Is Andrea Doria worth it?

[king_of_battle]

I think the difference is in location - the Great Lakes are cold and fresh - wrecks will stay preserved for a long time. In the North Atlantic you're lucky to get 60 years on a wreck before it's completely buried or destroyed by the ocean. If it'll be gone soon why not take something off?

Why so determined to get stuff off a wreck?

Perhaps my response is partially to being a minimalist when it comes to stuff and the fact that Great Lakes wrecks are protected by both state and federal law. You're not going to be legally taking anything off a wreck around here.

Pictures are my souvenir and proof I've done a particular wreck.

 

[Akimbo]

Why so determined to get stuff off a wreck?

Another reason is divers might as well snag some goodies off her. Modern metal ships deteriorate much faster in open sea compared to riveted hulls in fresh water. The Doria will be debris below the mudline while ships in the Great Lakes don't look that much different than the day the went down. There also isn't anything of significant historical value on her. Documentation survives for almost anything on the wreck, unlike ships that went down before 1900.

 

[Sam Miller III]

Akimbo
That dive was one that will probably never again be repeated on the AD. It took special people with so much special support
.
I chatted with Jack after the dive -- Asked him what the heck was he thinking? A dive like that with a family ?
Sadly and tragically Jack left us all to soon for the big reef in the sky

Al Giddings has totally turned his back on diving and is retired to a small ranch in Montana where he dabbles in old classic cars
Bob Hollis became a major dive manufacture and is doing well in retirement

Slowly history is passing by --thanks for your participation and sharing insigne and pictures

Sam Miller,111

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I agree with the sentiments that Marie expressed. As a journalist and a documentary film maker my treasure has always been "footage" or "pictures." I have been paid to obtain this at the rate not too big but definitely bigger than if I had brought some goody up and tried to sell it on Ebay The idea of wrecks being ripped to pieces is not something that would generally sit well with me because from my perspective my footage and pictures get compromised and lose their value.

I do feel that artifact recovery has its place. Like Akimbo said, ocean will eat away history and sometimes the only way to preserve it is to bring it up. I love diving the U-352 sub. I also enjoy the machine gun that was recovered and is displayed in front of Olympus. If George Purifoy did not get it when the sub was found, ocean would not let it survive. It would get eaten and there would be nothing left of it.

 

[Akimbo]

I chatted with Jack after the dive -- Asked him what the heck was he thinking? A dive like that with a family ?

Jack was a great diver, better on Scuba than most of the Navy sat qualified divers onboard. Combine those skills with a chamber and our support crew and suddenly the risk level drops dramatically.

The photo crew had never used Sur-D-O2 (Surface Decompression with Oxygen) before but picked up on it without missing a beat. We only had one Scuba team in the water at a time with a dedicated chase boat with a dive super and 2x O2 "K" bottles onboard supplying the decompression whip. Our 85' trawler would live-boat until we were in sat to keep ships clear of the site (the Doria is in the shipping lanes for New York).

To be fair, Navy divers don't spend much time on Scuba or care about gas consumption. Most commercial and working military divers only use scuba in the most benign conditions and many think it should be banned entirely on working dives. George Powell (USN Master Diver) is one of the best diving supers I have ever worked with and I never worried when he was in charge. However, he could burn through a set of doubles faster than anyone I have ever seen. Jack probably mentioned him to you. Somebody needs to write a book on George.

 

[BDSC]

Akimbo, you would be an interesting guy to sit down and talk to for sure.

 

[Akimbo]

Akimbo, you would be an interesting guy to sit down and talk to for sure.

Isn't that what we're doing? OK, a few hundred thousand of our closest friends are listening in, there's a little time delay, and we are buying our own drinks but it's all good.

 

[rhwestfall]

Bernie Campoli - 1973 Expedition to the Andrea Doria

(photo from VDH website/Forum)

 

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

I am also very interested by how these big dives were made in the early days when sex was safe and diving was dangerous.

This whole "saturation diving" business is also very intriguing. It would be a lot of fun if we could do that in a recreational capacity somehow.

 

[mdb]

View attachment 431341

Very nice B&W pic.

I had one of those Frenzy BC's in 1972.