Given his easygoing method, it’s not instantly obvious that Ray Maloney is a Key West hero. However that designation is properly deserved, as he has devoted his life to a quietly heroic effort: preserving an important a part of the island’s early historical past.
Maloney is a sixth-generation Conch whose ancestors embrace Walter C. Maloney, a Key West lawyer and civic chief. He himself has been a water plant operator, musician, mechanic and shrimp farmer.
However Ray Maloney will all the time be remembered for one thing else: discovering and salvaging the Isaac Allerton shipwreck, along with his brother and cousin, within the waters off the Saddlebunch Keys.
The 137-foot service provider vessel Isaac Allerton was touring from New York to New Orleans when it was caught in an 1856 hurricane. The Allerton’s passengers and crew escaped in longboats and had been rescued by Key West shipwreck salvagers — then referred to as wreckers.
The wreckers had been Keys locals who raced their very own boats out to ships that had wrecked on the treacherously shallow reef. They’d rescue the passengers and crew and be entitled to a portion of the cargo, or its financial worth as decided by a decide.
The mid-1800s marked the heyday of the wrecking or salvaging trade, which helped make Key West the wealthiest metropolis per capita in the USA. Whereas the wreckers might solely get well a part of the Allerton’s cargo due to the shipwreck’s depth, their award from the salvage court docket made the vessel the richest but salvaged in island historical past.
In 1985, the long-forgotten wreck was rediscovered by Ray Maloney and his brother Steve Maloney, who had been fascinated by treasure searching and maritime historical past, and their cousin Robert DeGrippo. The trio was out on Maloney’s boat Hazel investigating an space of curiosity.
“I went down with the steel detector and my cousin went with me, and earlier than I hit the underside it began screaming,” mentioned Ray Maloney, emulating the noise a detector makes to sign a goal. “We began swimming round and noticed the copper rods sticking up and the keel — we noticed an enormous piece of marble and all types of different iron sticking up on the underside — that’s after I knew.”
Maloney, whose nice New City dwelling holds his assortment of ocean charts and shipwreck artifacts, nonetheless will get a faraway look when he remembers that discovery.
“I’ve had two or three monumental days in my life. However the different ones, I didn’t notice on the time,” he mentioned. “I knew it that day. I knew this was going to be life-altering.”
The trio wasn’t conscious of the wreck’s id till, within the native library, Maloney uncovered an early diary that talked about salvage divers working in 1856 on the sunken Isaac Allerton off the Saddlebunch Keys, offshore of in the present day’s MM 11 by means of MM 15 on U.S. 1.
He additionally discovered info that proved the Allerton’s significance to Key West’s historical past. Interval accounts reported that the salvage crew consisted of 433 males and boys — a lot of the island’s male inhabitants on the time — working from 28 boats.
Extra analysis revealed that the Allerton was carefully entwined with the Maloney brothers’ personal heritage. One in every of their mom’s forbears labored the wreck, and lawyer Walter C. Maloney represented one of many Allerton’s unique salvors in 1856.
As soon as the mandatory legalities and permits had been in place, the Maloney brothers spearheaded modern-day salvage efforts. Utilizing methods and tools not obtainable to the wreckers, they started to excavate the vessel.
Preserving the objects discovered on the Allerton, and telling its story, grew to become the main focus of Ray Maloney’s life. When he married in 1987, he and spouse Yolanda honeymooned in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the place the ship was constructed — and even met a descendant of the builder.
The Allerton website yielded a various assortment of objects: a heavy marble “capital” destined for the New Orleans courthouse, Nineteenth-century inkwells, knives, pots, plates, oil lamps, glass bottles, brass candlesticks, navigation devices, ship fittings and extra. There have been even two gold cash, dated 1852 and 1854.
“As quickly as we began salvaging, we agreed we had been going to maintain all of it collectively,” mentioned Ray Maloney. “So we determined to open up a museum.”
Within the late Nineteen Eighties, they acquired the downstairs space of Key West’s Outdated Metropolis Corridor on Greene Road. A passionate historian, Maloney constructed the museum himself and operated it for about 4 years earlier than connecting with native businessman Ed Swift, who had the means and promotional potential to convey the Allerton’s story to a wider viewers.
Right this moment, the vast majority of the artifacts are displayed on the Key West Shipwreck Treasure Museum — operated by Historic Excursions of America, co-founded by Swift — the place the vessel’s story is informed by reenactors. Maloney notably appreciates the museum’s portrayal of the wreckers’ pivotal position in Key West historical past, and their true character in rescuing ships’ crews and passengers in addition to cargo.
Maloney, who now plans to salvage further areas of the wrecksite, generally ponders whether or not the Allerton’s discovery was coincidence, success or one thing extra.
“I puzzled if one thing was handed down in my genes about the place to steer the boat, as a result of they steered their boats to it,” he mentioned of his wrecker ancestors.
“If we’d have gone 100 toes to both facet, we’d have gone proper previous it and no person would have recognized something about it,” he acknowledged. “I feel I used to be meant to do it.”