Father And Son Loss

[H2Andy]

i liked Dark Descent, but it wasn't nearly as good (in my opinion) as his first book,
Deep Descent, about diving the Doria

have you read that one?

 

[The Horn]

Shadow diver has a different spin on the death of the Rousse's as Chatterton was on the dive boat and watched Chrissy struggle for his life. As no other diver made a dive that day except for one most of the causes are educated speculation. I think in The Last Dive Cowdry was not there as he had been bent on an earlier dive charter and was recovering.

Cowdrey also makes mention of the fact that they were diving air due to lack of funds, Chris had stated earlier (months or years before) that he would take a chance by surfacing earlier and being bent than staying in the water and drowning. This may have stuck in Chrissy' s head and in a narc'd state seemed like the thing to do.

Cowdry also writes about Chris surfacing and dieing quite quickly compared to his son who made it to a chamber.

The attitude of the Rousses' is also quite pronounced in The Last Dive and may have been an underlying cause in the tragdy as they are portrayed as having a bit of "one up manship" sort of relation.

They also seemed to be packing alot of dives into a season and may have secummed more readily due to nitrogen build up similar to the man that was crippled diving the Empress day after day.

Piecing both accounts from Shadow divers and The last dive does have some open ends, but we were not there :06:

 

[moneysavr]

Narc'ed and diving on Air,and the OOA seems to be there doom!

 

[jim T.]

H2Andy, Hi, I've just ordered it. I got the sense while reading "Dark Descent" that it was'nt as well written as "Deep Descent". I enjoyed it, but it was pretty simple narrative writing but I wanted to know more about The Empress of Ireland after reading about John Reekie's dives in "Last Dive". I'm looking forward to reading "Deep Descent". I've also ordered the book that TSandM recommended about the cave divers.

 

[GrierHPharmD]

If we understand such details perhaps they won't be repeated. I wrote The Cave Divers in 1972 that hopefully prevented untrained cave divers from making basic mistakes such as using a polypropylene rope as a lifeline, and learning too late that being neutral in the water it can entangle both you and your companion if you get into trouble at depth.

I just saw this post - The Cave Divers is probably my favorite diving book. Just wanted to say "Thanks" for it.

As for details on the U-869 story and the Rouse accident, I'd strongly suggest reading "The Last Dive". It talks about the accident quite a bit. The two books on the Doria also discuss the incident. It appears that the son (Chrissy) penetrated the wreck while the father (Chris) waited outside the hull. When Chrissy had his accident, he exited through a different place than where he entered, and in their rush to surface, both father and son missed the spot where they had parked their stage bottles.

If you're interested in more detail, I'd suggest contacting Bernie Chowdury. He used to be editor of Immersed magazine, and is a very personable guy. I met him a few years ago at a dive club meeting, and he shared many details that came to light after The Last Dive had been published.

Safe ascents,
Grier

 

[rawls]

Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know anything about those issues. I guess they are relevant even in rec diving if we are using a reel and line for wreck penetration. Care to explain a little?

There are some divers...Chatterton and Kohler, for example...that don't support wreck penetrations with dive reels at all. I know cave divers use them and rightly so, but with wrecks there is so much that could go wrong. So many ways for them to get entangled, cut... So there are those divers who support what is known as progressive penetration. The term speaks for itself. Go in a little way and get very familiarized with where you are the go a little further to the point where you are so familiar with the wreck you don't need a line to get you out because you don't get lost,even in a silt out. It takes more time but you don't get into the trouble the Rouses did, i.e. severe line entanglement and getting turned around to the point they couldn't find their stage bottles...That reel was absolutely of no benefit whatsoever...

 

[jim T.]

Just in case anyone here hasn't seen it, there's a parallel thread on the "basic scuba questons" forum reviewing and discussing "The Last Dive" and "Shadow Divers".