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DECENT INTO DARKNESS.
Pearl Harbour, 1941: A Navy Diver's Memoir. Commander
Edward C. Raymer.
Published 1996, by Presidio Press, California, USA. Hardcover,
dustjacket, 214 pages, mono prints.
Not a classic in terms of age but certainly in content.
The author has had plenty of time to think about it. I havn't read the
book yet but it looks fascinating.
On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona,
Oklahoma, Utah, and several others lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath
of the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, a crack team of Navy slavage divers
is hurriedly flown to the island of Oahu. The divers have been given a
Hurculean task: rescue the ailors and marines trapped below, and resurrect
the pride of the Pacific fleet. In the book, the author tells the whole
story of the desparate attempts to save crewmembers caught inside their
sinking ships. The book is the only one available that describes the raising
and salvage operations of sunken battleships following the December 7th
attack. Though many of these divers were killed or seriously wounded during
the slavage operations, on the whole they had great success performing
what seemed to be impossible jobs. Among their credits, the author's crew
raised the sunken battleships Wst Virginia, Nevada, and california. After
Pearl Harbor they moved on to other crucial salvage work off Guadalcanal
and the sites of other greats sea battles. [ps] |
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SHIP OF GOLD IN THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Gary Kinder.
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998. Hardcover, dustjacket,
507 pages.
In September 1857, the SS Central America, a side-wheel
steamer carrying nearly six hundred passengers returning from the California
Gold Rush, foundered in a hurricane and sank two hundred miles off the
Carolina coast. Over four hundred lives and twenty-one tons of California
gold were lost. It was the worst peacetime disaster at sea in American
history, a tragedy that remained lost in legend for over a century. In
the 1980s, a young engineer from Ohio set out to do what no one,
not even the United States Navy, had been able to do: establish a working
presence on the deep-ocean floor and open it to science, archaeology, history,
medicine, and recovery. The SS Central America became the target of his
project. After years of intensive efforts, Tommy Thompson and the Columbus-America
Discovery Group found the Central America in eight thousand feet of water,
and in October 1989 they sailed into Norfolk with her recovered treasure:
gold coins, bars, nuggets, and dust, plus steamer trunks filled with period
clothes, newspapers, books, journals, and even an intact cigar sealed under
water for 130 years. A human drama on two levels, Ship of Gold in
the Deep Blue Sea alternates between the tale of Thompson's decade-long
pursuit of the wreck and a powerful re-creation of the ship's downfall,
based on survivors' accounts. Kinder chronicles the events of September
1857, during which the passengers and the cargo of the Sonora were transferred
to the Atlantic steamer Central America for the nine-day final leg of the
trip, from Panama to New York. It was during this voyage that the Central
America met a hurricane described by the Charleston Daily Courier as a
storm of "almost unprecedented fury and violence." The ship battled
strong winds and 35-foot seas, which eventually leaked into the steam engines.
As the 60 women and children onboard huddled in fear, 500 men bailed water.
Eventually the women and children were led into lifeboats manned by crewmen
and were saved by a crippled bark. But at nightfall, with Captain Herndon
standing on the bridge, the Central America sank, taking 300 men with it.
Delays came about when competitors who had mounted their own expeditions
to find the Central America appeared at the wreck site and tried to force
Thompson off. It wasn't until 1988 that Thompson and his group first saw
what few people could imagine: "The bottom was carpeted with gold.
Gold everywhere, like a garden. The more you looked, the more you saw gold
growing out of everywhere." (eBay description). [ps] |
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STALIN'S SILVER
John Beasant.
Hardcover, 24 pages of photographs (most in color) and
diagrams
In August 1944, the German submarine U-859 sank the American
merchant ship USS John Barry in the Arabian Sea off the eastern seaboard
of Oman. The holds of the John Barry contained 3 million silver Saudi
ryals, worth $80 million and over $300 million in silver bullion. The 7200-ton
ship broke into two pieces and sank to a depth of 8,500 feet, more
than one and a half miles. For 45 years, the great depth of the wreck ruled
out any thoughts of salvage. However, in 1989, salvage rights were acquired
by Sheikh Ahmed Farid al Aulaqi, who engaged the French International Maritime
Institute and Jean Roux, leader of the team which recovered artifacts
from the Titanic. The story of the USS John Barry is recreated with the
help of living survivors, including one of the German U-boat officers,
and the mystery of the intended destination of $300 million in silver is
resolved. Stalin's Silver is as much a story of politics and intrigue between
governments during WWII as it is the story of the salvage of the world's
most valuable and mysterious sunken treasure. (eBay description).
[ps] |
