Robert Kurson

This was brilliant. I often like to read a true story and what a true story this is! It's not only the story of Joseph Bannister, but the story of the men who were looking for his ship, The Golden Fleece - John Chatterton and John Mattera. Giving such an insight into the background of the two Johns meant that I could empathise with them and understand their frustrations at times. In fact the early years of John Mattera was almost like reading about an episode of the Sopranos! John Chatterton show more on the other hand flirted with danger and showed no fear diving to places where others would not contemplate on going. I'm not sure what is more scary - the threat of the mob or the danger of the bends.

I was really interested in the process of hunting for a wreck - I had no idea that you had to have a lease to search the waters. In this case, the lease belonged to the renowned treasure hunter, Tracy Bowden, who gave the Johns instructions on where to look for the Golden Fleece. The story gets really interesting when the Johns become frustrated with their futile search in one area and try to persuade Tracy to search elsewhere. I thought it was going to come to blows on more than one occasion!

Mattera's interest in history meant that he cleverly used historical records to try to get into the mind of Joseph Bannister that ultimately led to the discovery of the Golden Fleece. This is where the events of 1686 and the 17th Century are described in such vivid details for us. Why men, and sometimes women, became pirates and what the could expect of life on the high seas. There was a heart stopping moment beforehand when somebody claims to have found the Golden Fleece and I let out an audible "Oh No!!" - this isn't a spoiler, history tells us that Chatterton and Mattera found the Golden Fleece but I was so engrossed in the story that I felt their disappointment and incredulity with them!

The book touches on the German U-boat that John Chatterton discovered off the coast of New Jersey and I'll certainly be adding Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers to my reading list.

This is a must read book for anybody wanting to learn more about the real Pirates of the Caribbean. It really does read like a fast paced thriller and I sometimes forgot I was reading a true story. A real swashbuckler of a read that has piqued my interest in underwater salvage.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

A group of deep sea wreck divers take a chance and go out to coordinates given to Captain Bill Nagle to see if they can discover an unknown shipwreck off the coast of New Jersey. What they find is a U-boat, at a depth of 230 feet, where only the best deep sea divers can get to, and even that at very high risk. Kurson recounts the story of the U-boat's discovery and the quest of the divers - particularly John Chatterton and Richie Kohler - to uncover the identity of the U-boat that, according show more to known history, shouldn't be anywhere near where it is.

Kurson's debut is compelling narrative nonfiction. He balances the story of the U-boat's discovery and the dives with background information about the divers, details about deep sea diving and its dangers, and the research quests that Chatterton and Kohler go on. The U-boat discovery happened in 1991, so their research meant writing letters and going to the naval and national archives to look at original accounts of World War 2. Chatterton and Kohler also came from different schools of diving - Kohler enjoyed getting artifacts from wrecks, and to Chatterton that wasn't the main point - and started out as enemies, but over the course of the book you see that shift to mutual respect that eventually deepened into true friendship. I personally would have liked to know more about some of the other divers, such as the one female diver who came with them and barely makes an appearance other than when another diver jokingly asks her to get coffee. But I also can't fault Kurson for focusing on what interested him, and crafting a detailed, thoroughly enjoyable story from it. show less

A book to tear through, Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers is an excellent example of narrative non-fiction. It tells the story of the discovery of an unidentified U-boat off the New Jersey coast in the 1990s, a deep and dangerous wreck that comes to claim the lives of some of the divers exploring it and challenging some of the others to their outer limits. There's danger, adventure, mystery, tragedy and a human core; it's one of those true stories that just hits the sweet spot, as compelling as show more any fictional enterprise.

If the story were not enough, it's also helped by Kurson's unobstructive telling of it. The author organises his mass of information well, giving us a keen appreciation of the dangers of deep-sea wreck diving and teasing out the mystery of the U-boat's identity until the end without once frustrating us about doing so. There are one or two minor flaws in the book if you were to accept it as sober history: America apparently won the U-boat war by "dig[ging] deep into its instinct for freedom" (pg. 237), with scarcely a mention of the overwhelming contribution of the British, while Kurson is excessively keen to stress that the German U-boat crew and their families were not Nazis and hated Hitler - probably to secure their families' support for the research of the book, with Kurson even repeating uncritically their tall tales of publicly dissenting against the regime. But Kurson knows his audience and you turn the pages happily, so engrossed are you in reading it. It's a fantastic true story well told; a home run for any avid reader. show less

Imagine you are deep sea diving to a shipwreck over 200 feet below the surface, swimming inside, disturbing the surrounding silt such that visibility becomes nil, and having to find your way back out. And, oh, by the way, the ship is angled or sideways or upside down, with wires dangling down and debris sticking out. Your body is building up narcosis so your brain and extremities are functioning much slower than normal. This is the stuff of nightmares to me, but it is what these divers faced show more in trying to identify the sunken U-boat they had discovered. This book contains plenty of adventure, exploration, historical research, and mystery. I found the first half of this book fascinating. I think it is difficult to make historical research particularly interesting, and the second half slowed down considerably. Other than this minor issue, I was riveted. Recommended to those interested in non-fiction, WWII, slowly-building mysteries, exploration, maritime history and deep sea diving. Contains a great deal of crude language which may be offensive to some. show less