VINELAND — The weather on the Atlantic was calm during the diving expedition, and the crew on the chartered boat Wahoo stared into the placid sea waiting for the second of two 700-pound mosaics to reach the surface.
Then, just as the yellow air bags lifting the artwork from the sunken Andrea Doria burst above the waters, the winds picked up and the sea got angry.
"It was like the wreck didn't want to give them up," said Gene Peterson, 37, of Seaville, a professional diver.
But after three hours of struggling to pull the mosaics onto the Wahoo, the 11 divers and seven crew members finally recovered their treasure, once buried 250 feet below the sea inside the Italian liner.
Moyer, who spent more than $25,000 to finance the recovery, and his crew worked three days last week to retrieve the artifacts. They were hanging in the Andrea Doria before the ship sank in July 1956, 11 hours after a collision in the fog with the Swedish vessel Stockholm - about 50 miles off Nantucket, Mass.
Many divers - including Moyer - have retrieved china plates, crystal goblets, sterling-silver utensils and brass windows from the Doria's watery grave.
But Moyer and his fellow divers claim the ceramic mosaics of modern artwork are the most valuable and significant artifacts recovered from the 700-foot vessel. The ship's lure was not its size or speed but rather the commissioned artwork. Thus, it was advertised as a "floating art gallery."
Moyer, who works in the business office of a Vineland pharmacy, said he dived for the adventure. He said he was fascinated with the Andrea Doria
because the ship was considered the most difficult wreck dive.
Many of the items Moyer has retrieved from the sea are stored in Cumberland County. But the mosaics are his biggest trophies.
"Very few ships had artwork, especially survivable artwork. This really is unique to diving history," said Gary Gentile, 47, of Philadelphia, a member of the diving team.
In 1981, filmmaker Peter Gimbel and his wife, Elga Anderson, were part of a team that recovered the ship's safe. It was expected to contain diamonds, but only soggy, partially decomposed Italian lire and American dollars were found.
In 1963, Dan Turner of Florida salvaged the bronze statue of Andrea Doria, the 16th-century Italian statesman who, like fellow Genoese Christopher Columbus, was an admiral in the Spanish navy.
