Wreck Diving

One often asked question is why divers risk there life to go down and search these wrecks. I thought i would give you a few of those reasons. First is because these wrecks serve as an artificial reef to many types of marine life. They often have some type of attracting history behind them. It presents new challenges for many divers to practice skill. It provides many types of history such as warfare, trade routes and other types of things. Last it can make divers very wealthy if they discover something great or break some sort of diving record. 

Trimix

Trimix is an oxygen tank except it has less oxygen because oxygen poisons your body the deeper you go. Trimix was experimental when they were using it. It reduces the chance of getting narcosis and oxygen toxicity.  Though there are disadvantages to using it such as hyperbaric arthralgia which comes during your desent. It was created in 1991 around the time the divers first went to U-Who and they were one of the first to use it and now it is still used by many, but not all divers.

History of U-869

On U-869's first patrol, 2 months after its launch the sub was supposedly sunk. But it drifted all the way to the New Jersey coast with out sign to anybody then lost for nearly a century until Chatterton and Nagle find the boat. They first discover a knife in the boat with "Neuerburg" carved in the handle, this is how they get the idea of U-869 with Neuerburg's records for captaining U-869. Then they found a box in the sub, very damaged but a plate on the side was cleaned of and had the marking of U-869 on it. So this helped to finally prove the idea of U-869. Before U-869's name was finally discovered it was often called "U-Who". U-869 was a German Type IXC/40 U-Boat. It was hard for most historians to believe a U-boat came this that close to the US coast when it was supposedly sunk of the coast of Rabat. But then records were found to order U-869 to move to Gibraltar, as seen in the map above where this was thought to be her end until of course U-869 was found of the coast of New Jersey making U-869 a mystery.

U-869

Sketch of U-869 after it sank

The Divers

After Chatterton and Kohler found the boat it took six years to discover its identity and during this time, three divers on their crew died during their exploration of the ship. Their names were Steve Feldmen, Chris Rouse, and Chris Rouse Jr.

Hellmut Neuerburg(far right) January 26, 1944 with U-869 and crew

Origin of U-869

Deschimag AG Weser, Bremen was where U-869 was built in April of 1943. Then it was launched later that year in October. Kptlt. Hellmut Neuerburg was the head of this submarine. This sub was thought to be originally sunk by USS Fowler, but possibly could have been sunk by one of its own acoustic torpedoes. It was found 60 miles off the shore of New Jersey and people didn't believe U-Boats were that close to the US shore.

Location of U-869

The U-869 was found far from where the sub supposedly sank(represented by the X).

Britannic

In 1997, Chatterton was chosen to be the first to dive the Britannic, sister boat to the Titanic. This was less then a month after he had identified U-869.

German submarine U-869

Submarine U-869 is the sub that was found by Bill Nagle, and John Chatterton. The destruction of this boat was accidental. The torpedo's in this boat found there target by sound so when the boat supposedly fired during a turn it missed the target and the torpedo picked up the sound of U-869's propellers and circled back and destroyed its own ship. This boat was sunk 28 Feb, 1995 in the mid Atlantic near Rabat.

John Chatterton Promotional Video

Dangers of shipwreck diving.

Here are the dangers of what shipwreck divers do. Such as Narcosis or decompression sickness, both come from pressure underwater. Every 33 feet you go below the surface, your adding one atmosphere. If you stay down for a long period of time nitrogen goes into your blood stream and to much of this will cause narcosis which can be compared to alcohol intoxication. Once you hit 130 feet you find easy tasks difficult. At 180 feet you start to hallucinate. Below 200 feet all the little things are annoyances to you. Good divers board the boat with a plan not just making it up as they go. Its learned from this chapter that no man is safe during a deep shipwreck dive until he comes up on the deck.

The Story

The story takes place 60 miles off the coast of New Jersey in the Atlantic ocean in 1991. Bill Nagle, a skilled shipwreck diver driven by uncovering history and finding treasure to show for it. Shipwreck diving is one of the most dangerous sports there is. Bill Nagle's boat was named the Seeker, a boat he had built specifically to chase possibility. His life truly changed the day a fisherman named Skeet had told him a secret of where an unknown sunken boat could be. Skeet kept his greatest fishing spots in secret so no other fisherman could come clean the place of its life. Skeet had found a new spot filled with life, and down below he could just see a little bit of metal so he asumed it was a barge of some sort, no shipwrecks were recorded in this spot so Skeet decided to tell Nagle about it. Skeet couldnt just trust everyone with the cordenents though so Nagle traded numbers with Skeet keeping either one of them from telling people about each others sights. Nagle had been searching for a new place to dive. The one problem now is that the sight would just turn out to be a pipe barge left there with no value of any sort, but this didnt stop him so he called a friend of his named John Chatterson, also a very skilled diver that Nagle could trust. Nagle put together a crew of twelve men not including him and John Chatterson. Then on September 2, 1991 Nagle and his crew set out to find the sight that just might change thier lives forever.