Tom:
Did not know he had died, but I had Bill Haynie get in touch with him in late 2010 and he was ill then.
Sam worked with Rex Stocker for Jim Rathmann's group, among others and I was a grunt diver for that group when Art Hartman moved up from Miami with the "Arto", an old river cruiser and they began working together on some of the 1715 wrecks. I believe the boat that Sam ran at that time was called the "Halmar", or something like that, if I recall correctly. I was on board a few times at Corrigans. Hugh Gray was one of Art's divers from down in the Keys and he moved up with Art to the Treasure Coast. Hugh and I left at the end of the summer as it was the period of first Arab oil embargo, and we both moved to Morgan City and went to work for Oceaneering in the oilfield. That was the last I saw of Sam.
There is a 'legend' rock pile in the vicinity of Sebastian Inlet that Frank Brawley supposedly found while flying in the area. He had his own boat in Port Canaveral and hired Sam to take it down to Sebastian Inlet for a number of months to periodically search for this rock pile. Supposedly spent quite a bit of money looking for it. Sam said he did not find it.
I knew Frank personally, from the offshore oilfield business, and I worked with him on the Laertes salvage job off the Cape. I would not bet that he actually saw the rock pile from the air, but, I would bet that he had heard about it and sent Sam down to take a look. Maybe Sam told him about it. This pile legend has existed for some time. When I first worked for Real 8, Bob Johnson took the Grifon down there and drug me around in the area looking for it. I don't think Bob thought it actually existed though, since he only ran me around the area for a few hours.
Anyway, that is the reason I was trying to get hold of Sam, and Bill took care of that for me. So now, Sam has died, Frank has died, Bob Johnson has died and I guess only Rex, myself, and a few others have heard about this mystery ballast pile, although, I would bet there are a number of contributors here on Tnet that have also heard this story over the years.