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Shadow Divers

robert kurson

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In the tradition of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery–and make history themselves.

For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing themselves against treacherous currents, braving depths that induced hallucinatory effects, navigating through wreckage as perilous as a minefield, they pushed themselves to their limits and beyond, brushing against death more than once in the rusting hulks of sunken ships.

But in the fall of 1991, not even these courageous divers were prepared for what they found 230 feet below the surface, in the frigid Atlantic waters sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey: a World War II German U-boat, its ruined interior a macabre wasteland of twisted metal, tangled wires, and human bones–all buried under decades of accumulated sediment.

No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artifacts brought to the surface. No historian, expert, or government had a clue as to which U-boat the men had found. In fact, the official records all agreed that there simply could not be a sunken U-boat and crew at that location.

Over the next six years, an elite team of divers embarked on a quest to solve the mystery. Some of them would not live to see its end. Chatterton and Kohler, at first bitter rivals, would be drawn into a friendship that deepened to an almost mystical sense of brotherhood with each other and with the drowned U-boat sailors–former enemies of their country. As the men’s marriages frayed under the pressure of a shared obsession, their dives grew more daring, and each realized that he was hunting more than the identities of a lost U-boat and its nameless crew.

Author Robert Kurson’s account of this quest is at once thrilling and emotionally complex, and it is written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they meet the dangers of the ocean’s underworld. The story of Shadow Divers often seems too amazing to be true, but it all happened, two hundred thirty feet down, in the deep blue sea.

335 pages, Hardcover

First published June 29,2004
Literary awards
book sense book of the year award, ala alex award, 
Places
new jersey shore, 

This edition

Format
335 pages, Hardcover
Published
January 1, 2004 by Random House
ISBN
ASIN
B0DTRC56VS
Language
English
Characters More characters

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About the author

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robert kurson

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Robert Kurson is an American author, best known for his bestselling book, "Shadow Divers," the true story of two Americans who discover a sunken World War II German U-boat and for "Crashing Through," the story of an entrepreneur who regains his eyesight after a lifetime of blindness.

Kurson began his career as an attorney, graduating from Harvard Law School and practicing real estate law. His professional writing career began at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he started as a sports agate clerk and soon gained a full-time features writing job. In 2000, Esquire published “My Favorite Teacher,” his first magazine story, which became a finalist for a National Magazine Award. He moved from the Sun-Times to Chicago magazine, then to Esquire, where he won a National Magazine Award and was a contributing editor for years. His stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. He lives in Chicago.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
kinglayy
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This was a fantastic book about a gripping story - part mystery, part history, with more than a little bit of life thrown in. The story of several divers who discover a u-boat 60 miles of the coast of New Jersey - that's right, a NAZI FRICKING SUBMARINE that was so close the submariners in it could have THROWN bombs at us if they wanted, let alone launching torpedoes... and one that was utterly unknown until the 1990s.

The book takes you beyond just the facts of the finding, into the lives of the divers who first located, then risked their lives to return to the wreck again and again until they had found out what it was and verified what lay within. It takes you into the complicated world of deep sea technical diving - a terrifying world where you either knew someone who had died or knew someone who knew someone who had: never more than a few steps away from the grim reaper in a world man is specifically not designed to go.

The book was riveting, frightening, emotional, elated all in stages, and I cannot recommend it enough.
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__Haliya__
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A fascinating read that illustrates the length people will go to follow their passions.
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Savannah-Sama
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This abridged audio tape was absolutely thrilling to listen to. It tells the story of divers who find a U-boat off the coast of New Jersey and then try to identify it. Until they do, they call it the U-Who.

Part of what made it interesting for me was that I never want to dive. I am a shore person. I'll settle for splashing my ankles in the waves.

In basic training in Texas, I went with three other guys to the Gulf of Mexico. We rented four oxygen tanks to dive with. No way I was going to go through with it, but I had to preserve my manhood, so I I kept complaining about my tank did not work. Turns out, two of the others did the same thing. Only one of us actually went out under the ocean for about 30 minutes till we were about ready to call rescuers to get his body. He came back and told us how wonderful it was. We still stayed on shore complaining the tanks did not work. No regrets about that one.
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OniKunIsGr8
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Submarines have always enthralled me. And scared me. I cannot imagine having the courage to be cooped up in a vulnerable piece of machinery that is always in danger of being overthrown by the forces of Poseidon. Now add to that the real wartime experience of fear and having to outrun the enemy and the enemy’s relentless barrage of depth charges. This book is about many things, but at its core, it’s about the discovery of a sub that went missing in World War II.

In 1991, two scuba divers discovered a sunken vessel just off the New Jersey shore of the United States. After continuous dives, they realize it has to be a German U-Boat after opening the hatch and finding a torpedo, but the big question is, which one? No one wants to admit that an enemy submarine was that close to American civilians, so the quest to discover the submarine’s identity takes on the main part of the book. It becomes an obsession for the divers and their team, and they title the shipwreck, “The U-Who”, until the real identity is revealed.

Along with having to counter the disbelief of the United States in the discovery of a German submarine in a place it wasn’t supposed to be, the book details the obsession that takes over as the men try to find out the true identity of the sub. Tragedy takes place, as it usually does, when divers have accidents. And when the submarine is finally identified, it means re-adjusting the final voyage of the U-Boat and the day it met its death, just three months before the end of the war.

I never lost interest in the telling of this historical event, because it combined the story of the divers, the history of U-Boats, and the red tape of government bureaucracy. While the sunken vessel was part of the enemy fleet, the reader wants to put its crew to rest, in having their families finally know what happened to the sons, fathers, and brothers who disappeared one night beneath the Atlantic ocean.

Book Season = Autumn (frayed nerves)


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kyleinfinity
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This is why I read. A tale that has it all mystery, brotherhood, heartbreak and passion.
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k1m3l
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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i actually cannot believe this story is real! what a captivating account of deep sea diving (of which i had absolutely no knowledge of). i never expected to learn so much from this book. it was also a great reminder that our perception of history is often not as accurate as we think. i loved reading about the friendship between chatterton and kohler - i literally want to meet them. talk about two insanely impressive and driven individuals.
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Kaizoku_Kazoku
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This is an action-packed adventure story. An adrenalin thrill. Make sure that is what you want before you start.

It is also a non-fiction book about the discovery of an unidentified submarine where none was said to exist. Which submarine was it? Who were the men that discovered it? What was done to discover its provenance and how it came to be there? Who were the dead men on that U-boat? That is the theme of this book. It can be tackled in several ways, two of which are to make it into a thrilling adventure story that will scare you sh*t~ess or through a calm, balanced presentation of known facts. Yeah, the latter is a bit more of an academic approach. What are you looking for? This is purely a matter of preference and/or mood.

There is another issue to be considered. Are you interested in understanding the psychological underpinnings of the prime actors? I don't think the book does that very well. There is a huge difference between knowing "what Mr. X did then and there" and understanding why that person made the choices he made. I never came to understand John Chatterton or Richie Kohler. Not Bill Nagle, nor Chris Rouse, nor Chris Rouse Jr. The book does state what they did but I just do not understand what motivated these guys. What makes them tick. I just do not understand. Perhaps people are simply born different. This book does not provide a psychological study. There are holes in the information if that is what you are after, and this is what I was looking for. One example: the book doesn't explain why custody of Kohler's children was switched between the parents. If we want to understand Kohler we need to know this. Another instance was when we are told how Chatterton’s mother saw to it that he was not allowed to return to Vietnam. We are told she spoke to people. Who? What did John do to fight these decisions? Nothing is said. If you want to understand the person these are important points. These are just two examples, but there are more. The book presents the actions of the people, but I still never come to understand these men.

I highly recommend this book if you want a thrill and are curious about marine warfare during WW2. The facts related to this dive are thoroughly presented, and you will be scared to death. This starts immediately when at the very beginning you learn of the dangers coupled to of deep wreck diving - nitrogen narcosis and decompression sickness. Don’t think those are the only two dangers!

The narrator of the audiobook is Michael Prichard. He reinforces the tone of the text. So, if you want to be scared, the audiobook is a great choice.

**************

At the beginning:
This is scaring me to death!
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WitchFromMercury
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I absolutely LOVED this book. Nonfiction is generally not my favorite, but this topic is exactly up my alley, and I was SO INTO IT. There were a couple writing quirks that I didn't love, but they weren't close to significant enough to affect my enjoyment, and overall the story was well structured and well developed. It had me on the edge of my seat and chanting quietly to myself at multiple points, and the mystery was fascinating. I gotta find more books like this.
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