Blowin' Smoke

It's amazing the rich material one can stumble on in a short period of time over on the HH website. We decided to check out their "Odyssey Marine Exploration" thread this morning and immediately found something posted by Doc that, once again, perfectly illustrates how the history poseurs use disinformation in their vicious campaign to discredit Odyssey.

Some of you may remember the research ship that caught fire off the coast of Louisiana a couple years ago. There was some speculation at the time that it might be an Odyssey-owned vessel. This was undoubtedly because of the ship's name, the Odyssey Voyager. Let's be clear from the outset: this was not an Odyssey-owned ship and the company quickly publicly stated so. Of course, that didn't stop the low-life Doc from using this tragedy to try to harm Odyssey:

DOC (8/13/06): "[Odyssey's] track record to date seems to demonstrate boundless optimism that has yet to be reflected in their traded stock. While I haven't been able to establish the ownership in the vessel noted below, if in fact it proves to be theirs I would expect this operation will be dead in the water. A radio intercept was forwarded to me by another skipper at the time the fire first broke out. From the position of the crane I would assume that they might have had an ROV in the water at the time of the fire."

A serious charge: if this was Odyssey's vessel, Doc claimed the fire would ruin company operations. And even though he possessed no evidence, he recklessly speculates the company also had an ROV in the water; meaning, they lost a very expensive piece of equipment to boot. (As an aside, isn't it amazing Doc always has some secret source -- his "intel net," as he calls it -- willing to send him "information" about Odyssey, or really anything going on in the world? Very "germane," not to mention convenient, don't you think?)

Doc provides an "update" a couple of days later, and continues his speculative garbage, openly discussing the damage he expects the vessel fire to cause OMEX's share price:

DOC (8/16/06): "Well, the good news is that the fire is out. It was so intense that they let it burn itself out rather than fight it. I talked with USCG Lt. Lamm in Louisiana. The vessel was registered in Vanutu, a little island nation that is a 'flag of convenience' like Panama. There was no report on owner or leasor. I am still mystified as to why no press release by Odyssey Marine as, true or false, this is serious business that reflects on their stock valuation in the market place. I'm going to check their stock. It's been going down steadily with only one upward spike when they prematurely announced that all was well with the Sussex recovery.

Right. Doc is so concerned about Odyssey's stock valuation he wants clarity from the company lest it causes them harm, right? Of course, he wouldn't be trying to impact the stock price negatively through his smarmy insinuations, now would he? In fact, and as most people of normal intelligence know, if the burning ship had been Odyssey's, they would have immediately put out a press release saying so, as that obviously would be a material event. Even still, Odyssey did publicly deny the vessel was theirs, but was that enough for Doc? What do you think? In fact, his final sordidly disgusting post on the matter shows his motivation all along:

DOC (8/20/08): "The stock is now listed as distressed and I'd guess that is the truth of it."

We're certain that, like us, you'd expect Doc, or the HH forum moderators, in the interest of accuracy and full disclosure, to update these posts to let readers know that the burning ship was ultimately proven NOT to be an Odyssey vessel. You would assume a website allegedly committed to historical accuracy and truth would want its readers to have all the facts about events and matters HH's posts about, right?

As we have shown time and time again, that's not the modus operendi of HH. Their approach is simply this: get the big lie out, hope it sticks, and let it ideally wreak as much havoc as possible.