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Authors: Robert Kurson
Tags: Fiction
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mattresses on the
Seeker.
There are romantic smells at sea, but a cushion kippered by years of sweaty, salt-watered divers is not among them.
On this night, while Nagle and Chatterton worked in the wheelhouse, the remaining divers slept in the salon. They were:
— Dick Shoe, forty-nine, Palmyra, New Jersey; administrator, Princeton University plasma physics lab
— Kip Cochran, forty-one, Trenton, New Jersey; policeman
— Steve Feldman, forty-four, Manhattan; stagehand, CBS
— Paul Skibinski, thirty-seven, Piscataway, New Jersey; excavating contractor
— Ron Ostrowski, age unknown, background unknown
— Doug Roberts, twenty-nine, Monmouth Beach, New Jersey; owner, cosmetics business
— Lloyd Garrick, thirty-five, Yardley, Pennsylvania; research chemist
— Kevin Brennan, thirty, Bradley Beach, New Jersey; commercial diver
— John Hildemann, twenty-seven, Cranford, New Jersey; owner of excavation company
— John Yurga, twenty-seven, Garfield, New Jersey; dive-shop manager
— Mark McMahon, thirty-five, Florham Park, New Jersey; commercial diver
— Steve Lombardo, forty-one, Staten Island, New York; physician
Some of these men had arrived in pairs and planned to dive together: Shoe with Cochran, Feldman with Skibinski, Ostrowski with Roberts, McMahon with Yurga. The others preferred to dive solo, many for safety reasons—a partner can’t panic and kill you, they reasoned, if he’s not your partner. Most knew one another from previous deep-wreck trips, or at least by reputation. All had searched for “mystery numbers” before. Collectively, they had discovered several garbage barges and rock piles for these efforts.
The Atlantic was kind to the
Seeker
through the evening. Around sunrise, loran readouts showed the boat just a half mile from the target site. Nagle cut the autopilot, throttled back the twin diesels, and swiveled to face the bottom finder. In the salon, divers began to awaken, the new quiet of calmed engines an alarm clock to eager men.
Nagle nudged the boat closer to the numbers. A shape appeared on the bottom finder’s electronic display.
“There’s something on the numbers,” Nagle called to Chatterton.
“Yeah, I see it,” Chatterton replied. “It looks like a ship on its side.”
“Christ, John, it also looks like it’s deeper than two hundred feet. I’m going to make a couple passes over it to get a better look.”
Nagle cut the
Seeker
’s wheel hard to port, throwing her stern starboard and pulling the boat around for a second pass, then a third and a fourth—“mowing the lawn,” as they call it. All the while, he watched the mass at the ocean bottom morph in and out of the bottom finder’s screen. On some passes, the instrument showed the object at 230 feet; on one it read 260 feet. Brennan, Yurga, and Hildemann climbed the ladder and entered the wheelhouse.
“What do we got, Bill?” Yurga asked.
“This is deeper than I was expecting,” Nagle told them. “And whatever it is, it’s lying low—there’s not a lot of relief. I think it might be a two-hundred-and-thirty-foot dive.”
There were no experienced 230-foot divers in 1991. Even those brave enough to test the
Andrea Doria
almost never went to her bottom, at 250 feet; most stayed near that wreck’s high point, around 180 feet, with the very best divers testing 230 feet perhaps once or twice a year. But Nagle kept saying that the mass on his bottom finder looked to be at 230 feet. Worse, it seemed to rise only about 30 feet off the sand.
Chatterton was capable of diving to 230 feet. He and Nagle devised a plan. Brennan and Hildemann would throw the hook. Chatterton would splash and check out whatever was on the bottom. If it looked worth diving and the depth was reasonable, he would tie in the anchor line. If it was some crappy barge or pile of rocks, or if the depth really was 260 feet, he would trip loose the hook, return to the surface, and call off the
Seeker.
There are romantic smells at sea, but a cushion kippered by years of sweaty, salt-watered divers is not among them.
On this night, while Nagle and Chatterton worked in the wheelhouse, the remaining divers slept in the salon. They were:
— Dick Shoe, forty-nine, Palmyra, New Jersey; administrator, Princeton University plasma physics lab
— Kip Cochran, forty-one, Trenton, New Jersey; policeman
— Steve Feldman, forty-four, Manhattan; stagehand, CBS
— Paul Skibinski, thirty-seven, Piscataway, New Jersey; excavating contractor
— Ron Ostrowski, age unknown, background unknown
— Doug Roberts, twenty-nine, Monmouth Beach, New Jersey; owner, cosmetics business
— Lloyd Garrick, thirty-five, Yardley, Pennsylvania; research chemist
— Kevin Brennan, thirty, Bradley Beach, New Jersey; commercial diver
— John Hildemann, twenty-seven, Cranford, New Jersey; owner of excavation company
— John Yurga, twenty-seven, Garfield, New Jersey; dive-shop manager
— Mark McMahon, thirty-five, Florham Park, New Jersey; commercial diver
— Steve Lombardo, forty-one, Staten Island, New York; physician
Some of these men had arrived in pairs and planned to dive together: Shoe with Cochran, Feldman with Skibinski, Ostrowski with Roberts, McMahon with Yurga. The others preferred to dive solo, many for safety reasons—a partner can’t panic and kill you, they reasoned, if he’s not your partner. Most knew one another from previous deep-wreck trips, or at least by reputation. All had searched for “mystery numbers” before. Collectively, they had discovered several garbage barges and rock piles for these efforts.
The Atlantic was kind to the
Seeker
through the evening. Around sunrise, loran readouts showed the boat just a half mile from the target site. Nagle cut the autopilot, throttled back the twin diesels, and swiveled to face the bottom finder. In the salon, divers began to awaken, the new quiet of calmed engines an alarm clock to eager men.
Nagle nudged the boat closer to the numbers. A shape appeared on the bottom finder’s electronic display.
“There’s something on the numbers,” Nagle called to Chatterton.
“Yeah, I see it,” Chatterton replied. “It looks like a ship on its side.”
“Christ, John, it also looks like it’s deeper than two hundred feet. I’m going to make a couple passes over it to get a better look.”
Nagle cut the
Seeker
’s wheel hard to port, throwing her stern starboard and pulling the boat around for a second pass, then a third and a fourth—“mowing the lawn,” as they call it. All the while, he watched the mass at the ocean bottom morph in and out of the bottom finder’s screen. On some passes, the instrument showed the object at 230 feet; on one it read 260 feet. Brennan, Yurga, and Hildemann climbed the ladder and entered the wheelhouse.
“What do we got, Bill?” Yurga asked.
“This is deeper than I was expecting,” Nagle told them. “And whatever it is, it’s lying low—there’s not a lot of relief. I think it might be a two-hundred-and-thirty-foot dive.”
There were no experienced 230-foot divers in 1991. Even those brave enough to test the
Andrea Doria
almost never went to her bottom, at 250 feet; most stayed near that wreck’s high point, around 180 feet, with the very best divers testing 230 feet perhaps once or twice a year. But Nagle kept saying that the mass on his bottom finder looked to be at 230 feet. Worse, it seemed to rise only about 30 feet off the sand.
Chatterton was capable of diving to 230 feet. He and Nagle devised a plan. Brennan and Hildemann would throw the hook. Chatterton would splash and check out whatever was on the bottom. If it looked worth diving and the depth was reasonable, he would tie in the anchor line. If it was some crappy barge or pile of rocks, or if the depth really was 260 feet, he would trip loose the hook, return to the surface, and call off the
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