Fatal Depth: Deep Sea Diving, China Fever, and the Wreck of the Andrea Doria

by Joe Haberstroh

Book Overview

At 11:10 p.m. on July 25, 1956, the luxurious Italian ocean liner Andrea Doria collided with the Stockholm forty-five miles south of Nantucket. Half a century later, the wreck of the Andrea Doria is still claiming lives.
Professional and amateur divers the world round consider the Andrea Doria to be the Everest of diving. At 225 feet below the surface, the wreck lies at the very edge of human endurance and accomplishment; ordinary air becomes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592283047
• ISBN13: 9781592283040
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great book...

I'm an avid reader of anything related to scuba diving and freediving. This book filled my expectations. However, I also read The Last Attempt by Carlos serra and found it even more appealing and gripping than this one. I highly recommend both of them but The Last Attempt was a really nice surprise. It's about the story of a female freediving champion who died during her last attempt to set a new world record held by her husband, a legend in the sport, but after her death, and even though everyting pointed towards him, and despite heavy scrutiny by the media, no one could establish what actually happened. I was astonished when i read it. Incredible story, so between The Last Attempt and Fatal Depth, i found myself delighted with a lot of good reading.

Great reference book for technical wreck divers

Great book. Lots of accident information as well as the diving history of the wreck. A must have for your reference library. Learn from the mistakes of others.

Deadly Seasons of the Seeker

As Scuba equipment and technique became increasingly advanced, dives to the "Everest of Scuba Diving", the Wreck of the Andrea Doria, were becoming increasingly routine throughout the 90's. Dan Crowell, skipper of the deep dive charter boat "Seeker", had a perfect safety record repeatedly visiting the site until the disastrous summers of 1998 and '99, when the "Doria" reasserted her reputation for doom and claimed five more divers. The author has presented the tale of the ill fated five with exceptional skill, managing to both impersonally recite the salient facts and yet provide a compelling story at the same time. Having told the tale so well, the book still draws no conclusions on the deadly dive seasons, leaving the reader to puzzle over the "why" of the Andrea Doria's still fatal depths. It is a satisfyingly dissatisfying ending to a good read.

No artifact is worth your life

The Andrea Doria is often called the pinnacle of wreck diving, and as author Joe Haberstroh relates the stories of men who've died pursuing their dreams of diving on the sunken Italian liner, it's easy to see how the thrill and mystique of mastering one of the world's most challenging wreck dives can cause otherwise experienced divers to throw aside caution in their quest for the sport's ultimate challenge.Without trying to assign blame, the author relates the circumstances surrounding the fatal dives taken by five men: Craig Sicola, Vince Napoliello, Richard Roost, Chris Murley, and Charlie McGurr. Technical divers with varying levels of skill, fitness and deep-wreck experience, the story of these men and their passion for the sport that ultimately killed them is what makes FATAL DEPTH a book that one can appreciate on many levels. The author (who is not a diver) has obviously done careful research on the sport, and he writes about the psychological and physiological effects of deep diving accurately and engagingly.I've never climbed a mountain, jumped out of an airplane or surfed a breaking wave, but I have plunged to the ocean's depths to visit the remains of ships lost generations ago. Haberstroh captures that excitement in his prose, and has penned a book that will appeal to everyone who appreciates a spirit of risk and adventure.

Sports and Death: Tales of the absurd

When you think about them, all sports can seem absurd....batting a round ball 400 feet, carrying an oval ball 100 yards, climbing the highest peaks on Earth. And yet each sport attracts its own. Each attracts players who embrace a sports peculiarities, intricacies and risks. Players do it for the love of teamwork and competition, for the unique camaraderie spawned in such pursuits, and for the moments of exhilaration, tranquility and statisfaction that come when pushing toward any form of excellence.In Joe Haberstroh's new book, "Fatal Depth," the sport is scuba diving at its extreme, riskiest level....200 feet below the surface of the cold North Atlantic, where divers scavenge the wreck of the 1950s luxury ocean liner, the Andea Doria, in search of cups, plates and saucers from the ship's china cabinets. Silly as it might seem to others, scuba divers see the Doria and its baubles as the Mount Everest of their sport.As the title suggests, the book is also about death....the odd circumstances surrounding the deaths of five Doria divers in 1998 and 1999.One by one, readers get to know and care about each ill-fated diver. Haberstroh uses a gripping narrative style that's sparse, swift and rich with incisive detail. The craftsmanship is particularly visible at the end of each chapter, where the author is both playful and poignant.The heart of the book, though, belongs to its ultimate survivor, Dan Crowell, skipper of the charter boat that escorted all five divers to the Doria. Crowell is an enigma, but an unrelentingly interesting one.Unlike many sports-book authors, Haberstroh resists the temptation to romanticize Crowell and his crew of "big-boy" divers.Unlike many authors examining untimely death, Haberstroh also resists the temptation to blame or scorn either the five divers or the crew that led them to the abyss.Instead, he leaves it to readers to judge where fault lies....or whether there is fault when dealing with risks of such a sport at its highest, or in this case, deepest level.It's those murky depths that help make "Fatal Depth" as rare and valuable a find as a first-class saucer from the Doria herself.