Driving home that night, Chatterton contemplated a final reason why he had determined to leave the remains undisturbed, a reason that seemed too personal to share with Kohler. More than ever, diving had become a reflection of life to Chatterton. The principles by which he had made himself a great diver were the same principles by which he lived. If

On a deep-wreck dive, no one is ever truly safe until he is back on the deck of the dive boat.

The diver himself hears two primary sounds: the hiss of his regulator on his inhalation and the booming gurgles of his bubbles on his exhalation; together they are the metronome of his adventure.

Chatterton splashed first and tied in the grapple. His plan was trademark: shoot video, forgo artifacts, return with knowledge. He often used video cameras, which picked up underwater nuances that were beyond the human eye, then watched the tapes topside, learning wreck topographies and planning his second dive. At home, he watched the tapes dozens

“I think we all know from our research that the stuff you hear about U-boats coming up on the beaches and the crewmen attending costume balls and buying bread at the local market are bullshit fantasy,” Kohler said, pacing the room and using his triangular pepperoni slice like a professor’s pointer. “But I’m going to confess something. You know the

The anchor line does not simply keep the boat stationary. It is the diver’s umbilical cord, the means by which he makes his way to the shipwreck and, more important, finds his way back. A diver cannot simply jump off the boat, drop through the water, and expect to land on the wreck. By the time he splashes, his boat likely will have drifted several

A great diver learns to stand down his emotions. At the moment he becomes lost or blinded or tangled or trapped, that instant when millions of years of evolution demand fight or flight and narcosis carves order from his brain, he dials down his fear and contracts into the moment until his breathing slows and his narcosis lightens and his reason ret

While the other divers intended to pick a spot and search for a tag or other piece of identification, Chatterton planned to swim the wreck, orienting himself according to his Chicago memories, looking for nothing but impressions. Only when he understood a wreck did he believe he could formulate a plan to approach it. The strategy made it likely tha

As the Seeker steamed home and many of the divers retired to the salon to sleep, Chatterton and Kohler found themselves sitting together atop a cooler. The trip had overwhelmed Kohler; it had brought together, in a single day, his passions for naval history, submarines, exploration, and artifacts. It had made him feel a part of history. For a while