Given his easygoing manner, it’s not immediately apparent that Ray Maloney is a Key West hero. But that designation is well deserved, as he has dedicated his life to a quietly heroic effort: preserving a vital part of the island’s early history.
Maloney is a sixth-generation Conch whose ancestors include Walter C. Maloney, a Key West attorney and civic leader. He himself has been a water plant operator, musician, mechanic and shrimp farmer.
But Ray Maloney will always be remembered for something else: discovering and salvaging the Isaac Allerton shipwreck, with his brother and cousin, in the waters off the Saddlebunch Keys.
The 137-foot merchant vessel Isaac Allerton was traveling from New York to New Orleans when it was caught in an 1856 hurricane. The Allerton’s passengers and crew escaped in longboats and were rescued by Key West shipwreck salvagers — then known as wreckers.
The wreckers were Keys locals who raced their own boats out to ships that had wrecked on the treacherously shallow reef. They’d rescue the passengers and crew and be entitled to a portion of the cargo, or its monetary value as determined by a judge.
The mid-1800s marked the heyday of the wrecking or salvaging industry, which helped make Key West the wealthiest city per capita in the United States. While the wreckers could only recover part of the Allerton’s cargo because of the shipwreck’s depth, their award from the salvage court made the vessel the richest yet salvaged in island history.
In 1985, the long-forgotten wreck was rediscovered by Ray Maloney and his brother Steve Maloney, who were fascinated by treasure hunting and maritime history, and their cousin Robert DeGrippo. The trio was out on Maloney’s boat Hazel investigating an area of interest.
“I went down with the metal detector and my cousin went with me, and before I hit the bottom it started screaming,” said Ray Maloney, emulating the noise a detector makes to signal a target. “We started swimming around and saw the copper rods sticking up and the keel — we saw a big piece of marble and all kinds of other iron sticking up on the bottom — that’s when I knew.”
Maloney, whose pleasant New Town home holds his collection of ocean charts and shipwreck artifacts, still gets a faraway look when he recalls that discovery.
“I’ve had two or three monumental days in my life. But the other ones, I didn’t realize at the time,” he said. “I knew it that day. I knew this was going to be life-altering.”
The trio wasn’t aware of the wreck’s identity until, in the local library, Maloney uncovered an early diary that mentioned salvage divers working in 1856 on the sunken Isaac Allerton off the Saddlebunch Keys, offshore of today’s MM 11 through MM 15 on U.S. 1.
He also found information that proved the Allerton’s importance to Key West’s history. Period accounts reported that the salvage crew consisted of 433 men and boys — much of the island’s male population at the time — working from 28 boats.
Additional research revealed that the Allerton was closely entwined with the Maloney brothers’ own heritage. One of their mother’s forbears worked the wreck, and attorney Walter C. Maloney represented one of the Allerton’s original salvors in 1856.
Once the necessary legalities and permits were in place, the Maloney brothers spearheaded modern-day salvage efforts. Using techniques and equipment not available to the wreckers, they began to excavate the vessel.
Preserving the items found on the Allerton, and telling its story, became the focus of Ray Maloney’s life. When he married in 1987, he and wife Yolanda honeymooned in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the ship was built — and even met a descendant of the builder.
The Allerton site yielded a diverse collection of objects: a heavy marble “capital” destined for the New Orleans courthouse, 19th-century inkwells, knives, pots, plates, oil lamps, glass bottles, brass candlesticks, navigation instruments, ship fittings and more. There were even two gold coins, dated 1852 and 1854.
“As soon as we started salvaging, we agreed we were going to keep it all together,” said Ray Maloney. “So we decided to open up a museum.”
In the late 1980s, they acquired the downstairs area of Key West’s Old City Hall on Greene Street. A passionate historian, Maloney built the museum himself and operated it for about four years before connecting with local businessman Ed Swift, who had the means and promotional ability to bring the Allerton’s story to a wider audience.
Today, the majority of the artifacts are displayed at the Key West Shipwreck Treasure Museum — operated by Historic Tours of America, co-founded by Swift — where the vessel’s story is told by reenactors. Maloney particularly appreciates the museum’s portrayal of the wreckers’ pivotal role in Key West history, and their true character in rescuing ships’ crews and passengers as well as cargo.
Maloney, who now plans to salvage additional areas of the wrecksite, sometimes ponders whether the Allerton’s discovery was coincidence, good fortune or something more.
“I wondered if something was handed down in my genes about where to steer the boat, because they steered their boats to it,” he said of his wrecker ancestors.
“If we’d have gone 100 feet to either side, we’d have gone right past it and nobody would have known anything about it,” he stated. “I think I was meant to do it.”
