Clive Cussler's cash? It's in his cars, baby!
Bankrate: How did you come to turn Pitt's fictional employer, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, into an actual nonprofit shipwreck-hunting organization?
Cussler: One year I was looking for John Paul Jones' ship, the Bonhomme Richard, and an attorney, one of the crew, said, "You know, if you're going to do this kind of stuff, you should form a nonprofit foundation," which we did to search for shipwrecks of historic significance that were believed lost and gone forever. I had some great trustees who came on board: Dr. Harold Edgerton, who invented the strobe light and side-scan sonar; Peter Throckmorton, the dean of American archeologists, and Donald Walsh, the commander who went down a record 38,000 feet in the bathysphere, Trieste. Great guys came on board, and they said, "Let's call it the Clive Cussler Foundation, since you're funding it," and I said, "I've got an ego but it ain't that big!" So they said they thought it would be great fun to call it NUMA, like the books. That one they outvoted me on. Yes, Virginia, there really is a NUMA.
Bankrate: You were bankrolling this from the start?
Cussler: Um-hmm, always have. I used to try to get funding but ... you know, if I said I was going for treasure, sure, people would write a check. But since I said there was no return on this, they said phooey. I just gave up and funded it myself.
Bankrate: People always remember Key West treasure hunter Mel Fisher ...
Cussler: Oh God, yes. I knew Mel. People thought that I belonged in a rubber room under restraint because I have never looked for treasure. When people walk into my office, they're always amazed because I don't even have any artifacts. I'm kind of a pariah, a weirdo in that respect, but I'm held in esteem by archeologists and scientists. I never really had anybody doing publicity. I think the only press conferences we had were when we found the Lexington and the Hunley. I did hold one when I failed on the Merrimack, mostly to say we failed and why, so that somebody 200 years later wouldn't waste their time looking for it, because it was hopeless.
Bankrate: You published "Raise the Titanic!" well before they found the Titanic, right?
Cussler: Oh, way before; Robert Ballard found the Titanic in 1985 and the book came out in 1975. In fact, the movie of the book came out in 1980.
Bankrate: Would you have liked to have been a part of that discovery?
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Cussler: Yes and no. I thought it was fascinating, but since then, I've been invited to go down but I just didn't. I used to tell them I'm so sick of the Titanic I can't see straight. The History Channel is still going on about the secrets of the Titanic and all this crap. They've overdone it. I was amazed when we found the Carpathian, there was very little play on that. And that's a wonderful story, how it responded to save the 700 Titanic survivors. I researched it and found that it had been torpedoed in World War I off Ireland, so we went after it, and after three tries, we found it. All the information goes over to the state or federal government or universities, places like that.