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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the weather as the Martha Ann gets underway?

2. What does Dirk communicate about the sub's crew in his initial message back to the Martha Ann?

3. What is the nickname of the area where the Starbuck went missing?

4. What about the Starbuck's engine room strikes Dirk and LT March as suspicious?

5. What does the message say that the NUMA zoologist received against a microphone he is using to record fish sounds?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Adrian Hunter feel about her father? Use quotes from Chapter to support your position.

2. Why is Dirk's helicopter a necessary component of the crew on the Martha Ann?

3. What are some of the ways that Dirk knows that Summer is neither a government agent nor an American?

4. Dirk describes a few incidents he has known in his work that "smacked of Jules Verne." Describe them and discuss Dirk's attitude towards "ghost catching."

5. What is the significance of the Lillie Marlene?

6. Why is ADM Hunter taking the step of having Dirk detailed officially to the 101st Salvage Fleet?

7. What are the different mysteries or questions that ADM Hunter enumerates as he reads the log?

8. Boland refers to himself as "the skipper" of the Martha Ann. What is a skipper?

9. Cussler gives a good description of rip tides after Dirk has swum out beyond the breakers at Kaena Point. Describe them, why they are dangerous and explain how best to swim through them if caught in one.

10. What are the multiple ways that the Martha Ann is disguised as a civilian ship?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

ADM Hunter says, "I'll not confuse the issue with a personal problem," in response to Dirk's question as to whether he has informed the men plotting to blow up the seamount that his daughter is being held hostage there. How does this statement capture the essence of ADM Hunter's character throughout the book?

Essay Topic 2

Dirk refers to the salvage operations on the Thresher, the Bluefin, the Scorpion, and the submarine F-4. What are these boats or ships and what happened to them? How are they relevant to the sinking (and raising) of the Starbuck?

Essay Topic 3

Carefully analyze the "real" condition of the Starbuck with respect to international maritime law. Whose waters is she sitting in and who can rightfully claim her? How do the laws of maritime salvage govern this kind of at-sea loss? Most importantly, how does this contribute to the urgency and top-secretiveness in the plot?

(see the answer keys)

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