Jim participated in the dives to identify the wreck of the famous U.S. Naval brig Somers, scene of the U.S. Navy's only mutiny on the high seas and the inspiration for Herman Melville's story, Billy Budd. The ship sank in 1846 during the conflict between the U.S. and Mexico, Mexican War. The wreck was discovered off Vera Cruz, Mexico by Jim's friend George Belcher in 1986, and the two worked to preserve the wreck and encourage the governments of the U.S. and Mexico to protect it. In 1991, Jim led the official U.S. government team to Mexico to help negotiate a treaty between the two governments and to work with Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia, represented by Mexico's chief underwater archaeologist, Dra. Pila Luna, to map the wreck aboard the Mexican Navy gunboat Margarita Maza de Juarez. Here, at mission's end in 1990, Jim poses at the Mexican War Memorial at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Ironically, the "Somers affair" was one of the reasons the Naval Academy was founded. Somers was working as a training ship for young officers when the mutiny occurred, and the resultant scandal forced the Navy to move its training ashore.