Here's the story.
Coast Guard vows fight over `Nantucket' graverobbers
By J.M. Lawrence
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Federal prosecutors are suing six deep-sea divers who defied the Coast Guard and took relics last year from a sunken U.S. Lighthouse Service ship disintegrating off Nantucket since 1934.
The government claims the divers with the Boston Sea Rovers plundered the Lightship Nantucket and desecrated a gravesite last year when dive team Capt. Erik Takakjian led a team that took a 1,200-pound bronze bell, the ship's helm, telegraph and other artifacts.
``They have got a brass set of you know whats,'' said Marty Krzywicki, 69, who founded an association for Lighthouse Service sailors, a predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard. ``What they did was illegal. They went down on a grave ship.''
But Takakjian's lawyer yesterday said the government ought to be thanking the team for finding the ship in 1998 and undertaking a dangerous dive to bring back artifacts memorializing the 17 sailors aboard the Lighthouse Nantucket (LV-117). The ship was accidentally rammed May 15, 1934, by the Olympia, a sister ship to the Titantic.
``They're being threatened with felony prosecution when they should be writing them checks for having done this work,'' attorney Peter Hess said.
Hess told a federal judge yesterday the divers will hand over the relics within two weeks to federal marshals while battling the lawsuit. He contends the ship was abandoned by the government and the men should receive a salvage award.
Other divers named in the government's lawsuit are Sea Rovers President Dave Morton, Steve Gatto, Tom Packer, Tom Murray, and Steve Scheuer. The suit also names Takakjian's Research Vessel Quest.