Lynbrook's Art Mattson: At war with the elements

In my previous article about the wrecks of the three-masted ships Bristol and Mexico off the South Shore of Long Island in 1836, I wrote about what motivated me to spend decades researching these long-forgotten tragedies.

Primarily it was the death of my 23-year-old sister in the wreck of her own tall ship off the coast of France. Also, I had a near drowning experience, one that validates much of what I read about the victims of these shipwrecks.

It happened while spear-fishing in Long Island Sound. As a teenager, I spent summers at my parents’ cottage on the North Shore, at Sound Beach. I became a highly skilled spear-fisherman — my expertise was such that I was able to spear every fish in the head, so as not to damage the meat.

One bright summer day, at age sixteen and fit as a dolphin, I snorkeled out for a solo spear-fishing expedition 300 yards from shore. My objective was a cluster of rocks that barely broke the surface. Once there, I descended fifteen feet to the bottom, where blackfish and sea bass lurked among the cracks and crevices of a massive array of glacially-deposited boulders. I poked my head into a three-foot wide opening, and allowed my eyes to get used to the dim light. I had looked into this very crevice dozens of times before, but today was different. There before me, instead of a fish, was one of the few lobsters I had ever seen in the wild. Determined to catch it and have it for dinner, or better yet, sell it, I eased in and slowly extended my hand toward the backward-retreating crustacean. When the creature raised its claws in a fighting mode, I decided that perhaps my thin skin was not up to such a battle. It was time for me to retreat.

Because of my eagerness, I was farther into the crevice than I thought. I began to paddle backward with my free arm, the one not holding the spear-gun. But my diving fins, which were designed to propel me forward, restricted my ability to back up. Moreover, the buoyancy of my upper torso had floated me upward into a narrower space. I began to panic.