In a career spanning so many years, Bill McGehee conducted numerous expeditions and made several archeological discoveries.
But the renowned oceanographer will probably always be known as the first to lay hands on the sunken city.
Morgan was a pirate who ruled Port Royal, with fortresses on both sides of a narrow passageway. In 1692, an earthquake rocked the island and brought most of the city into the water.
McGehee’s business partner, Norman Scott, came up with the idea to take an expedition to uncover Sir Henry Morgan’s “sunken city” just off Jamaica’s shores.
McGehee’s original role was to prepare more experienced divers hired for the 1964 project. The lead diver’s wife got into a serious car accident. Two more got other health problems, and a couple left due to fear of sharks.
“They looked over at me,” he recalled, “and said, ‘Why don’t you put on your stuff and see what’s down there?’ Oh god.”
Underwater, it took McGehee maybe 15 minutes to find anything. He hit something solid with the aid of a vacuum system called an air lift.
“It was the gun carriage to a cannon,” he recollected. McGehee called it a life-changing instant, “as far as lack of fear and interest in what we were doing.”
Before it all started, McGehee and Scott were jointly running a pool maintenance business, neither one with a real dive experience.
Some months later, McGehee was all set after getting trained in the U.S. Navy pool. Scott already had a deep interest in archaeology.
They formed the company Expeditions Unlimited Inc., and Scott set about raising funds.
“Norman could sell iceboxes to the Eskimos,” McGehee said. “Imagine somebody walking in and saying, ‘There’s a hole in the round in Mexico that they think they sacrificed a whole bunch of people, and there’s stuff on the bottom. Could you give us money to go do it?’”
And then came the sunken city.
After discovering numerous artifacts from several Caribbean shipwrecks came their most grand expedition. It was a dive into the Sacred Cenote – the “Well of Sacrifice” – to see what had been preserved by the ancient Mayans.
“We were bringing back artifacts that were 1,500 to 2,000 years old,” McGehee said. “We added a lot to the history.”
“I was discovering things of interest to everybody,” he added. “Nobody had seen it after the earthquake, and nobody was going to see it unless we bring it up. And it was going to add to the history of Sir Henry Morgan’s sunken city.”
It was even more so at the Sacred Cenote, where young men were sacrificed to the rain god Chaac in rituals that originated at the stone pyramid of Chichen Itza. A later finding revealed a long-held belief that teen girls had been the sacrifice; it turned out to be young males.
In the 1969 expedition, McGehee brought up thousands of skulls, along with any bones found nearby. Archaeologists would later assemble complete bone structures.
“The first five or so we brought up was very, very weird,” he recalled. “Then it got to be like you were a surgeon. You’re doing something you were trained to do.”
Bright paintings on the vases described the sacrificial rituals.
“To work the fields, who do you have? Young males,” he said. “They’re the strongest and most willing to do the work… It was considered a religious honor to be sacrificed.”
They also surfaced stone carvings, vases and ceremonial trinkets still preserved as new in 45-degree temperature. The well’s bottom also was filled with silt, offering an additional layer.
“On land, they wouldn’t exist,” he continued. “A 2,000-year-old vase? Not in an area like Chichen Itza, which has tremendous heat and hurricanes and rain. The vases would deteriorate.”
– Attributed Source, The Villages Daily Sun