The Seeker arrived at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Manasquan Inlet at about ten P.M. Each man aboard the boat was taken inside and asked to write an account of the incident, then was released.

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

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

“It was on a wooden spare-parts box, a little bigger than a shoe box,” Palmer said. “In what room?” Chatterton asked. “It was in the electric motor room.” The divers nearly leaped from their chairs. “The spare-parts boxes had to be labeled with the U-boat’s number,” Palmer explained. “That way, if a part was used during a mission, they could send

Chatterton torpedoed out of the diesel motor room and up toward the top of the wreck. Kohler, stunned by the sight of his friend without a regulator, gave chase behind him. Chatterton’s lungs screamed as his stage bottles came into sight. He kicked harder. Every cell in his body shrieked for oxygen and pulled at his jaws to breathe. He clenched his

He imagined a time when he could run out for pizza or take his car for a spin without seeing the U-Who’s crushed control room before him, a time when he no longer wondered if he was who he hoped he was. The fantasy always felt good for a minute, but it always ended with Chatterton thinking, “When things are easy a person doesn’t really learn about

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

Along the way, each marveled at how easy it was to get an incomplete picture of the world if one relied solely on experts, and how important it would be to further rely on oneself.

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