of action, Spence has saved the lives of others on more than a dozen occasions, sometimes at great risk to his own. He freely admits to having worked undercover for our government. However, he says it was many years ago when he was "young, invisible, and bulletproof." He refuses to say which agency.His tools of discovery have ranged from primitive grappling hooks to highly sophisticated side-scanning sonars. Over the years, he has worked out of tiny sailboats, beautiful yachts, and ocean going research vessels.He first made local and national news when he was a teenager. His work has since been written up in Life, People Weekly, the London Sun and hundreds of other periodicals all over the world. You may have seen him on the Today Show or heard him on Talk Net Radio.Having extensively researched ships lost in hurricanes, Spence was not surprised when his home on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo.Spence's initial, but very brief announcement in 1989 of the identity of the "Real Rhett Butler," made international news. He had discovered (what one of the editors for Life magazine later characterized as "overwhelming evidence") that Margaret Mitchell based her famous Gone With The Wind character on a 19th century Charlestonian named George Alfred Trenholm. This book represents the first time that detailed information relating to that discovery has been made available to the public.Spence has actually located several steamers and sailing ships once owned by Trenholm. Trenholm's blockade running activities earned him today's equivalent of over one billion dollars in less than five years time. Spence is currently working on a book specifically on Trenholm.Although long considered one of the "founding fathers" of underwater archeology, at age 54, Dr. Spence is still a relatively young man.In June of 1992, Spence was appointed chief of underwater archeology for Providencia, an archipelago owned by the country of Colombia and covering more than 43,000 square miles in the Western Caribbean. As part of the arrangement, Spence's company was granted the exclusive salvage rights to the entire area for 25 years. His primary target was a treasure fleet which was lost in 1605 with over 250 tons of silver, gold, and precious jewels. His share would have made him richer than Ross Perot.When word leaked out that Spence had discovered the location of one of the fleet's richest galleons, he suddenly found himself threatened with trumped up charges of treason. The cha