Ghost Board

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Having an eclectic mind (I read nearly anything) it even led me to read Marty's writing in his career field, that had been for his students (and very interesting it was, too).

I am laughing out loud! 

I started my TIGHAR career by reading the entire website twice in 2000. That was just after Niku IIIIP. There were many exciting expeditions after that!

Ameliapedia -- Category: Expeditions

There were six more Niku expeditions after that, and they were full of drama and discovery.

At that time, conversations took place on different versions of a mailing list. The Forum was born in 2009. When TIGHAR knew that there was going to be interest in the website, we would double or quadruple the size of the server until the rush had passsed. Those were glory days. There were remarkable experts debating each other on the Forum every day. 

Those days are gone. They were not the product of willpower and determination. The time was ripe to pull together many pieces of information.  Among other things, Randy Jacobson did extraordinary studies of the Naval archives to dig out all of the material relative to the loss of and search for AE and FN.

Yes, the Forum is a shadow of its former self, but what fun we had while it lasted -- "What a long strange trip it's been."

[Don White]

You mention the Ameliapedia, which also seems to be a casualty, with no updates in a long time. I read all of that too.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

You mention the Ameliapedia, which also seems to be a casualty, with no updates in a long time. I read all of that too.

I know it has not been updated for a long time.

When we moved to our current ISP, it was left behind.

We do not have as many privileges on this server as we had with our old ISP.

I was able to partially revive it. I thought that we were going to move again and that perhaps we might be able to restore the old SEO URLs, but I'm not sure what happened to those plans. Ric and Pat were very busy with finishing the book and finalizing plans for the upcoming work on the Midnight Ghost. I was the driving force behind the development of the Ameliapedia and I have lost my mojo, I guess.

By my count, the last Niku expedition was 2014 (!).

• Niku I (1989)
• Niku II (1991)
• Niku IIIP (1996)
• Niku III (1997)
• Niku IIIIP (1999)
• Niku IIII (2001)
• Niku VP (WOF--2003)
• Niku V (2007)
• Niku VI (2010)
• Niku VII (2012)
• Niku VIII (2014)

I really enjoyed tying the results of those expeditions together.

I thought that the underwater searches would turn up an Any Idiot Artifact, but I was wrong.

Because they were sponsored by other organizations, I didn't feel motivated to do any in-depth coverage of them.

I did watch the videos of the most exciting moments. It is a tremendously complex environment that could easily swallow up all of the pieces that might clinch the argument. Reasoning from the clarity of artifacts found on the ocean floor around the wreck of the Titanic was a mistake. Niku is at the other end of the spectrum. What worked so well for the Titanic does not seem to be capable of searching all of the underwater hiding places on the slopes of Nikumaroro.

I kept working away on the list of sextant numbers up until 2018, when "The Ghost of Gardner Island" proved that the sextant box had been on the survey ship in 1939. That made all of the material I had collected on the Ameliapedia page irrelevant:

Sextant Box found on Nikumaroro

My last edit on that page was on 27 January 2019, at 09:17. At that time, I had been working in Rome for six months or so and had decided that I could resign my teaching position in Buffalo and make a commitment to stay here. I had hoped to get a new assignment in the states last year, but my provincial decided to assign me to stay for another three years. The first is done, leaving two to go, if I don't get sick or die first.