Summary of Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Brielle, New Jersey, is the place where the boat captains and fishermen live. It is also the place where the hangers-on and wannabes and also-rans keep believing in the sea.
#2 Nagle’s area of expertise was the New York and New Jersey shipping lanes, which saw a lot of traffic in the 1970s and 1980s. The wrecks there rarely yielded treasure, but they often yielded stories that fascinated Nagle.
#3 Deep-wreck divers, like Nagle, had to brave the unknown depths of the ocean floor. They had to discover all of their discoveries by themselves, without any maps or directions.
#4 The Andrea Doria was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks. It was not a typical target for Nagle, since her location was widely known and she had been explored by divers since the day after her sinking. But the Doria made siren calls to great wreck divers.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Segunda Guerra Mundial
• Military
• World War II
• History
• Seconde Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669396871
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Brielle, New Jersey, is the place where the boat captains and fishermen live. It is also the place where the hangers-on and wannabes and also-rans keep believing in the sea.

#2

Nagle’s area of expertise was the New York and New Jersey shipping lanes, which saw a lot of traffic in the 1970s and 1980s. The wrecks there rarely yielded treasure, but they often yielded stories that fascinated Nagle.

#3

Deep-wreck divers, like Nagle, had to brave the unknown depths of the ocean floor. They had to discover all of their discoveries by themselves, without any maps or directions.

#4

The Andrea Doria was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks. It was not a typical target for Nagle, since her location was widely known and she had been explored by divers since the day after her sinking. But the Doria made siren calls to great wreck divers.

#5

The Doria’s real challenge was exploration. The ship was so deep, dark, and dangerous that entire decks remained unexplored. Nagle went to work, and after several days of searching, he found the ship’s bell.

#6

Nagle had envisioned his business as an endless series of trips to deep and dangerous wrecks like the Doria or the Choapa, but his clients desired only the nearby sites, wrecks like the Stolt Dagali, SS Mohawk, and the Tolten.

#7

Nagle’s drinking worsened. He began to lose customers. By 1990, he had made his last Doria dive. He continued to lose customers. Every day, he would tell the few remaining people he respected about how right things were in the old days, when diving was great.

#8

The Horrible Inn was a bar in Brielle, New Jersey, that was run by Nagle. It was a place where fishermen, boat captains, and other local toughs could go to get drunk and fight. It was a constant stream of bikers, fishermen, and street toughs.

#9

The author went fishing with Skeets, and while he was basking in the largesse of the site, he could not stop himself from wondering about the object at its center. It was big, deep, and made of steel. It mattered to him.

#10

The next day, Nagle met with Skeets to swap the numbers. Nagle wrote down his numbers for Skeets, a little blackfish snag south of Seaside lump, just a pile of rocks that made for good fishing. Then Skeets began to copy his Loran-C time differentials across a streak of peanut grease left by Nagle’s hand.

#11

John Chatterton was a commercial diver who had met Skeets Nagle in 1984. He volunteered to dive the Texas Tower in 1984, and reached the bottom to retrieve the dead diver. He tied the body to a two-hundred-pound lift bag and inflated the bag with air until the body began its ascent to the surface.

#12

Chatterton was soon crewing on the Seeker. He made his first trip to the Doria in 1987, and was astounded by the wreck’s size and complexity. He returned and marveled at the feeling of being inside places that didn’t used to be places.

#13

In 1991, Nagle and Chatterton organized a diving expedition to the Skeets site. They found their twelfth diver, who didn’t have the heart for wreck diving.

#14

On September 2, 1991, Nagle, Chatterton, and the twelve divers who had signed up for the exploratory trip stuffed the Seeker with tanks, masks, regulators, knives, flashlights, and bundles of other gear. They faced a six-hour ride to Skeets’s numbers.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Deep-shipwreck diving is among the world’s most dangerous sports. It is not a matter of if a deep-shipwreck diver will die, but rather when. The sport confront man’s most primordial instincts to breathe, see, and flee from danger.

#2

The effects of narcosis are similar to the effects of alcohol intoxication. As a diver descends deeper, the effects intensify. At 130 feet, most divers will be impaired. Some become all thumbs and struggle to complete simple tasks, while others turn dumb with the depth.

#3

The nitrogen in the diver’s breathing gas poses another problem. It accumulates in his tissues with both depth and time, and if he ascends quickly, the surrounding atmospheric pressure drops rapidly, causing the accumulated nitrogen to form massive quantities of large bubbles.

#4

Deep-wreck divers plan their dives ahead of time, and they use their equipment to allow them to enter an off-limits world. They are very careful about their equipment, as it grants them passage into an otherwise inaccessible world.

#5

The anchor line is the diver’s umbilical cord, by which he makes his way to the shipwreck and returns. It is critical that the anchor line be dropped precisely. If a diver cannot locate the anchor line, he will be forced to ascend and decompress from wherever he happens to find himself.

#6

The anchor line is secured by the mates, who dive down to the wreck and tie in. Once the tie-in is complete, they release several white foam drinking cups, which rise to the surface and act as a signal to the captain and divers that the anchor line is secure.

#7

The buddy system is important in recreational scuba, but even more so in deep water diving. Divers stay in pairs, poised to help each other. However, the diver’s descent down the anchor line is little more than feint fall.

#8

The diver enters the wreck, and begins to explore it. He must consider space differently than he does on land. He must remember everything and do so in an environment with few obvious landmarks.

#9

A diver who spends time inside a wreck will screw the viz; it’s just a matter of how soon and how badly. Once the silt billows and the rust flakes fall, visibility in the wreck might stay fouled for several minutes.

#10

The diver’s response to the problems he encounters in a shipwreck determines whether he lives or dies.