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arkiwi88's review
adventurous
informative
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cursing, War, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcoholism
Minor: Suicide, Murder, and Domestic abuse
13iscute's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
tense
medium-paced
5.0
2024 Reading Challenges
• ATY #28. A book related to sea
• Popsugar #28. A book with a main character who's 42 years old (John Chatterton turned 42 in 1993, a year in which some of the key action of the book takes place.)
How I selected this book
Recommendation from Erin
Plot summary
On the Atlantic Coast, good fishing spots are often around shipwrecks, where the things that grow on the shipwrecks spawn a local ecosystem. Nagle, who captains a boat for wreck divers, hears about a new spot from his friend, and he gathers a group of divers to check it out. They find a submarine, a German U-boat from World War II... and this starts a years-long investigation into a historical mystery, because there are no records of U-boats being downed in this area, off the coast of New Jersey.
The two main divers are Chatterton and Kohler, who hated each other at first but grew to form a close bond. Other divers join and leave along the way. They organize many explorations of the wreck, looking for artifacts of some kind to identify which boat it was. They also do research on land, narrowing it down to a couple options, both of which they disprove on expeditions to the boat. They find a knife with a man's name engraved on it... but that man was on a boat, U-869, sunk off the coast of Gibraltar, so it feels like a dead end. Until they realize that a lot of the records about which boats sunk where are inaccurate, and they find out that U-869 was at first headed to New Jersey, but was sent new orders to move to Gibraltar. In all likelihood, that boat never received the orders to move to Gibraltar, and it is the boat they found. But they want to find definitive proof. Chatterton almost kills himself a couple of times trying to find proof in a room of the boat that has been blocked in by fallen equipment, but in the end he finds a box of repair parts labeled with the boat's name, and the mystery is confirmed solved.
This book gives deep dives into the lives of the two main divers, into the culture and dangers around scuba diving, and into the history of U-boats during WWII and the recordkeeping around them. The information about scuba diving was fascinating, including easy to understand explanations about the bends, narcosis, low visibility, different types of air to breathe, and how easily something can go wrong, especially when exploring inside a wreck. Three men died exploring this U-boat, and there was many close calls. The WWII history was also really interesting, even to me, someone who doesn't really care too much about the fighting aspects of war history.
Thoughts
This book was so fascinating!! Honestly, a topic I thought I wasn't really interested in, but the book takes its subject and describes it so well, you can really feel the passion of the divers and their drive to solve this mystery.
• ATY #28. A book related to sea
• Popsugar #28. A book with a main character who's 42 years old (John Chatterton turned 42 in 1993, a year in which some of the key action of the book takes place.)
How I selected this book
Recommendation from Erin
Plot summary
On the Atlantic Coast, good fishing spots are often around shipwrecks, where the things that grow on the shipwrecks spawn a local ecosystem. Nagle, who captains a boat for wreck divers, hears about a new spot from his friend, and he gathers a group of divers to check it out. They find a submarine, a German U-boat from World War II... and this starts a years-long investigation into a historical mystery, because there are no records of U-boats being downed in this area, off the coast of New Jersey.
The two main divers are Chatterton and Kohler, who hated each other at first but grew to form a close bond. Other divers join and leave along the way. They organize many explorations of the wreck, looking for artifacts of some kind to identify which boat it was. They also do research on land, narrowing it down to a couple options, both of which they disprove on expeditions to the boat. They find a knife with a man's name engraved on it... but that man was on a boat, U-869, sunk off the coast of Gibraltar, so it feels like a dead end. Until they realize that a lot of the records about which boats sunk where are inaccurate, and they find out that U-869 was at first headed to New Jersey, but was sent new orders to move to Gibraltar. In all likelihood, that boat never received the orders to move to Gibraltar, and it is the boat they found. But they want to find definitive proof. Chatterton almost kills himself a couple of times trying to find proof in a room of the boat that has been blocked in by fallen equipment, but in the end he finds a box of repair parts labeled with the boat's name, and the mystery is confirmed solved.
This book gives deep dives into the lives of the two main divers, into the culture and dangers around scuba diving, and into the history of U-boats during WWII and the recordkeeping around them. The information about scuba diving was fascinating, including easy to understand explanations about the bends, narcosis, low visibility, different types of air to breathe, and how easily something can go wrong, especially when exploring inside a wreck. Three men died exploring this U-boat, and there was many close calls. The WWII history was also really interesting, even to me, someone who doesn't really care too much about the fighting aspects of war history.
Thoughts
This book was so fascinating!! Honestly, a topic I thought I wasn't really interested in, but the book takes its subject and describes it so well, you can really feel the passion of the divers and their drive to solve this mystery.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Alcoholism
Minor: Suicide and Murder
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