Spanish, so that cut out both my brother and me out of the conversation for the remainder of the visit.
The officers invited us into the Chart Room, and took out a large map. As I remember it now it was about four feet square. It covered most of the table that was situated in the center of the Chart Room. My dad was very short sighted, so he pored over the chart with his nose almost touching the paper. He was tremendously pleased, but he didn’t say much, until we got home again, and then he said he had difficulty in reading the map, not in understanding the language as he was a Spanish scholar and had at one time published a Spanish journal, and he also understood navigation, but he said he didn’t have enough time to study the map. Nevertheless he was overjoyed at having seen it. I might add that my father was an enthusiastic yachtsman, and at one time contemplated making a trip around the world in his yacht, the Oriole. . . . I am sorry I don’t remember the names of the officers who showed us the map, but it is most likely that they signed the log at the Clubhouse, and this has probably been preserved. 14
The mention of the chart being “four feet square” intrigued Hapgood since the Piri Reis map was about two by three feet. Might the map that Campbell saw actually depict the entire world and not just the Piri Reis fragment?
Hapgood was also curious about the senior Campbell’s reaction to the map. Campbell’s father had written geography texts, and the fact that he “pored over the chart with his nose almost touching the paper” was suggestive. We know that the senior Campbell was not puzzled by the inscriptions since he was a “‘Spanish scholar.’” So what was it that fascinated him? We suggest it was the unusual equidistant projection—uncommon in 1893.
THE WHITE HOUSE ACTS
When we reviewed Hapgood’s correspondence contained in President Eisenhower’s archives, we discovered that the White House did in fact follow through on the memorandum. The U.S. State Department, on orders from Eisenhower, directed the American ambassador in Spain, John David Lodge, to pursue the matter.
Ambassador Lodge’s younger brother, Henry Cabot Lodge (1902– 1985), was Richard Nixon’s vice presidential running mate during the 1960 campaign. Despite the obvious distractions, Lodge followed through on the presidential order. Unfortunately, the Spanish authorities came up empty-handed.
With the election of President John Kennedy in 1960, the dynamics in Washington changed. The new administration never found time to pursue Hapgood’s quest. Hapgood never knew what happened. Instead he devoted a decade to writing Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. The preface begins:
This book contains the story of the discovery of the first hard evidence that advanced peoples preceded all the peoples now known to history. In one field, ancient sea charts, it appears that accurate information has been passed down from people to people. . . . It becomes clear that the ancient voyagers traveled from pole to pole. Unbelievable as it may appear, the evidence nevertheless indicatesthat some ancient people explored the coasts of Antarctica when its coasts were free of ice. 15
WE TAKE UP THE HUNT
As librarians, we were challenged by the problem of finding this most important of documents. We began by contacting a friend in Toronto, Shawn Montgomery, to see if he could follow up on Campbell’s suggestion that the Royal Canadian Yacht Club might have log entries concerning the visit of the Santa Maria replica. Unfortunately the logs from 1893 no longer existed.
We then turned to the Chicago side of the mystery and contacted Ray Grasse, an author and friend living in Chicago. He suggested that we contact the Chicago Historical Society. The librarian at the society, Emily Clark, told us that the captain who sailed the replica of the Santa Maria in 1893 was named V. M. Concas. Clark turned our