According to training agencies, the main factor limiting amateur divers was an impaired state of mental functioning much like drunkenness that is brought about by breathing compressed air at depth. The air in a scuba tank is the same air humans breathe on land. Air consists of about 79 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen and includes trace elements such as argon, neon, helium, and hydrogen, as well as pollution, which together make up less than 1 percent of the air. Our bodies use only oxygen for their metabolism and simply expel the nitrogen back into the air during exhalation; because the human body expels nitrogen without making use of it, it is called inert.
Underwater, however, all nitrogen is not expelled during exhalation; when pressure increases, the nitrogen is forced from the lungs into the blood, and from the blood into the tissues, including the brain. This causes a condition known as nitrogen narcosis, and it becomes more pronounced with the increase in pressure, the deeper a diver descends. Nitrogen narcosis mimics alcohol intoxication. And just as with alcohol, different divers have different degrees of susceptibility to nitrogen’s effects and may experience varying intensities of narcosis from one day to the next. The exact mechanics of the syndrome are not well understood. One theory is that the nitrogen blocks neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain, resulting in a distortion of electrochemical signals. The level of the disability varies, depending on the physical and emotional state of the diver that day, the water temperature, and the extent of disorientation that can occur with ever-changing underwater visibility. The sense of time itself can grow distorted, and the diver may feel euphoric. Sometimes, a diver may feel sad, but he may also feel paranoia—especially if any problems arise with equipment, marine life, or sense of place. Hand-eye coordination generally deteriorates during the dive. All of these symptoms are usually far more pronounced in cold water than in warm, clear water. Unlike an alcohol buzz, which lasts for a while even after the person stops drinking, nitrogen narcosis is thought to leave no comparable negative residual effect, and all the diver who is unduly affected has to do is ascend to a shallower depth, and his wits will return immediately. Afterward, a diver who has experienced nitrogen narcosis may not be able to accurately remember details of a dive.
“The Martini Law” is a rule of thumb for estimating the danger of nitrogen narcosis. As is sometimes the case with laws, there are different definitions of it. One standard is that every 33 feet you dive is like drinking a martini on an empty stomach. Another version states that every 50 feet is like having a martini. Still another version claims that the Martini Law comes into play only after 100 feet of depth. This last version does not, however, take into account that a diver is influenced by nitrogen as soon as pressure is increased, just as he is influenced by alcohol as it is consumed. And the effects of nitrogen narcosis, like those of alcohol, are at first usually extremely subtle, even imperceptible, but then mount exponentially with ever-greater depth. By the time a diver reaches 130 feet, the effects may be so pronounced that he or she cannot function properly; problem-solving ability is seriously compromised, and the diver may lose a sense of place and the ability to accurately assess the danger of an alien environment requiring a life-support system. Divers sometimes hallucinate and hear voices calling them to go deeper. They may completely forget that they have a very limited quantity of breathing gas in their scuba tanks, and use up their gas capacity, and drown. For our purposes, we will consider the Martini Law to be that every 50 feet of depth is equivalent to one martini drunk on an empty stomach.
Diving to the U-Who—a depth of 230 feet—while breathing compressed air, as the Rouses would be doing, would be like functioning under the influence of four and a half martinis.
Sport divers like me and the Rouses who dived beyond 130 feet were often considered cowboys, taking unnecessary risks, especially as we used compressed air and not one of the special breathing gases, called mixed gas, that in 1992 were just starting to become—expensively—available to sport divers. For the vast majority of the world’s amateur divers, descending to 130 or 165 feet was as deep as they needed to go, and each year millions of divers safely stayed, and continue today to stay, within the limits recommended by recreational diving-training agencies. But there was a big difference between the desires and abilities of these recreational divers and those of sport divers like the Rouses, just as there is a big difference between the desires and abilities of casual rock climbers and those of the mountaineers who scale Mount Everest, or at least make the attempt.
Perhaps it was for the best that I missed the dives that led to the discovery of the U-Who. As my wife always tells me, “Everything has a reason.”
Nagel quickly planned a second trip to the mysterious wreck, and the spots were limited to those from the previous trip. Steve Feldman had dived the wreck on the first trip to the site. After his first dive of the second trip, he remarked to another diver, “My regulator sure feels hard to breathe from on the bottom. It’s like sucking pea soup through a straw.” On his next dive, Feldman apparently passed out from his exertions in a strong current, and he drowned. Divers could not recover his body, which drifted along the sea bottom for many months until commercial fishermen caught it in their trawler nets among the seafood catch destined for New York City restaurant tables. After Feldman’s death, many divers saw the U-Who mission as even more challenging and appealing. Many wreck divers are like big-game hunters: The more difficult and dangerous the trophy, the more status you gain when you bag it. Diving 230 feet into cold, clouded water and burrowing into the notoriously cramped quarters of a U-boat to bring out an identifying piece of the wreck—that would be like planting your flag on Everest.
From the day he first dived the wreck, Chatterton made a gentleman’s agreement with expedition members that they would be the only people invited to dive the U-Who, unless one of them dropped out of a future expedition and left a spot open. All agreed. Feldman’s death prompted several divers on the expedition either to give up the sport entirely or to scale back their efforts and conduct only shallow, less dangerous dives. This left several spots available for divers on upcoming U-Who expeditions. One of those spots was filled by Richie Kohler, an experienced deep-wreck diver who had developed a reputation for being fearless underwater. Chatterton invited Chris and Chrissy Rouse to fill the other two spots.
Chris Rouse found Chatterton’s invitation hard to believe, even though most divers who knew the Rouses would agree that they had earned their spots over several years of intense activity that had proved they were both competent and also well liked by others in the small community of hard-core divers. Chris remarked to a friend, “Can you believe that we got invited to be part of this expedition with all these great divers? I mean, us, the Rouses. We’re just nobodies from nowhere. But we got invited. I just can’t get over it!” Chris, a tough, driven diver, would grin like a boy when he talked about Chatterton’s implicit acknowledgment of his and his son’s skills and expertise.
The Rouses’ expertise included the ability to rescue other divers. Both Chris and Chrissy had come to other divers’ assistance, saving them from drowning. One diver was a friend who got disoriented in a cave and swam in the wrong direction through the winding maze of tunnels looking for a way out. Chris and Chrissy both methodically searched the cave in the area where their friend was likely to be. They found him before he ran out of air and led him to safety. One month before their U-Who expedition, Chrissy Rouse was diving alone on a shipwreck in 170 feet of water when a diver Chrissy did not personally know signaled frantically to him. In spite of the danger that a panicked diver poses to a would-be rescuer, Chrissy swam to the other man without hesitation. Chrissy saw that the diver was kneeling in the sand and his tanks’ pressure gauge indicated that he had very little breathing air remaining. Chrissy provided the other diver with air, made the ascent with him, and stayed with him until they were both safely back on the dive boat. The Rouses saw it as their duty to help a diver in need, whether or not they knew the person.
After Chatterton invited the Rouses on the U-Who expedition, they excitedly declared that they were going to find something to identify the wreck and evidence of why it sank. Chrissy went a step further than his father. “I’m going to solve the U-boat mystery and do lots of other stuff,” he confided to me. “I think I’m destined to be the next Sheck Exley.” Chrissy was making a tall statement, comparing himself to the Michael Jordan of diving. Sheck Exley held almost every conceivable record in cave diving, including deepest cave dive and longest cave penetration, and was widely regarded as the world’s best at that perilous sport. Chrissy, very much his father’s son—handsome, enthusiastic, and even cocky, but very good at what he did—figured he would be even better than Exley because he would be an expert at diving both ocean wrecks and the world’s networks of treacherous flooded caves. Chrissy figured that solving the U-Who mystery would be the next of many notches in his diving belt.
Aboard the Seeker, at the sound of Chatterton’s voice Chris Rouse sprang out of his bunk, glad to get out of the bucking bed. He went over to his son and prodded him insistently several times with his hand. “C’mon, get up, ya lazy bum. We got a dive to do.”
Chrissy let out an exasperated groan. “Ohhh, I can’t get out of bed now.”
Unperturbed by his son’s intransigence, Chris spotted Barb Lander, the only woman on board, still lying in her bunk. “Hey, Barb, I’ve been waiting almost eight hours to pick on you. You awake yet? The sink’s full of dirty dishes. I can see you’ve been neglecting your woman’s work.” Barb, a nurse by profession, was an experienced wreck diver familiar with the very macho, male wreck-diving scene. She rolled over and gave a grinning Chris the finger.
Chris laughed. “Hey, Barb, ya gotta do something about your hair, ’cause ya got a serious case of the uglies this morning.”
Barb decided to set aside Chris Rouse’s barbs. She had learned early that her fellow diver teased, prodded, and needled everybody—especially his son, who gave as good as he got. Chris’s banter prompted the others to get up. All of them—Steve Gatto, Tom Packer, Richie Kohler, Steve McDougall, and John Yurga—were veteran wreck divers. It didn’t take much pondering of the sea conditions for them to decide that it was pretty damn dark for diving. Although they all had done their share of night diving, they knew that this kind of roiling daytime darkness, combined with rough seas, made diving dangerous and unpleasant. Chatterton had given everyone a last dive time of one-thirty that afternoon, because of worsening weather conditions, and this meant that some haste would be required if anyone wanted to accomplish two dives that day. Gatto and Packer, who always dived as a team, decided to hurry and get one dive in. They went about getting their dive suits on.
Chrissy Rouse emerged from his bunk, shook his head, and ran his hands through his brown, shoulder-length hair, pulling out the tangles accumulated through a night of being tossed about in his bunk. He moved carefully, dreamily, around the carpeted cabin, his usual swagger replaced by cautious steps among the clothing and grocery bags littering the heaving floor. The odor of twelve divers, their dirty, sweaty clothes, and various foods left in the sink reminded him of the frat-style house in Pennsylvania he had shared with diving buddies when he could afford his own digs. Lately, he had been living at home with his father and his mother, Sue, thanks to a couple of minor but costly car accidents. When he could, he would escape to his friends’ house with his girlfriend, Julia.
Chrissy had met Julia Bissinger while she was taking diving lessons and he was assisting the instructor during the pool training sessions. Chrissy and Julia casually flirted with each other; Julia liked Chrissy’s playful, innocent manner, and she relished his attentions. Chrissy was not coming on to her in some sort of macho fashion; he was just enjoying the attention of the attractive dive student. During their conversations, they had made it no secret that they were both involved in other serious relationships. Yet their flirtatious gazes made their attraction no secret.
When the class ended, Chrissy and Julia went their separate ways. A year after they had first met, Julia ran into Chrissy again at the dive shop. Both of them had ended their serious relationships, and were now left with the confused and painful emotions that are the inevitable aftermath of youthful romantic disappointment. Tentatively, they took a chance with each other, and started dating very casually. Without quite realizing it, they treated each other with the tenderness, gentle touch, and soothing words of a compassionate caregiver treating a seriously wounded patient.
Though it was now only six months into their relationship, they were both so relaxed with each other they felt as if they had been together far longer. Still, they were going slowly, each of them feeling vulnerable, cautious. Neither wanted to spoil their enjoyment by pressing for a more committed relationship, though neither really wanted to date anyone else. Julia was only twenty-three, Chrissy a year younger. Time was on their side.
Chrissy squinted out the Seeker’s main cabin windows. “Yeah, sure is a shitty day out here. Who started the boat rocking anyway?” Then he asked no one in particular, “What’s for breakfast?”
His father grimaced at him. “Hah! The lord of the manor has awakened and wants to be served! Why are you standing up? Don’t you want breakfast in bed?” He turned to Barb. “I want some eggs. Hey, Barb, rustle us up some eggs, will ya? Make yourself useful.”
Chrissy added, matter-of-factly, “I don’t want eggs. Barb, hold the eggs. Make us some toast instead.”
Barb Lander, like the Rouses, was a paying customer on the boat; she was under no obligation to make anything for anyone. But that was lost on Chris and Chrissy, who continued arguing with each other about what they should eat for breakfast. Lander shook her head. The Rouses were at it again. Listening to them bickering reminded her of her son fighting with a playmate, only these two were grown men.
As Chatterton’s cool warning reverberated aboard the Seeker that October morning, most of the divers had already decided conditions were bad enough already; they wouldn’t risk diving at all today. Chatterton’s words only confirmed their decision. Yesterday the wind had been less strong, the waves only three feet high, but even then the current had been forceful, making divers work hard to propel their 150 pounds of diving gear through the water and then back up the Seeker’s ladder at the stern of the boat after the dive. This morning, looking at the roiling surface, Chris Rouse felt in his muscles the effects of yesterday’s effort. But he was a strong man, and he scoffed at diving friends who trained for the sport and suggested he do the same. “An exercise program? Yeah, right,” he would snort. “Try doing my job for one day and then going diving the next. That’s plenty enough exercise program for me.” His excavating business in eastern Pennsylvania demanded frequent manual labor from him; where his heavy machinery couldn’t do the job, Chris Rouse would dig with pickax and shovel. Besides, he figured, it wasn’t really the diving that was strenuous; the equipment weighed nothing at all underwater. Moving within the ocean was as close as you could come to weightlessness on earth. No, the hard part of this sport was carrying the equipment to and from the boat and the truck. That, and climbing out of the water in full regalia. In rough seas, like today, a diver had to make sure he had enough energy left to make it back up a ladder that was tossing like a rodeo bull. Chris knew he could do it.
On deck, the wind whipping around them, Chris looked over at his son, who was frowning at the ocean. “Dad, I’m not going to dive today,” Chrissy said.
His son wasn’t going to dive! That meant Chris would be left without a partner. They always dived together. “What? You pussy! I’m gonna dive. What’s the matter with you?”
Chrissy swallowed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he retorted. “Let’s just forget it.”
“What, so a big, strong kid like you is afraid?”
“I’m not afraid, just smarter than you,” Chrissy shot back.
Chris grinned. “Hah! That’s a good one: My load is smarter than me. I taught you e
verything you know. I carry you through the dives.”
Chrissy’s face reddened in anger. “You couldn’t even keep up with me if I didn’t swim real slow!”
Chris kicked at a diver-propulsion vehicle, commonly referred to as a scooter. “Yeah, right, that’s why I was smart enough to learn how to fix scooters, which you don’t seem to mind using. Hey, smart one: When are you ever gonna learn how to fix those things anyway?”
That remark hit Chrissy hard. He knew he lacked the natural mechanical abilities of his father. “I’d rather let you play with the toys while I go play with the girls. I don’t need to marry the first one that comes along.”
Chris had gotten married while he was still a senior in high school, after his girlfriend, Sue, had gotten pregnant—with Chrissy. He glared at his son. “If you hadn’t gotten my good looks, you’d have shit—and girls wouldn’t come near you.”
Back and forth they went, hurling insults and digging at each other, while the other divers laughed occasionally at the exchange, which seemed to some of them like watching a modern version of Abbott and Costello. Chris gave a final murderous jab. “Fine, don’t dive. You were always a loser and out here you’re just another wannabe diver.”
Chrissy looked at the waves, and then back at his father’s feet. He relented. “Okay, fine. Let’s do it.”
A grin flickered on Chris’s face. “Nah, you’re right. I was only kidding.”
The Last Dive Page 2