Perth Diving Academy

 

New Stock in Store

On 26 October 1942, whilst the bloody Battle of Santa Cruz was raging in the Solomons, another drama was unfolding two hundred miles south. The luxury liner SS President Coolidge, under contract to the U.S. Army as a troopship, steamed toward the safe anchorage of the Segond Channel in Espiritu Santo. Two mine explosions, laid to discourage enemy attack, mortally crippled the liner. Captain Henry Nelson immediately ran the ship on shore to save as many lives as possible. Within ninety minutes, the 654 ft luxury liner slipped off the coral reef and lay on the seabed, one hundred feet below the surface. Of the 5,000 U.S. infantry and crew aboard, only two were lost. But the demise of the President Coolidge begged a number of serious questions. Did Captain Nelson receive the Special Instructions that would direct him to the safe entrance and thus avoid the deadly minefield? Why was the ship allowed to travel unescorted when it was known that a Japanese submarine was in the region? Was Admiral Halsey covering up for the Navy's mistake? 
Whatever the answers, the U.S. Army lost a valuable troop carrier in the early stages of the war when it needed all the equipment and facilities possible. More critical however was the stranding of 5,000 fighting men with no equipment and not even a dry pair of shorts. They were on their way to reinforce and relieve the Marines that had taken Guadalcanal only two months previous. How many American lives were lost in the bloody battles of the Solomon's because of the lack of badly needed reinforcements?
The Lady and President answers these questions and gives a dramatic account of the loss of the ship, subsequent salvage of the propellers and bunker oil, and details of recent day scuba diving on the ‘world's largest accessible shipwreck'. 
Printed on 90gsm Matt Art, size 240 x 180mm, 320 pages with additional eight pages of colour. Contains over 140 mono photographs, sixteen deck plans and charts, and six maps. $56.00 
ANDREA DORIA - DIVE TO AN ERA.
Gary Gentile. 
The collision between the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm has been the subject of unending debate since that fateful night of 25 July 1956. Fifty-two people lost their lives, the Italian Line lost its finest ship, and one of the greatest sea rescues in history made banner headlines. Today, the ship lies on her starboard side in 240 ft of water off Nantucket on the east coast USA. This book chronicles the story of the ship after she sank, including the author's twenty-two expeditions to the wreck, with the recovery of the bronze statue pf Admiral Andrea Doria, and the ship's bell. It is a fascinating book with excellent colour photographs. 
Hardcover, with dust jacket, 160 pages, full colour. $45.00
SHADOW DIVERS
Robert Kurson.
From the fly: ....  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. No identifying marks were visible on the submarine or the few artefacts that Chatterton and Kohler 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 bond 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, emotionally complex, and written with a vivid sense of what divers actually experience when they encounter the dangers of the ocean's underworld.
Softcover, 390 pages, colour prints. $35.00

FROM JUTLAND TO JUNKYARD. 
S.C. George. 
In 1919, the German High Seas Fleet scuttled twenty-four large war ships and numerous smaller ships at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. From 1924 the great fleet was raised, ship by ship, and scrapped. This book covers the extraordinary story of how the greatest salvage operation of all time was achieved. Books like this should be produced in hardcover, but alas, this is in paperback form, 150 pages, with 87 mono photographs. 
A superb read. $32.00
THE TERRIBLE HOURS. 
Peter Maas. 
On 23 May 1939, the American submarine Squalus failed to surface on her final test-run. Many men died when the seas rushed in through an open vent, but thirty-three remained alive at 243 ft. No rescue operation has ever been successful at this depth, but that did not deter Commander Swede Momsen, whose innovative development for the US Navy provided a submarine escape lung, and a submersible bell that could link to a stricken submarine, providing all conditions were right! They weren't, but Momsen rescued all the men over as harrowing twenty-four hours. The sub was salvaged and recommissioned. This is an exceptionally well written account, as exciting as any fiction. It covers the development of escape apparatus and salvage methods. Maas is the author of Serpico, and The Vallachi Papers. Softcover paperback, 288 pages.$28.00
DEEP, DARK AND DANGEROUS. Adventures and Reflections on the Andrea Doria.
Gary Gentile. 
The author is well known for his first book on the Andrea Doria, published in 1989 (Andrea Doria - Dive to An Era), and brings the reader up to date (to 2004) with further expedition, recoveries, and, unfortunately, the high number of deaths on the shipwreck, and how they occurred. Gentile does not mince words, and gives a graphic description of salvage events and dives that have led to tragedy In the following pages the reader will explore vicariously the deep compartments and dark passageways where danger abounds, anxiety is commonplace, fear is palpable, and death is literally a breath away". Fair enough!! The book covers recovery of works of art from the ship, and the slow but inevitable collapse of the hull. A great read, as is usual from Gentile. Hardcover, dust jacket, 216 pages, mono and colour prints. $48.00
DARK DESCENT
Diving and the Deadly Allure of the Empress of Ireland.
Kevin F. McMurray.
McMurray has already made his reputation as an excellent author through his history and descriptions of diving the Andrea Doria in 'Deep Descent'. But if you thought that was a difficult dive (thirteen lives claimed so far), try the Empress of Ireland in the Gulf of St Lawrence. It may be a comparatively shallow wreck at around 120 ft, but when you consider the freezing cold waters, strong currents, near zero visibility, and French-Canadian bureaucracy, you wonder why anyone would bother. But such is not the thinking of true wreck divers, and The Empress remains one of the most challenging of recreational sport diving wrecks in the world. McMurray overcame all obstacles, including the bureaucracy, and describes his and several other much less satisfactory dives in which not all who descended in good health remained that way after ascent. McMurray captures the terror of shipwreck with the fear of visiting a gravesite in such in hospitable conditions. A great read. 
Hardcover, dust jacket, 270 pages, mono prints. $55.00


 

Perth Diving Academy Pty Ltd ACN 009 038 484