As plane as the May
Those of us who have spent any time boating, fishing, shrimping, or crabbing in the waters of the Colleton or May Rivers know that the river floor is not flat, it can go from 10 feet to thirty feet very quickly, then back to 10 again. For those that shrimp these waters, those deep holes are exactly what you are looking for.
The year was 2018 and Fred Mix of Bluffton was heading out onto the water. An experienced fisherman, Mix was out on his boat by himself, navigating the waters between the big sand bar and Palmetto Bluff. It was a normal day for Mix, just looking to fill his cooler with shrimp to put in the freezer.
With a top-of-the-line fish/depth finder, Mix had found a hole that he liked and could see the schools of shrimp just off the bottom. The deep hole was about 28-30 feet deep but within a 20-foot radius, was back to about 12-15 foot deep. If you know anything about shrimping, you know that you are constantly moving the boat, either chasing the schools, or trying to get back on the hole.
“I could see the layer of shrimp and had thrown the net a few times. When the tide starting to drift me off the hole to shallower water, I saw a new object on the river floor,” said Mix. “I put the boat in reverse then let it drift forward over this object I could see on the side scan sonar. I immediately saw what appeared to be a plane.”
Mr. Mix was of course intrigued by this and marked the area where he was. He went back home and mulled over what his next move was going to be.
“I called up the Beaufort County Sherriff Dept. and met them down at All Joy landing. I explained to them what I thought that I had found.
Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be concerned with it, but did mention that almost 8 years prior, there was a report of a pilot that lost the ability to steer his airplane and crashed it in the May River. According to the report, the pilot was able to swim to safety.”
Mr. Mix was now even more curious to know about what he found lying at the bottom of the river, so he called on his friend Mr. Mike Majer, an extremely knowledgeable commercial diver and owner of Majers Diving and Salvage off of Hilton Head Island.
“So, I take Mike to the site of the wreck to see what was really down there. Mike suits up and dove down, within a minute or two he was right back to the surface.”
“Yep, it’s a Plane” Mike yells to Fred excitedly as he breaks the surface of the water coming up from the dive!
Both men go back to shore, of course skeptical as to what they had found and also what they should do next. Since the Sheriff department didn’t seem to worried about it, guess they don’t need to be either.
A few weeks later both men go back out there again to get a better look at it. When Mike Majers went down the second time he came back up with the pilot’s flight valise and the dashboard with the gauges. He knew the gauges had serial numbers that were that were integral to that plane only and could be identified by the serial numbers. When Mike got back in the boat, we did not open the valise because we did not know the details of the crash and gave it to the sheriff’s department
“There was really nothing in the plane, just what seemed to be some small luggage, which I’m quite happy with. Can you imagine if we had found anything else” laughed Mix?
A couple years later, Mr. Mix got a call from a lady who said that she was metal detecting off the beach in Bluffton and found the remnants of a hydraulic ram. She remembered seeing the article about the plane in the Island Packet and got a hold of Fred.
“Turns out that the plane was a Cessna 170 and because the hydraulic ram had fallen out, that is what most likely caused the pilot to have to make a crash landing, he had lost control of the steering.”
Just goes to show, you really never know what people are going to find, either hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface, or in 15 feet of water in the May River!
Paul Tollefson is the Director of Tennis at the Hampton Hall Club in Bluffton. He found his love for the Lowcountry in early 2002 after graduating high school and unsure of what career path he was destined towards. After moving from Hilton Head to Bluffton he became enthralled with the history of the town and the people and cultures that called it home for many generations. He has found a passion in writing and enjoys being able to share the stories and pictures of long-time locals. He is the co-creator of the Facebook page “Bluffton Then and Now.”
