Races and Games
You wouldn't think that there aren't any races in treasure-hunting. Well, you'd be wrong!!! One kind of race is a well-known one for any craft... weather! Winter is a super-bad time at sea. Storms kick up suddenly, and seas are just rough in general during the winter. So when winter is coming, you have to really race and try to find your payday. Sometimes you have to lock up your primary boats anyway, and use other boats at your disposal... especially chartered ones!
And then there's political races! There is quite a few other treasure-hunters at sea, of course. Sometimes they're sitting right on top of your current target, and may be scanning the area with an R.O.V. of their own!!! So games and races begin!
First you have to play the waiting game. One thing you can do while you wait for the boat to move is go hunting for other treasure and paydays. Commodity ships are a good start... these have a lot of valuable material, like gold, sliver, copper, and other stuff. There's an area in the North Atlantic where a lot of these ships were shot down by U-Boats in the two World Wars. So you can head over there while waiting for your rival to move.
Then the dude finally moves, and may even leave the area. You have to move in fast, and get an artifact to bring to court. Of course, you've got to scan with your side-sonar first, and then dive and grab artifacts! Everything has to be done quickly and carefully. And you have to keep an eye out for your rival, and keep out of his or her radar range. And you may have to pretend to be a different kind of ship while you're at it!
Then, once you have your artifact(s), it's a race to court! You have to race your rival to get the artifact to the right government's court before they do, and get legal rights to salvage the site. Sometimes you have to take a plane to be sure you're the first one to get legal rights. When you do, you can dig up the site and sell off the payload.
R.O.V.s come in all different shapes and sizes. Some aren't built the same. Some go down straight, as-is, while others go down in cages! The ones in cages have "leashes" that spool out after them, called tethers. These tethers can be used to pull the R.O.V. back in safe and sound. And not all R.O.V.s are controlled by 3 rooms... some have only one room, and are sometimes the controls are also connected and controlled by the bridge!
But a lot of R.O.V.s have certain things in common. They have two manipulators ("hands"), one usually being equipped with a hose and the other especially designed to pick things up. They usually have cameras with flashes so that they can take still-frame photos. They have sonar built into them, for when visiblity (sp?) is low.
The Silver Queen
There is one very famous commodity ship... known as the Silver Queen. She is called this often because she had a huge load of silver in her hull when she was sunk. She was a super-fancy ship... even more so than the Titanic or Lusitania! But the World War I came along... and she was converted into a military vessel. She was crossing the ocean when a U-Boat attacked. The two torpedoes shot hit, and the engine room blew. This caused the boat to sink.
Now, luckily, most of the crew escaped. But 12 people went down for good... including two Americans. A mother and daughter died in the attack. This enraged the Americans, and made the ship another big factor into bringing the U.S.A. into the war.
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