Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson

secret.”
    “I’m calling Bill Nagle right now,” Kohler said. “I gotta be on the next trip.”
    “No! No! Don’t do that, Richie! You can’t say anything.”
    Kohler finally agreed to keep the secret. Like Brennan, he went to sleep that night rerunning scenes from
Das Boot.
    The same evening, Nagle hit the bottle in celebration of the discovery. With each sip, the notion of keeping such a secret seemed selfish, even criminal. Ice clinking in his glass, he called Danny Crowell, a mate on the
Seeker
who, because of a business obligation, had been unable to make the trip. He didn’t bother with clues. “We found a U-boat,” he slurred. “Don’t tell a fucking soul.”
    The next morning, as John Yurga punched in at the dive shop where he worked, he received a call from Joe “Captain Zero” Terzuoli, a friendly dive boat captain. Terzuoli was the store’s best customer.
    “Yurga, hey, it’s Zero. How was your trip?”
    “Oh, it wasn’t too bad. It was a rock pile, so we moved on and dove the
Parker.
”
    “Oh, well, you took your shot,” Zero said. “Catch you soon, buddy.”
    Five minutes later, the phone rang again. Yurga answered.
    “This is Zero! I just talked to Ralphie, who talked to Danny Crowell, who says Bill Nagle told him it was a U-boat!”
    Yurga’s stomach pounded. He liked Zero. It sickened him to lie. But he had sworn an oath.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Zero. It was rocks, man. Call Bill.”
    Yurga hung up and raced to dial Nagle before Zero could do it.
    “Bill, this is Yurga. What the hell is going on? Did you open your mouth?”
    “That fucking Danny Crowell!” Nagle exploded. “I told him not to tell!”
    The remaining divers seemed better able to keep the secret. A few told family or nondiver friends, while others were unwilling to risk it even with wives. Soon, word of Nagle’s indiscretion reached Chatterton. He knew his friend’s weakness and was not surprised. He suggested that Nagle make several outlandish claims—to say on Monday that he had discovered a U-boat, on Tuesday that he had found the
Corvallis,
on Wednesday the
Carolina,
and so on, until no one believed any bit of it. Nagle mumbled that he would try. Chatterton heard the ice clink. The men would need to stand guard with that much more vigilance to prevent getting jumped on the wreck the next time out.
    Two weeks was an agonizing wait for divers so alive with mystery. Landlocked for eternity, many did the next best thing to diving—they hit the books.
    Most worked independently from their homes or local libraries. They consulted area shipwreck chronicles, U-boat histories, and World War II naval records. Their strategy: find any submarines recorded sunk anywhere near where the mystery wreck lay. Two U-boats leaped from the pages.
    In April 1944, Allied forces sank
U-550
at a location of 40°09¢N latitude and 69°44¢W longitude. Those numbers sounded distinctly New Jersey to the divers. They rushed to their navigational charts and traced their fingers along the lats and longs until they reached a point about a hundred miles north of the mystery wreck’s general location, still in New Jersey waters but not a great match. Still, no one had ever found
U-550.
To most of the divers, the hundred-mile discrepancy might be explainable; perhaps
U-550
’s sinking location was recorded imprecisely; perhaps
U-550
had only been wounded by Allied forces and then limped underwater to the mystery wreck site before sinking. Perhaps anything
—U-550
was the only submarine recorded sunk in New Jersey waters. She became the divers’ odds-on favorite.
    Close behind was
U-521,
which had been sunk in June 1943 at a position of approximately 37°43¢N latitude and 73°16¢W longitude. Again, the divers consulted their navigational charts. This location lay in Virginia waters, about ninety miles east of Chincoteague Bay. Though not in New Jersey waters, the site was just 120 miles south of the mystery wreck.