Submarines – Page 4 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Bookshelf: Shadow Divers

Shadow Divers – Robert Kurson

This book is gripping – I loved it. It describes the discovery and diving on a German U-boat in the northern Atlantic Ocean. It took over six years before the vessel was conclusively identified, and Kurson describes the process followed – including multiple dead ends – by John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, the two divers who persisted with the mystery long after others had lost interest.

It’s a mixture of terrifying deep wreck diving and penetration, WWII history, and personal drama that I found quite irresistible. Three divers died on the submarine before it was identified, and every imaginable diving accident – from entanglement to DCS to panic to nitrogen narcosis (a big feature, since the sub lies at about 70 metres and initially the diving on her was on air), and the constant risk of being lost at sea if you didn’t surface on the line – occurs. I still don’t think this kind of diving is for me – the dangers are too great.

I admired the determination of Chatterton and Kohler to put a name to the submarine, thus providing closure to the families of the German officers who perished on board. Their rectitude and determination not to desecrate a war grave and the resting place of nearly sixty men was admirable. It’s possible that, had they agreed to rummage among the human remains all over the submarine, they’d have located an item of someone’s personal effects that would have speeded the identification process, but they refused to disturb the bones.

The culture of American deep wreck diving sounds as though it is quite macho and cowboy-like (one group of divers wore matching denim jackets with a skull and crossbones on it), and for Chatterton and Kohler to buck that trend was a big thing.

I learned one useful thing that has stayed in my mind since I finished the book – maybe I knew it all along, but it was articulated here in a clear manner: when you run into difficulties in the water, solve the first problem completely before you try to solve a second or third one. You need to answer each problem fully when it occurs, because accidents happen when a small thing is ignored, which then combines with another problem to cause a life-threatening situation.

In the acknowledgements, Kurson mentions Deep Descent by Kevin McMurray, which describes diving on the wreck of the Andrea Doria in the same dangerous, cold, rough piece of ocean. Many of the protagonists in MacMurray’s book appear in Shadow Divers, as do the same pair of dive boats – the Seeker and the Wahoo. He also cites Neutral Buoyancy by Tim Ecott, another of our favourite diving books, as an inspiration and source for some of the decompression theory.

Unfortunately the aggressive, fiercely competitive ethos that has been allowed to fester among this particular group of divers has led to the publication of a rival account by Gary Gentile (who appeared extensively in Deep Descent). It’s called Shadow Divers Exposed and apparently refutes much of what is described by Kurson. Gentile is clearly a bitter and angry man, with several axes to grind. It does however seem possible that in focusing the book so squarely on Kohler and Chatterton, Kurson allowed it to seem as though the two of them are due more credit for identifying the U-boat than they really are, so this book should be read with a small measure of caution. I would still strongly recommend it, however – the overarching truths and events described did take place, even if a few small-minded participants and observers would quarrel over specific details.

The book is available here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here.

Series: Treasure Quest – HMS Victory special

This is an excerpt of two episodes from the Discovery Channel series Treasure Quest, which recounts the activities of Odyssey Marine Exploration as they travel the English Channel one summer, looking for valuable shipwrecks to salvage. Odyssey is a listed company that conducts for-profit archaeology.

The episodes cover the discovery and subsequent identification of the HMS Victory in the English Channel. The Victory was an 18th century British warship believed to have been carrying substantial loot when she sank. The explanation of the process of investigation, and recovery of two cannons from the site, is fascinating.

The DVD is available here. There’s no need to purchase it if you already own the first season of Treasure Quest, as this is simply the two episodes of that season that deal with the Victory.

Series: Treasure Quest

Odyssey Marine Exploration is a listed company (Nasdaq: OMEX) that conducts deep-sea salvage operations on shipwrecks believed to be valuable (in money terms). They use side scan sonar to map the sea floor, expert eyes to identify potential targets, and tethered ROVs to examine those targets and decide whether they’re worth salvaging. The Wired magazine article I posted about here describes their activities. As I mentioned in that post, some are critical of the company for being treasure hunters and failing to preserve the archaeological remains of the ships they plunder. They’ve also run afoul of several governments for a variety of reasons relating to salvage rights.

Treasure Quest (only one season on DVD so far) documents a season of wreck hunting in the English Channel. We are frequently told it costs over $30,000 per day to keep the operation running, and it’s clear from the awesome ships and gadgets used by the crew that this is a big money operation. There seems to be a job for every single kind of person: computer techs, general handymen, project managers, archaeologists and historians, photographers, sailors, and those skilled at Playstation (they drive the ROVs using joysticks from the surface).

The vessels explored ranged from merchant to pirate ships, navy vessels to submarines – of various eras. Their most exciting find in this series was the wreck of the HMS Victory (one of the six ships that bore the name), an 18th century British warship believed to have been carrying a lot of treasure. Not all the episodes involved a successful outcome, but the variety of the activities recorded, along with the total romance and drama of being at sea looking for pirate treasure with the finest modern technology, ensured that we kept watching.

Two of the episodes in the middle of the series are purely archaeology and marine history focused. Keen to show they’re not just treasure hunters (they are) the Odyssey team checked out four German U-boats in the English channel. This was quite a moving episode – not because of the ramblings of the member of Odyssey’s crew who spent years as a submariner and seemed to have forgotten that sixty five years ago the German submariners were the sworn and heartfelt enemies of his Allied brethren, but because of the extremely funny (inadvertently) yet sincere German U-boat historian whose expertise assisted the Odyssey team members in identifying which sub was which. When I see those submarines on the ocean floor – whether intact (indicating that the men inside died slowly, knowing what was coming) or ripped to shreds (indicating a mercifully quick death) – I am filled with respect for those who would agree to spend weeks in a confined space, out of sight of daylight, facing constant threats of danger.

Another episode entails a visit to the wreck of the RMS Lusitania, off the Irish coast. This wreck was purchased many years ago by a wealthy entrepreneur who chartered the Odyssey vessel to conduct dives on the wreck over a period of about a week, in order to photograph the vessel and to try and determine why she sank so rapidly.

The final episode is an account of the greatest succcess Odyssey has had to date, the discovery of a wreck they call The Black Swan (and the source of much of the diplomatic controversy that the company has experienced). Seventeen tons of gold and silver coins were recovered from this site but owing to a lengthy legal process, they are in limbo and cannot be disposed of as yet.

Tony and I devoured this series, both of us contemplating selling our worldly possessions and buying a ship to hunt treasure with! After reading Robert Ballard’s book on using submersibles to explore depths beyond those which a human on scuba could penetrate – The Eternal Darkness – seeing the tools he describes being used first-hand was fabulous. There’s a lot of computer animation depicting the ships being explored, their sinking, the layout of the Odyssey vessel, the layout of the wreck sites, and just about everything else that could be useful to illustrate what’s being sought and how the search is conducted.

The box set is available here. It comes highly recommended if you aren’t offended by for-profit archaeology, or if you’re interested in shipwrecks, technology with marine applications, or anything related.

Bookshelf: The Eternal Darkness

The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration – Robert D. Ballard

I have read several of Robert Ballard’s books – Robert Ballard’s Titanic, Mystery of the Ancient Seafarers, Return to Titanic, Adventures in Ocean Exploration, and Explorations, his autobiography.

I expected to find this book a bit dry and repetitive, thinking I’d read everything he had to say about submersibles and the like. There is a small amount of repetition, but it’s very limited, and this book is more focused on the history of man’s attempts to dive deep using submarine vessels of various kinds – from William Beebe and Otis Barton’s bathysphere to the bathyscaphe and beyond.

Ballard himself was involved in much of this history, having pioneered manned and then unmanned (ROV) submersibles during the course of his career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

It boggles my mind that only once has man visited the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the world’s oceans in the Mariana Trench near Guam – and this was in 1960. A Japanese robot has since descended into the depths there (in 1995) and in 2009 a robot built by Woods Hole, Nereus, made the journey; but not since the bathyscaphe Trieste carried Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh below the surface has any human being visited this spot, nearly 11 kilometres beneath the sea.

This is an easy read, with ample illustrations (particularly of Ballard’s activities) and is a comprehensive history of our efforts to explore the deep ocean. Frankly, I think they’ve been a bit lacking in intensity and frequency, but most ocean explorers would agree with me!

The book is available to order here.

Series: The Deep

The Deep is a five episode BBC production starring Minnie Driver and two other actors who I am sure are famous on Mud Island. It has mostly been panned by critics, but Tony and I quite enjoyed it. We found it pretty gripping and watched it over several consecutive evenings.

It’s set almost entirely on a submarine, 600 metres beneath the North Pole. The crew are visiting a hydrothermal vent field to do scientific research, but first have to figure out what happened to an earlier expedition that was lost with all hands, six months prior. The repercussions of their discoveries (we are told) could set off world wars if the information they uncover were to fall into the wrong hands. And besides the explosive discoveries, the crew find themselves trapped under the ice with no power, communications, and limited air. It’s uncertain as to whether they’ll escape with their lives (cue DRAMATIC MUZAK).

I’m not sure what audience this was intended for, but there’s a lot of repetitious explanation of what’s happening, and I imagine the actors must have felt like total bananas saying some of the lines. Stating the obvious – often summarising the entire series of events that has transpired to date – is commonplace. The script is not in the tradition of Shakespeare. That said, it gets the job done, and it’s the atmospheric interior of the Russian submarine and the cramped but high-tech British submersible that provide much of the interest and entertainment.

I must confess not to be terribly well-versed in the undersea horror genre, but this is more of a thriller than a horror (for which I was grateful). I think this series has what must be the standard ingredients of cramped spaces, uncertain future survival, and some emotional entanglements to add spice to the plot.

I was annoyed and disappointed by Minnie Driver’s character, Frances Kelly, who is the captain of the British submarine. She’s supposed to be a capable, unflappable leader, but is reduced to a simpering lip-quivering mass of jelly by one of her crew, with whom she is having an adulterous affair. Her leadership abilities are seriously compromised by their attraction, and we find her uttering a lot of painfully embarrassing pleas in his general direction (as he prepares to commit unspeakable acts of courage), accompanied by heaving bosoms and wide eyes.

Initially I was pleased to see what appeared to be a positive female role model in Captain Kelly – and the submarine’s crew is pretty diverse in all respects – but the ultimate message recieved is that even a woman who is a highly-qualified scientist and leader will be undone in all respects by the devastating charisma and good looks of her one true love (or lust). And, also, that if you’re in LURVE, an adulterous affair is just fine. Bleugh. End of rant. I think Captain Kathryn Janeway , captain of the Starfleet starship USS Voyager, spoiled me.

There are some illogical and impossible to justify decisions on the part of members of the crew, numerous implausibilities, and some downright ridiculous situations… For example, “triangulating the click signals” of the pod of beluga whales visible through the front windscreen (is that the right term?) of the submarine in order to find the hole in the ice to which they’re headed, instead of just following them using visual contact… Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough!

There’s not much marine life on show – the aforementioned beluga, and a squid-like deepsea creature with glowing dots – but the focus here is on the storyline and the cramped interiors of the submarines.

The DVD is available here. Here’s the official BBC website page for the mini-series.

Jules Verne’s birthday

Jules Verne was born today in 1828. He was a science fiction writer (one of the first), best known for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. The Google doodle for today is in celebration of his birthday… Go check it out – you can toggle the view through the windows of the Nautilus!

Bookshelf: Explorations

Explorations: A Life of Underwater Adventure – Robert D. Ballard & Malcolm McConnell

Robert Ballard is the author of several other books I’ve reviewed here, and I must confess that this is one of the ones I enjoyed the most. He’s best known for his work locating the wreck of the Titanic, documented in a beautiful volume that balances history, science and anecdote.

This is more of a biography than the other books by Ballard that I’ve reviewed, and Ballard describes his path from navy recruit to graduate student to world-renowned marine geologist and explorer. It’s amply illustrated and very easy to read. More steeped in the everyday life of an academic, the book is also riddled with accounts (sensitively done) of the infighting, politics and jockeying for credit and funding that characterises the everyday life of a researcher.

Ballard isn’t really a diver; most of his work is on extremely deep wrecks and sites far beyond the reach of a human being in a wetsuit. He is one of the pioneers of the use of submersibles, and he recounts several times what it feels like to sink, in a small titanium bubble, deep into the darkness of the ocean. It’s quite scary-sounding… At that depth one is beyond all help, and if the submersible should get stuck, have a ballast problem, catch alight or lose power, there are very few options for escape. Sumbersibles are now equipped with very flexible steering equipment, but it still requires great patience and skill on the part of the pilots to deal with problems that may arise.

From a personal perspective, Ballard sounds as inept at marriage and fatherhood as Lance Armstrong – he tries to rationalise things (like divorcing his wife without warning, just after their college-age son had died in a car accident, because she wasn’t interesting and exciting enough for the world-famous explorer that he’d become) but just comes off sounding like a complete jackass. Fortunately being a decent human being doesn’t have any bearing on how adept one is at directing the search pattern of a submersible, but it’s still disappointing. His dealings with his colleagues and subordinates also seem fraught with conflict a lot of the time, and while his arrogance may be justified, it’s not attractive.

You can get a copy of the book here.

Bookshelf: Adventures in Ocean Exploration

Adventures in Ocean Exploration: From the Discovery of the Titanic to the Search for Noah’s Flood – Robert D. Ballard & Malcolm McConnell

I read this book while sick in bed one weekend, wishing I was diving. Robert Ballard has lived a life of exploration and adventure, and has had a pioneering role in the use of submersibles – both manned and unmanned – in deep sea mapping and exploration.

This is a large-format, lavishly illustrated book, as with the other National Geographic titles I’ve reviewed, that is a happy meeting between a description of some of the highlights of Ballard’s varied career, and a history of man’s relationship to the ocean. It’s written in an entertaining anecdotal style, but with lots of solid historical background. The photographs are magnificent.

It’s not the first of Ballard’s books I would get hold of, if I was starting out a collection, but it’s a good addition to the library of someone who is fascinated both by undersea science (the hydrothermal vents chapter is marvellous) and history. If you’re interested in the process and results of deep sea submersible exploration, I’d take a look at Ballard’s Titanic book first.

You can get hold of a copy of Adventures in Ocean Exploration here.

Movie: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

This is my favourite movie – I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier in the category of “ocean movies”! It has an incredible cast – Bill Murry, Angelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Jeff Goldblum. The humour is not laugh out loud funny, but – in true Bill Murray style – the kind that makes you chuckle or smile to yourself.

Steve Zissou is an underwater researcher like Jacques Cousteau (even down to the Speedos and little red caps). The film traces his attempt to track down the jaguar shark that ate his partner, and his reunion with his illegitimate son. The sea life is rendered using computer graphics or giant puppets – most of the creatures shown are fictional, but beautiful nonetheless. My favourite part of the movie was the Belafonte, Steve’s ship. The actual ship used in the filming was a former South African minesweeper. but a huge cross-sectional model was also constructed.

I also loved the soundtrack – very quirky, with some tracks specially designed by Mark Mothersbaugh to sound like they were produced on a Casio electric keyboard.

There are many things about this movie that make me laugh when I think about it.

Steve getting covered in leeches while wearing his ridiculous shiny blue wetsuit
Willem Dafoe’s character’s gift for choosing TOTALLY random Bible readings for funerals
Alistair Hennessy’s (Jeff Goldblum) very gay crew, with impeccable fashion sense, when contrasted with Steve Zissou’s ragtag bunch
The female crewmember on the Belafonte who is gratuitously topless most of the time
The Adidas tracksuits and branded sneakers
The number of people squeezed into the submersible at the end, when they’ve found the jaguar shark (far more than it’s rated for)

Aside from the comic element, the film is very moving indeed. The final scene when the crew walks down the jetty over the credits is beautiful, as is the exit from the awards dinner with Steve Zissou carrying a little boy on his shoulders. The music at that point was perfect.

The DVD is available here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here. If you liked the soundtrack, including some David Bowie performed in Brazilian Portuguese on an acoustic guitar, you can get it here or here.

Bookshelf: Mystery of the Ancient Seafarers

Mystery of the Ancient Seafarers: Ancient Maritime Civilzation – Robert Ballard

I read this book while miserably ill in bed this past weekend, envying Tony the nine dives he was doing over two days with students. It was a small consolation – Ballard combines history of the various maritime civilisations with descriptions of research and exploration expeditions mounted to search for and examine undersea remains of the vessels used.

The photography, as is usual for National Geographic, is magnificent, and ancient mosaics and frescoes are interspersed with paintings of how the ships must have looked in full sail, photos taken by the submersibles and divers working on the archaeological sites, and pictures of the submersible and other marine technology used to perform the exploration. Ballard’s writing style is engaging but he really comes into his own when he’s describing the voyages of discovery he was a part of.

I was particularly interested in the research being done in the Black Sea, which has only a very narrow channel leading out of it into the Mediterranean Sea. The freshwater draining into the Black Sea from the surrounding rivers drains out, but a deep layer of anoxic water – a dead zone devoid of any kinds of life – exists in the depths of the Black Sea where the water is never stirred up or refreshed. This provides a perfect preservation environment to the many shipwrecks which must be lying there as a result of the Black Sea being part of such important trading routes. Ballard and his team found a vessel with wood looking as though it was hewn yesterday, when it had been underwater for over 1,000 years.

The book is a large format hardcover, and a lovely addition to the library of anyone who is interested in the sea and its history. You can purchase it here.