CHAPTER ONE

 

“Something’s alive on the Andrea Doria!” -- Dr. Jenna Corey

 

“Death is nothing at all...I have only

slipped away into the next room...I am I,

and you are you...whatever we were to

each other that we are still.”

— Henry Scott Holland 1847-1918

 

The Andrea Doria had slipped under the waves after listing to starboard, lying like an enormous skyscraper on its side, and now at the bottom of the North Atlantic, she likewise was intact and lying on her side. She did not look like the caved-in, ripped apart, pancaked inward shipwrecked Titanic but more like the intact Bismarck. But the Andrea Doria was a shipwreck that could be gotten to by divers trained in deep water dives, whereas Titanic and Bismarck were not within diving distance by any stretch of the imagination, despite films and books to the contrary. They were thousands of feet out of reach except by submarine. Even then a diver could not truly inspect these ships, unable to ‘dive’ into the Titanic.

But here, above the Italian cruise liner, Andrea Doria, two more divers slowly descended, properly, cautiously, as trained. Between them, they had 15,345 hours of dive experience but only 5000 of that was in the kind of deep depths where they now headed. They’d come equipped with the best communications, lights, tanks, and confidence. They were diving the Mt. Everest of shipwrecks, the Andrea Doria, some sixty miles off the coast of Nantucket and 200 feet below the surface.

“I know you’re anxious to get to the ship and search the interior, Jake,” Jenna Corey said into her com-link as she descended just ahead of Jake Stoughton, holding him up. “But I’m already feeling a bit queasy, so just cool your jets.”

“Cool my jets. Haven’t heard that expression since high school.” Jake held onto the guideline, a strong hemp line that went from the dive boat, Explorer II to the wreck below. The line had been secured to a buoy that marked the dive location left by the last tour boat that had come and gone with anxious divers who wanted a look at the remains of the Andrea Doria. The Explorer II, however, was no excursion boat but a ship dedicated to ocean exploration and sometimes salvage operations, if a salvage operation appeared lucrative.

Still most who came out to dive the famous cruise liner came on tour boats. This usually meant ten or twelve divers of various ages and backgrounds from all over the states and the world who wanted to be able to say that they’d kneeled on the deck of this particular shipwreck. Due to Doria’s reputation, the shipwreck drew divers like flies. A reputation as the most dangerous shipwreck dive of them all. It certainly had earned that reputation with seventeen divers who’d not returned alive from her deck.

Descending took time and aside from the Trimix of air they breathed, time was their most precious commodity down here. Still, if Jenna was feeling woozy or lightheaded, she might do well to slowly return to the dive boat now. The pressures at these depths played havoc on the human body.

Jake advised her to turn and start up, adding, “I can manage alone.”

“I’m OK, Jake.”

“If I locate Pritchards’ body inside Doria, we still have two more days on site.”

“No…no, I’m fine. Just needed a minute.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, now quit harping, Jake.”

“You know damn well down here we can’t be too careful. Seventeen divers dead ahead of you, kiddo.”

She said no more, moving down the guideline instead of up. Clenching onto the heavy rope with the idling boat and the powerful current tearing at it, made holding on difficult. If not careful, the rope could tear loose a glove and rip skin down to bone. No one wanted blood in the water, not out here in the North Atlantic.

They continued their descent to the shipwreck. Like any death investigation, the first step was to have a look at the body and its surroundings, to scope out the site where the victim was last seen alive. Just because Thom Pritchards’ body remained unaccounted for, that was no reason to assume his body could not be found inside or near the wreck. Both Jenna and Jake had to assume that the unfortunate sixty-four-year old, veteran diver—or what was left of him—could be found. He has to be down here somewhere, Jake thought. Quite possibly inside the shipwreck.

Most of the now seventeen divers who’d perished in, around, and on the deck of the Andrea Doria had perished inside the wreck, lured in, no doubt by some shiny object, a peek through a portal, or some notion that one more minute inside the hulking wreck would net a quick fortune, a find like no other. Riches always presented a lure difficult to race away from even if a man had only a few minutes left of his oxygen mix. One of the dead, a fellow named Dennis Goreman of Pensacola, Florida was found clutching some cheap rosary beads he’d found somewhere in the wreck. Like many of the others, Goreman was a top-notch diver, a veteran who should not have died inside this wreck. But Goreman had no rich relatives putting up a small fortune for his recovery.

Not all but some of the bodies of those who’d died here had been recovered and autopsied. Cause of death ranged from heart attack to the bends—from ascending or descending too fast. Some who’d perished were thought to be suicidal as they had not been in good health or in any shape to make the dive in the first place. Others had gone down without sufficient training in deep water diving. After all, the ship was slightly over 250 feet below the surface at its stern. Most recreational divers seldom went beyond sixty feet, and to go even to 150 required special equipment and special mix of three gases in one’s tanks called a Trimix.

Jake and Jenna had been hired by the Richards children and estate to recover Thom Richards’ remains, and they’d been paid a wonderful advance, plus a sizable donation to the cause of dive safety for which Jake tirelessly worked.

The ‘recovery’ dive had been meticulously planned. Jenna had interviewed one of the divers who’d gone down with Richards, and Jake had interviewed the other man. They’d also interviewed a couple, man and wife, who’d come up after Richards’ dive buddies who might have seen something. The couple recalled having seen a strobe light like their own attached to the guideline, and the initials on the strobe light, a beacon to guide a diver back to the rope and the surface, read: TR—Thom Richards. Presumably, Richards had not gotten back to the guideline, despite the fact, his two dive partners had believed him right behind them on their ascent to the dive boat that day, the Whahoo.

“Another reason to believe the man had turned back, curious about something, despite his running low on his Trimix. By the time a diver got to this depth, he only had a mere fifteen minutes at the wreck site before he must ascend and switch over to normal oxygen as he did so.

For some reason, Richards failed to do anything approximating protocol down here. Aside from the monetary motive, Jenna and Jake wanted to know why, and how could it happen to so many veteran divers? There were diving deaths all across the globe, and most were associated with shipwreck dives. But no shipwreck had claimed a fraction of the lives that Andrea Doria had taken.

Was there an explanation? Or would the mystery remain forever a mystery?

“The depth has all to do with it,” Jake insisted during their planning stage.

“I know but that’s just one factor, Jake. I have a sixth sense that there’s more to it. Something simply not right.”

“Don’t tell me you think the ship’s haunted.” He’d laughed after the scoff.

“Haunted, perhaps not, but Jake haunting, now that’s another story.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know how people go to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and throw themselves to their deaths there?”

“I’ve read about that. Yeah, a lot of people choose it to end it all.”

“Like the Golden Gate Bridge. Some places just somehow lure people to their deaths. The haunting is inside them, not outside…or you might see it as a combination of the two.”

“A shipwreck like a bridge entices people to suicide, sure. I get that. The beauty of the canyon, I get it. But this is an ugly heap of metal on the ocean floor.”

“But from everything his friends, dive buddies, children, wife said about him, Richards loved life and had never suffered from depression,” she had argued. “Then he sees Doria for the first time and he’s mesmerized.”

“You may have something there, but it’s kinda far-fetched.”

“Not really. What if he got a diagnosis—say cancer or Alzheimer’s onset—everyone’s worst nightmare? And he told no one?”

Jake had scratched his head. “I suppose anything’s possible, but suicide by shipwreck is a new one on me.”

“Just sayin’ it’s a possibility.”

“You know people better’n I ever will. I bow to your thinking, Dr. Corey.”

They now arrived at the shipwreck and snapped on their strobe lights to the guide rope. The strobe lights sent out a signal of light that could be seen for some fifty yards. Their much stronger lights attached to their shoulders penetrated the length of a football field topside in the dark, but in the murky waters here, they were lucky to get half that. In the distance, as they continued to follow the guideline attached to the hull of the ship, they first saw the reflection of coral reef growing on the wreck. Curious fish, some that’d made a home of the wreck came into view along with a scuttling crab here and there.

Suddenly, the outline of the ghostly ship itself came into focus. It was, as shipwrecks go, both huge and elegant in its demise. Many a shipwreck dive was over a structure one quarter the size of the famous Italian cruise liner Andrea Doria. This was far closer to diving the Titanic—a ship thousands of feet below the surface, miles below, and out of the reach of shipwreck divers. This was the closest thing to accomplishing that miracle. Every time Jake saw it, the Andrea Doria struck a place in his heart. “She’s as beautiful as ever,” he muttered into his com-link.

Above on Explorer II, Sam ‘Sharky’ Kent replied, “I hear that. Tomorrow, I’m coming with you guys for a look.”

“You’re welcome, Sam,” said Jake. “Once you’re feeling better.”

Sam had picked up a bug that had him barfing half way out from Woods Hole.

“She is such a sad beauty,” Jenna then said, staring at the lines of the huge ship that had lain here since her sinking in 1956. The entire hull and deck was covered with sea life and ruinous rusticles—a term for the oxidation of metal coined by Bob Ballard, the Woods Hole scientist who had discovered the whereabouts of both the Titanic and the Bismarck on the floor of the North Atlantic.

Since the Andrea Doria was at a depth of hundreds of feet rather than thousands, and since it was on the continental shelf, more sea life existed in and around her. She had become a huge reef for the sea creatures.

“When you guys tire of admiring the shipwreck,” began Sam, “you can get busy searching for Richards…or what’s left of him. He’s been under water somewhere now for six months.”

“Do you have us on camera, Sam?” asked Jenna, who had talked of creating a documentary about this ‘expedition’, even kicking over a title: Dive Into Death. That was a long way off, but footage of each day’s search for Richards, with the possibility of finding others who’d disappeared here over the years, made the idea titillating. She’d hoped to get the backing of Woods Hole and Jake’s bosses at the University of Rhode Island, URI. All of it was in the talk stages for now.

Sam assured Jenna that all cameras were operating just fine.

“Shall we split up. We only have fourteen minutes left,” Jenna said to Jake.

“Now we talked about this. We should stay close.”

“Close then, but you take the left stairwell down, and I’ll take the right.”

“Jenna…”

“Time is of the essence, Jake. We need to be successful here.”

“Alright but stay in contact.”

Jake made his way into the bowels of the ship to the left, descending a stairwell at his right. The stairs went from the top deck to a corridor below. Jenna did the same, going down the left stairwell and into the corridor there. They had studied the schematics of the ship until they knew every nook and cranny, but the reality was that once inside, nothing looked as it did on blueprints and drawings.

“I’m going to find the gymnasium, check it out,” Jake said just to keep in touch with her.

Jenna laughed lightly and replied, “You think Richards stayed for a workout?”

“Men are drawn to the smell of sweat. What can I tell ya?”

“Try out the rings maybe, the horse while you’re in there. Might do you some good.”

They were silent for some time, in search and rescue mode when Jake broke the silence with a question. “I wonder if there’s any truth to the theory that she was hit on purpose.”

The communications were breaking up, but Jenna heard the words theory truth she hit purpose. “What? You’re breaking up, Jake.”

Jake eased his way through the broken, hanging doorway to the gymnasium as Jenna spoke. He repeated his question.

“Oh, you mean like some secret cargo that someone wanted destroyed?” asked Jenna. “But in 1956, we weren’t at war—not a real war.”

“Cold war was a war, Jenna. Could have been something as simple as top secret documents or a spy on board.”

The findings had the Stockholm’s junior officer on the bridge simply making a foolhardy mistake, reading the radar somehow upside down or backwards. The findings never set well with Jake. He had scoured the manifest, every person on board, but even so, a spy would be using an alias, he imagined. Putting these thoughts aside, he checked his dive watch. “We only have twelve minutes left to find Richards. What are you seeing ahead of you, Jen?”

“Parlor room, sitting areas, a bar.”

“No floating bodies?”

“None so far, no.”

“Be damn sure to check behind the bar. He might’ve hoped to bring up a bottle or two.”

“That’d fetch a pretty penny,” she replied.

“He’s got to be here somewhere. It’s mean a lot to have that donation to the URI Marine Biology Program finalized, and more could come of it, you know.”

“I thought the family already made the donation,” said Sam from above, listening in on them.

“Not until we have results, Sam, no.” Jake realized the gymnasium was a bust.

Sam replied, “My bad assumption.”

“Aren’t they all bad, Sam?” said Jake. “I’m moving on from here down the length of the corridor other side of the gym, Jenna. I’m getting pretty far in.”

“Watch out for hanging wires, pipes, falling debris, you two,” Sam warned. “Looks like an explosion hit that area, you’re in, Jenna.”

“I just found the gash. Huge hole in her side starboard bow. Damn. Looks like Hiroshima.”

“Be careful there, sweetheart,” warned Sam.

“Just keep capturing this footage, Sam,” she told Sam. “Hey, I could escape the ship from here, go up to the top deck and cross back to the strobe lights and guideline.”

“If you swim out that gash, be damn careful,” warned Jake. “That torn metal cuts deep. I got the scar to prove it.”

Jenna looked about what was once a state room, one of the many that had been demolished when the Stockholm’s reinforced bow plowed into the Andrea Doria, cutting a huge swath of a gash across some forty feet, killing some fifty people at once, washing many of the bodies out to sea as the Stockholm backed its nose out of the wounded ship. One lucky girl wound up inside the Stockholm, unconscious but safe and found hours later in the torn bow. The young woman had been presumed dead for twenty-four hours before she was found unconscious but alive.

Jenna realized she was staring at history, and if this compartment could speak, it would tell one hell of a story. As she moved carefully about the destroyed area, she had to be extra careful. “If Richards came this way, he could easily have gotten tangled in the conduit and wires,” she said into her com-link. “And if so, his body could as well be at the bottom of the ship outside, covered over by sand, shell and debris.”

“You don’t have time to move outside and down her side and dig around, do you?” asked Sam.

“No, she doesn’t Sam, and don’t encourage her,” countered Jake. “Times nearly up for us already.”

Jenna stood staring at the enormous gash to her side; something mesmerizing about the gaping hole that looked out on nothing but the sea bottom. It looked as if a bomb had gone off. All the metal was twisted inward, pointing at Jenna like so many ugly giant knife edges. Everywhere building materials, wires, pipes either lay about or hung overhead. What was left of a smashed, twisted bed was forced into a wall, half in, half out of the corridor the other side of the compartment. Jenna imagined a sleeping mother and child in that bed. Of course, she had no idea whose compartment this was, who would have been in that bed, but it was obvious, whoever he or she was, death had instantly found anyone lying there at the time of the impact.