If altogether more scientific in design, Ron’s proposal was ultimately just as adventurous. Was it possible, he asked, to verify the details of past life memories with the material record from archaeological investigation? As a preliminary word, he would have us understand that by past life memories he was specifically referring to the “whole track” and defined it as the “moment to moment record of a person’s existence in this universe in picture and impression form.” As for the particulars—how individual impressions are recorded, stored and recalled—this is the stuff of Dianetics. Yet suffice it to say, those impressions are real, and verifiably so. Thus the question became, not whether whole track memory was valid, but could one tap it for archaeological advancement? As another preliminary word, readers should understand that similar experimentation through the 1970s and 1980s, including Explorers Club fellow Stephan A. Schwartz’s “psychic” search for the tomb of Alexander the Great, were essentially derivative and Ron was categorically the first to explore this dimension. Initial correspondence only peripherally references the matter. “We are organizing the Ocean Archaeological Expedition,” he informed New York and London curators in May of 1961, and described a forthcoming hunt for artifacts “pertaining to Mediterranean culture likely to be found in cities and harbors of past ages or cargoes carried in ancient vessels.” Althoughthen receiving Explorers Club flag number 163, and proceeding with the refit of a Fairmile class “B” Motor Launch, it was not until September of 1967 that plans came to real fruition—by which point, the Ocean Archaeological Expedition had become a broader Hubbard Geological Survey Expedition and the Fairmile replaced with two vessels, the doubled-ended, high-sided ketch Enchanter and a 150-foot North Sea trawler known as the Avon River. Stated aims were likewise grander: “To complete a general geological survey of a belt from Italy, through Greece and the Red Sea and Egypt and along the Gulf of Aden and the East Coast of Africa,” and simultaneously, “to find and examine relics and artifacts and so possibly amplify man’s knowledge of history.” While if he yet made no official mention of how such relics and artifacts might be found, preliminary exercises told all.

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