Book Review -- Shadow Divers, Robert Kurson

I picked up Shadow Divers with very low expectations. The story of the U-Who had already been told in numerous media and the fact that the book was a best seller just convinced me that it would turn out to be so much schlock. I was wrong.

Shadow Divers is the story of two men, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, who find themselves thrust together while diving the wreck of an unidentified U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. The motives and methodologies of the two men, both in life and in diving, seem polar opposites. Chatterton lives a tenaciously disciplined life in which he consistently strives to do the honorable thing. Kohler prefers to keep things a bit looser, drinking to excess, mooning families on passing boats and pulling up as many artifacts as he can from the wrecks he dives. Not surprisingly, the two start off not liking each other.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that they turn out to have a lot more in common than they initially believe. Both have more than a passing interest in U-boats. Both are able to look past the subs' Nazi origins to see the characters of the men who manned them. And both are committed to doing whatever it takes to discover the identity of this particular one -- which lies in a place where no U-boat is supposed to be.

To the uninitiated, it would seem a simple matter to discover the identity of a wreck. Someone must have reported a sinking. Somewhere a name must be engraved or stenciled in. At the very least, there must be some mention of a crewman. Well, not in this case. Whatever secrets the U-Who has, it doesn't give them up easily. It lies in 230 feet of water and its interior is a nightmare combination of silt, skeletons, hanging cables and caved-in pieces of machinery. Of the first six divers who enter it, three lose their lives. Still, dive after dive, year after year, Chatterton and Kohler devise new plans to find some marking, carry those plans out perfectly and then come up empty.

I get the feeling that the author, Robert Kurson, is not a diver. If this is the case, then his ability to describe the dangers and claustrophobia of deep wreck diving is remarkable. And the human side of this story is nothing to sneeze at either. I actually got a little verklempt near the end -- that's the first time that's happened while reading a wreck diving book!

Despite my original misgivings, Shadow Divers is a very good book.

It was published by Random House in 2004.