Part of the thrill of the hunt is the thrill of the find. “I’m here to research this isn’t just a bunch of guys running around on jet skis. “There is a little sign at the end of the tour that says: ‘This is only 10 per cent of the collection.’ I said: ‘Let’s go introduce ourselves.’” They walked into Mel Fisher’s office. Maybe 21.” They toured the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum and Allen was thrilled. “A buddy of mine and I decided we were going to take a three day vacation to Key West. And then he met Mel Fisher, the chicken farmer turned millionaire and self-confessed part pirate who found the 17th century Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha and its cargo of gold and emeralds. In the salty shallows around Florida he found more, different kinds of fish and the remains of cargos from armadas of ships. “When I discovered salt water, that was the end of the lakes,” Allen says. To memorialise him after he passed away in September 2016, Allen and family dropped an anchor to mark one of his favourite fishing spots. He was an avid boater and fisherman as well, and the family enjoyed the sea. “It was about 60 pounds and I was freaking out.” He kept up diving in fresh and occasionally frigid water until his stepfather – Charles Walgreen III, the grandson of the founder of Walgreens – bought a home in Florida. He obtained his PADI certification in a sunken quarry in Wisconsin one January, bumping in the dark against an enormous carp. His curiosity for what lies below was born in an unlikely place, the Midwest, where he grew up. With that, and in spite of his many interests including raising fallow elk, Sitka deer and Russian boars in Tennessee, he needed a new purpose and acquired the tools of his future trade and lifelong avocation.Īllen's Support vessel Axis side-by-side with his Viking 52 Frigate He recently sold his family’s Heritage Bag Company, a manufacturer of institutional rubbish bags, which he headed for many years. If the name of Allen Exploration is not that familiar yet, it is because Allen is only getting warmed up as an environmental warrior, studying plastic pollution and fish migration, with a secondary mission as retriever of sunken history. “He’s found the Indianapolis, which was something else,” he says. “I have been accused of being his nephew a few times,” Carl says of that other Allen, as he comes up naturally in a conversation about shipwrecks. This is Carl Allen of Dallas, married to Gigi, and the driving force behind the Allen Exploration company. His last name is Allen, his personal fleet includes a submarine and he loves finding sunken ships. With a personal fleet that includes an aircraft and a submarine, superyacht owner Carl Allen tells Cécile Gauert how, after selling his business, he found new purpose in exploring the deep and researching its pollution.
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