First, the Hawley family used their spare time, for a year or so, to visit libraries and research sunken boats. They decided to look for the "Arabia" , which sank in 1856 in kansas, not far from the hawley's home. As the missouri river changes its course a lot, the wreck was now under a field about 800 metres from the river bank.its approximate position was known from the records of two earlier salvage attempts that failed. with the permission of the land's owner,the hawleys used a mrtal detector to locate the buried steamboat.