Plot Summary?
We’re just getting started.

Add this title to our requested Study Guides list!
SuperSummary Logo
Plot Summary

Shadow Divers

Guide cover placeholder
Plot Summary

Shadow Divers

Robert Kurson

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2004

Plot Summary
Shadow Divers (2004) is a non-fiction account of two men’s eight-year obsession to uncover the true identity of a WWII U-boat sunk off the coast of New Jersey. Author Robert Kurson uses the techniques of a gripping thriller to create mystery and suspense as he explains both the complexities and manifold dangers of deep sea diving, and the historical context behind the sunken wreck. Kurson’s research was used in the PBS Nova episode that dealt with the discovery of the U-boat.

In 1991, a small group of deep sea diving enthusiasts led by veteran diver Bill Nagle ran across an unknown object lying 230 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast near the town of Brielle, New Jersey. Despite the seeming historical impossibility, this object turned out to be the wreck of a German U-boat from WWII. Although there were no records of an Unterseeboot being this close to America, during the war, there were hundreds of them patrolling the Atlantic Ocean. Their near-invisible approach was terrifying and deadly.

At the time, the kind of diving necessary to explore this find – now called technical diving – was in a rudimentary phase. The men were using equipment that was decades old, and their knowledge of the dangers they would face was hastily and painstakingly assembled from hands-on experiences, information shared by the Navy, and buttressed by macho brazenness and hit-or-miss guessing. The extreme peril of going that deep into the water is multilayered. Even if all goes perfectly well, simply spending twenty minutes at two hundred feet under the sea demands an hour-long ascent to the surface and then several more hours at sea level to properly decompress before being able to dive again. And many things can go wrong while a diver is underwater; most significant is nitrogen narcosis, a deeply disorienting and panic-inducing state created by breathing highly pressurized air, which can force even an experienced diver to make incorrect and life-threatening decisions. To this general list of potential disasters, the specific wreck of the U-boat added an almost complete lack of visibility.



The divers began to try to identify this boat, but were stymied by the fact that no markings or insignia were visible from the outside. The group contacted US Navy and German Navy officials, but was told that the closest U-boats, according to available records, would have been hundreds of miles away. Frustrated by the lack of information, concerned about the dangers involved, and generally unwilling to dedicate their lives to this one wreck, most of the group members quit.

Soon, only two men were so taken by the need to find out exactly which U-boat this was, when it sank, and who died on board, that they wouldn’t stop until they had found the truth – John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, Kurson’s partners in the telling of this story. The book spends some time explaining the biographies of these two men, whose styles and ideas were sometimes diametrically opposed to each other. On the one hand, they both grew up during the Vietnam War, neither went to college, and both always felt deeply drawn to the sea. On the other hand, Chatterton was a methodical and cautious diver, while Kohler was part of an infamous team called “Atlantic Wreck Divers,” a crew that was known for its piratical and devil-may-care attitude toward wreck retrieval. Still, despite initial reservations about working together, the two men, soon seeing that they were both driven by a quest for knowledge and the need to correct the historical record rather than money or fame, assembled a new team for continuing their work.

Feeling compelled to identify the sailors aboard the U-boat to let their families in Germany know the details of their fate, Chatterton and Kohler spent eight years, from 1991 to 1997, diving down to the boat to try to retrieve anything that might have its name or number on it, traveling to Germany to interview anyone who could remember details about the U-boat program, carefully combing through the United States Naval Archives in Washington, D.C., and having endless discussions about the possibilities. The book makes it clear that this obsessive process was detrimental to both men’s lives. Each man’s marriage ends over this endless work, and, most terribly, the attempt to learn the name of the U-boat ends the lives of three divers on their team: Steve Feldman, and the father-son team Chris Rouse, Sr. and Chris Rouse, Jr. Some reviewers wonder whether Kurson lets Chatterton and Kohler off the hook too much, considering both men were instrumental in the writing of the book – throughout the mistakes they make and the relationships they destroy along the way, they always come off as dedicated and misunderstood rather than monomaniacal and potentially reckless.



Finally, they do uncover the identity of the boat: U-896, which was sunk in 1945, probably when its own torpedo boomeranged into it and exploded. To underscore the closure that this discovery brings to the families of those aboard, the book ends with a couple of chapters set in 1944 and telling the story of the U-boat from the point of view of the seamen inside. This fictitious section comes in for the most critical concern from reviewers since Kurson entirely avoids the fact that these sailors were part of the Nazi army and instead highlights the pathos of the men doomed to die.

Continue your reading experience

SuperSummary Plot Summaries provide a quick, full synopsis of a text. But SuperSummary Study Guides — available only to subscribers — provide so much more!

Join now to access our Study Guides library, which offers chapter-by-chapter summaries and comprehensive analysis on more than 5,000 literary works from novels to nonfiction to poetry.

Subscribe

See for yourself. Check out our sample guides:

Subscribe

Plot Summary?
We’re just getting started.

Add this title to our requested Study Guides list!

A SuperSummary Plot Summary provides a quick, full synopsis of a text.

A SuperSummary Study Guide — a modern alternative to Sparknotes & CliffsNotes — provides so much more, including chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and important quotes.

See the difference for yourself. Check out this sample Study Guide: