History
After construction, the Sub Marine Explorer was partially disassembled and transported to Panama in December 1866, where she was reassembled to harvest oysters and pearls in the Pearl Islands. Experimental dives with the Sub Marine Explorer in the Bay of Panama ended in September 1867 when Kroehl died of "fever." The craft languished on the beach until 1869, when a new engineer and crew took it the Pearl Islands to harvest oyster shells and pearls. The 1869 dives, with known depths and dive profiles that would have inevitably led to decompression sickness, laid the entire crew down with "fever", and the craft was laid up in a cove on the shores of the island of San Telmo.
The wreck of the Sub Marine Explorer was rediscovered on San Telmo in the Pearl Islands in 2001 by archaeologist James P. Delgado of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. The wreck was well-known to locals, but was assumed to be a remnant of the Second World War. Identification of the craft, with the assistance of submarine historians Richard Wills and Eugene Canfield, led to four separate archaeological expeditions to the Explorer in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008. Documentation of the Sub Marine Explorer has resulted in detailed plans, including interpretive reconstructions of the craft, scientific study of its environment and interaction with the surrounding water, bathymetric assessment, scientific analysis of rates of corrosion, and considerable historical research. Work in 2006 was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the Office of Ocean Exploration. The 2008 expedition was funded by the Waitt Institute for Discovery of La Jolla. The vessel is now included in the Historic American Engineering Record of the U.S. National Park Service. A recent (2007) report summarizes preservation options for the submarine for the Panamanian government and recommends the recovery, preservation and public display of the craft in Panama. Metal analysis confirms that the craft is in a critical stage and faces irreversible deterioration and loss.
The Sub Marine Explorer was the subject of two documentary films; the first was an episode of the "Sea Hunters" that aired on National Geographic International Television in 2004, and the second, by Der Spiegel, which aired in Europe and in the US on the Smithsonian channel in 2010.
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