The Shipwreck Hunter: A Lifetime of Extraordinary Discoveries on the Ocean Floor

I'm a sucker for undersea discovery stories and this is a superb example. Follows in the Ballard mould as Mearns describes his life hunting for lost wrecks at fantastic depths. His searches for the Lucona, Derbyshire, Athenia, Hood, Sydney, Kormoran, Centaur and Esmeralda are described in great detail, expertly mixing technical descriptions of the search with the human stories behind these wrecks. He ends with his plans to search for two of the remaining great lost wrecks, Indianapolis and Endurance. This is an absorbing and highly readable account of modern day treasure hunting, one of the best I have read in the genre. Very highly recommended.

This book was more compelling for the histories of each shipwreck, than the finding of the wreck itself. I hadn't heard of some of the wrecks, but each was significant. On the downside, the finding of each wreck felt a bit same, same.