Author shares tale of World War II mystery at Town Hall
By Andrea Blum
As an author, Robert Kurson is used to getting unsolicited story ideas from
friends, family and acquaintances.
But one such story tip turned into one of the greatest successes of his
career.
“Shadow Divers — The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything
to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of WWII” (Random House, 2004) is Kurson’s
account of the 1991 discovery of a sunken German U-boat 60 miles off the
coast of New Jersey.
“It’s a truly amazing story that changed my life,” Kurson told the crowd at
a Jan. 17 Downriver Town Hall lecture.
“The book isn’t about U-boats — it’s about two men and what they did to have
their moment,” he said. “It’s about how if you’re lucky, you get your
moment.”
Kurson, a former features writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, is a
contributing editor for Esquire magazine and has had stories published in
Rolling Stone and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications.
His story captured the attention of the sold-out Town Hall crowd, due in
part to his natural storytelling style.
He credits his father with passing along his storytelling abilities to him.
“My Dad was the greatest storyteller,” he said. “As a child, I would go on
business trips with him, and he would tell me to listen to everything.”
That advice came in handy when a friend mentioned the unique discovery that
two divers had made off the New Jersey coast.
Deep-sea shipwreck divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler embarked on a
six-year quest to solve the mystery of how the ship came to be where it was.
“Every expert said it was impossible,” Kurson said.
The sunken sub’s location was somewhere that wartime naval records indicated
no German craft had sailed.
The story of German U-boats prowling up and down the American coast is a
somewhat forgotten chapter from World War II.
American warships sank many of those boats, and experts believed — up until
the discovery off the New Jersey coastline — that all the U-boats were
accounted
for.
But resting 230 feet beneath the Atlantic Ocean was one such boat that
mysteriously had escaped U.S. warships. The bodies of 56 German soldiers
were found aboard.
Chatterton and Kohler, once sworn enemies, worked together to bring the
details to light and became best friends in the process.
A principled man who dove for the beauty of the endeavors, Chatterton at
first refused to work with Kohler, a salvage diver whose goal was to take
everything he could from a wreck.
“He hated Chatterton, and Chatterton hated him … but Kohler was made part of
the group,” Kurson said.
Solving the mystery would cost three other divers their lives.
“Of the 10 million certified divers in the country, less than 200 do what
they do,” Kurson said.
He outlined several dangers faced by divers venturing into the kind of
depths that Chatterton and Kohler dove to.
Chief among those is narcosis, a condition that develops when nitrogen
accumulates in the bloodstream and causes hallucinations.
Another danger is the shipwreck itself, with its twisted metal and broken
pipes splayed in every direction, just waiting to snare divers and their
bulky gear.
“Often the ship is on its side or upside down,” Kurson added.
Decompression sickness or “the bends” is another deadly condition faced by
divers who don’t ascend slowly to the surface to allow the nitrogen in their
bloodstream to dissipate.
Chatterton and a group of other divers initially thought the wreck
discovered by a fisherman’s sonar was nothing more than a worthless pipe
barge.
“He saw a hatch and put his head inside, then saw the unmistakable shape of
a torpedo inside,” Kurson said. “He knew he’d discovered the holy grail of
deep-water diving.”
The divers found that the sub’s hull was torn open by an explosion that sank
the U-boat, most likely caused by a malfunctioned torpedo.
The daring group of men was about to rewrite history, Kurson said, but faced
another danger — rival divers known as pirates who might jump their claim.
“They swore each other to secrecy … and the secret lasted about two hours,”
Kurson said.
The quest would bankrupt each of the divers and cost all of them their
marriages.
And, the divers faced ethical challenges as well.
Nazi memorabilia collectors offered the divers money for skulls of the dead
sailors, and the mystery could’ve been solved much quicker if the divers had
searched the sailors.
“They weren’t willing to disturb the remains of the dead,” Kurson said.
“The U-boat was their one chance to do something great and not do it in an
ugly way.”
Kurson soon realized that the book was his chance to do something great, as
well.
“I flew back to Chicago and set about writing,” he said. “It occurred to me
after about six weeks that this book was my U-boat.
“A writer could live many lifetimes and not get an opportunity like this.”
With that realization, he decided to visit the submarine in the darkened
depths himself.
“I believed if I didn’t go inside and see what they saw that I wouldn’t be
able to tell the story,” he said.
With self-deprecating humor, Kurson detailed how his lofty idea was quickly
derailed.
A non-swimmer, he signed up for scuba lessons but was promptly removed from
class after it was discovered he couldn’t swim.
Nevertheless, he went on not only to tell the story, but also to enthrall
millions of readers.
“Shadow Divers” reached No. 2 on the New York Times’ bestseller list, and a
big-screen adaptation by 20th Century Fox is in the works.
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