Every summer, 100 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, a select number of the world's top scuba divers descend 225 feet to the sunken remains of the Italian passenger ship Andrea Doria. The wreck is considered the Mount Everest of scuba. A single teacup plucked from the Doria is the sport's ultimate trophy. But such souvenirs can exact a disturbingly high price. In 1998 and 1999, five divers died at the wreck site. They were customers of the Seeker, a renowned charter boat docked each season at Montauk. For the past few years, Newsday staff writer and "On the Waters" columnist Joe Haberstroh has chronicled the exploits of the divers who explore the Doria. In a new book that grew out of that reporting, "Fatal Depth: Deep Sea Diving, China Fever, and the Wreck of the Andrea Doria" (The Lyons Press, $23.95), Haberstroh probes the circumstances behind the deaths and the fatalistic subculture of deep-wreck divers. The book also recounts the sinking of the Doria and examines safety issues for those who operate at scuba's highest technical level. In this excerpt, diver Christopher Murley, a 44-year- old Ohio businessman, is forced to confront physical problems that led others to suggest he forgo his planned trip to the Doria. One day in February 1999, William Murley walked into his son's office in the Cincinnati suburb of Woodlawn only to find Chris lying down on the floor. His eyes were closed, and his clothes were drenched in perspiration head to toe. Closing the door so Chris' employees at Better Telephones & Technology would not see Chris prostrate, the elder Murley asked his son what was going on. "I don't know what it is," Chris murmured. "I just - this just happens to me." Chris said he suffered from headaches, deep fatigue and prodigious sweating. Sometimes he just sweated. Other times all the symptoms flared at once, and he had to lower his huge frame to the floor and lie down. He told his father that a doctor had advised him he might have the early signs of diabetes. On the doctor's advice, Chris had begun watching his diet. He was trying to keep sugary foods to a minimum. As Chris lay there, the conversation came around to his scuba diving training, and his stated goal of diving on the Andrea Doria. Chris' father opposed the dive. It was clear to him his son was ill. William Murley, 74, had served 24 years in the U.S. Army and, as a paratrooper, had made five combat jumps over Korea. He liked to say that, in the jump planes, if the officers sensed a paratrooper was even subtly unprepared, or uncertain, or sick, they would cancel the soldier's jump at a moment's notice. To him, it was obvious Chris was not 100 percent. His son had been walking around for two years with his clothes plastered to his body with perspiration. The old paratrooper also frequently made the point that the air was unforgiving - he meant the air between the troop plane and the ground. He felt the same way about the water. The environment allowed for very few errors. William Murley had a gut feeling. His son shouldn't go to the Andrea Doria. Chris rested on the floor. His father asked him if he could get up, and he said no. "I'll be all right," he said. The two men had drawn close in the previous six or seven years. Chris' father had a little income-tax preparation business in the Better Telephones & Technology building, which was located on the Springfield Pike between Dayton and Cincinnati. William Murley, who had earned two college degrees during his time in the military, followed his career in uniform with 18 years as an auditor at the General Accounting Office, and helped his son run the phone business. It wasn't working out very well. The corporation lost more than $130,000 in 1997 and more than $150,000 the year before. Nevertheless, the passage of time had partially healed some deep wounds between the two men. It had been especially hard on William Murley when his son, who had been enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in college, went on active duty only to be court-martialed and convicted for theft of government property and conduct unbecoming an officer, among other charges. Chris even served six months in 1982 at the government's Military Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Now, as they talked in Chris' office, William Murley tried to persuade him to abandon his strange obsession with diving the Andrea Doria. He asked his son if he was satisfied with his diving. Chris said he was, until he got "in trouble." The equipment and the techniques weren't always easy to master. Murley remembers finally asking his son not to go the Doria. "You know you're sick," he said. "I'm committed," Chris said. "I've got money tied up in this. I can't back out on it. It's a noncancelable contract." William Murley suggested that the Doria dive was simply beyond his son's abilities. Chris, his father recalled, said that was OK. He'd be qualified for it when he returned. *** Most who explore the Andrea Doria have been addicted to scuba diving for years. But when Chris Murley stepped aboard the charter boat Seeker in the summer of 1999, he had been diving for only 17 months. He stood out in other ways. For one thing, he stood 6-feet-8 and weighed 320 pounds. He had also been below 200 feet only twice, having made most of his dives in a flooded stone quarry in Ohio. Oddly, Chris was not interested in a cup or plate from the wreck. Somehow, he hoped to salvage a Doria toilet. Despite his inexperience, Chris executed a successful Doria dive on the morning of July 21 alongside his instructor, Joe Jackson. The Seeker's skipper, Dan Crowell, was pleasantly reassured, and Murley's fiance, Mary Beth Byrne, snapped photos of a beaming Chris. But Chris wanted to go inside the ship on his next dive. He had even brought stainless-steel cable he believed would help him escape the ship in an emergency. But Jackson refused. Chris offered Jackson a thousand dollars on the spot to take him inside the wreck. Jackson said no. Chris explained that he wanted the toilet and sink fixtures. He thought of the plans for a Doria-themed room for the home he and Mary Beth shared. He pulled out the reel of stainless-steel safety line. Wouldn't the line make a deep penetration OK? Jackson told him no again. To the other divers, Chris seemed either delusional or shockingly uninformed. It seemed he had no idea of the absurdity of the notion that someone such as himself, who 17 months earlier had not even strapped on a single can of compressed air, should be allowed to penetrate the wreck of the Andrea Doria as deeply as people such as [diver/author] Gary Gentile. Even in the fast and loose subculture of Northeast wreck diving, this was dangerously risky. Jackson told Chris he wouldn't be diving if he didn't abide by the agreed-upon plan. There would be no compromise. This had the effect of shutting Chris up. He agreed. Dan also made a late-afternoon dive that day. He entered the water a few minutes before 5. Chris and Jackson now sat on the Seeker's dressing table, making final preparations. It was a spectacular afternoon on top of the ocean: Temperatures were in the 70s, visibility measured at least 10 miles, and a mild wind from the north provided a cooling breeze to the divers in their stifling neoprene suits. Mary Beth tucked Chris' hoses away for him and tugged on straps that held the decompression bottles in their places. Chris decided to make one more run at Jackson, and he again offered his instructor a thousand dollars to take him inside the Andrea Doria. Jackson glared at him. Chris walked over and knelt at the cutout along the Seeker's starboard rail. Then, at 5:12 p.m., he dropped into the water. He quickly surfaced, looked for Mary Beth, and held up an OK sign. She took a picture. In a few seconds, after Chris had gotten out of the way, Jackson rolled into the ocean. Then Chris began pulling himself along what the divers called a geri line - a rope that ran along the length of the boat, descended below the water's surface, and knotted into the anchor line. It eased the diver's brief trip to the anchor line. Submerged just below the surface, Chris inched along the geri line. He was horizontal in the water, about 15 feet ahead of Jackson, who could see Chris' fins paddling the water. Jackson glanced down at his tanks, and when he looked back up Chris had stopped. Now Chris was vertical in the water. Jackson saw him from only the chest down. "Help me!" Chris cried. Jackson hurried as best he could to get to Chris. "Help me!" Chris repeated. | | The final moments of the Andrea Doria [Crew member John] Moyer, who had been in the Seeker's cockpit, recording divers' entry times, sprinted down the stairs. He and diver Steve Nagiewicz met up and hustled to the bow. They saw that Jackson had made it to Chris' side. The two men were under the Seeker's long bowsprit. Neither Chris' buoyancy-compensator vest nor his suit was inflated. To Nagiewicz, it looked like the 320-pound Chris was having difficulty staying afloat. "I'm drowning," Chris cried. "Help me." Nagiewicz jumped into the water. He and Jackson tried to get Chris to accept a regulator and breathe and relax, but Chris wouldn't cooperate. He flailed his arms. "Help me," he cried, again and again. Jenn (Jennifer Samulski, Crowell's partner) and Moyer lowered a line to Chris and, with what entailed a tremendous physical strain, he attempted to pull himself out of the water. He was in a full-blown panic. He continued to fight off Nagiewicz and Jackson. Nagiewicz pushed the inflation button on Chris' vest and on his dry suit, and that helped. Chris lifted in the water a bit and he calmed down. Gary Gentile had the line from the boat now. "I'll tow you," he called. Then, halfway back, Chris stopped talking. He stopped moving. It was as if he had suffered a heart attack. That's what it looked like to the others. Chris just slumped. "It doesn't look like he's breathing," Jenn Samulski called from on deck. Jenn jotted notes as the men struggled with Chris. At 5:19, seven minutes after Chris had splashed in, the crew members had him at the back of the boat. At first they all tried to bundle Chris up the ladder, but that proved impossible. They tied a rope under his arms and tried to lift him. Still, no go. He was way too big a man. So they floated him all the way around the Seeker's stern to the portside, where the boat had a block and tackle, and they used that to slowly hoist him aboard. It was 5:26. Fourteen minutes had passed since Chris had entered the water. At 6:35 p.m., a Coast Guard helicopter had lumbered out from Cape Cod, hovered above the Seeker, and dropped down a rescue swimmer. The swimmer helped secure Chris Murley onto a litter, and they took Chris aboard the helicopter. He was pronounced dead on arrival in a Cape Cod hospital. Dan quaked with anger when he came out of the water and learned what had happened. He had sensed that Chris wasn't fit to dive. He knew it. It seemed obvious. But he had trusted Joe Jackson, with whom he had worked for several years. Absent enforceable, straightforward standards, and, apparently, his own willingness to set firm rules and stick to them, this was Dan's world: He relied on people vouching for each other, and he made exceptions to the rules when it suited him. Soon he, Jackson and Mary Beth were discussing Chris' medical history. There was the hypertension. Mary Beth mentioned the diabetes diagnosis. She also said Chris' parents had both had heart problems. Just as news of Vince Napoliello's [Napoliello had died when diving on the wreck the previous summer] heart problems had, in a sick sense, relieved Dan, so did this news. As far as Dan was concerned, this fatality hardly counted as a diving death. Chris wasn't diving. He was on the surface. A heart attack waiting to happen. Wasn't it obvious? Another freak accident. Not so much bad luck, but yet another consequence of taking the highest numbers of divers to the Doria. It was cruel mathematics. By 7, the dive boat was pointed back to Montauk. The early evening remained clear and warm but the northern breeze had shifted since the morning, so now the Seeker was turned against the wind. *** In 2001, Chris Murley's elderly parents and Mary Beth Byrne filed a $35 million negligence lawsuit against defendants including Seeker skipper Dan Crowell, instructor Joe Jackson and a dive-training agency. A complex legal battle, detailed in "Fatal Depth," has followed. Lawyers filed their most recent motions last month in federal court in Central Islip. Last summer, Crowell began to ease back on his Andrea Doria schedule. He offered only three charters to the wreck site. While he sometimes reflects with sadness on the men who died in 1998 and '99 - some were his friends, after all - he says his conscience remains clear. The Seeker simply endured a nasty run of bad luck. "No one died because they didn't have the proper training," he says. "People died due to unknown medical conditions. The way I look at it, everybody basically succumbed to circumstances." Meanwhile, Crowell isn't sure he will return to the Doria this year. The ship had once rested on its side with a sort of mesmerizing dignity, but increasingly it looks like a pile of junk. There are piles of tortured steel bulkheads now, and mystery girders, and wires leading nowhere. In conjunction with the release of "Fatal Depth,"Joe Haberstroh will appear at 7 p.m tomorrow at the Long Island Maritime Museum, 86 West Ave., in West Sayville; and at 8 p.m. March 13 at the Book Revue bookstore, 313 New York Ave., in Huntington. The History, The Danger The shipwreck's reputation in the world of scuba diving stems from its renown during its career as a passenger liner to the improbable circumstances surrounding its sinking to the striking way it rests on the bottom of the Atlantic - on its side. Many Northeast wrecks are smashed to bits. The Doria, by contrast, still looks like a big ship. Divers love it. Danger attracts many divers, and the Doria is indisputably dangerous. At 225 feet, it's well beyond the informal recreational diving limit of 130 feet. Ocean currents are unpredictable, and the site is several hours from land. Sharks are routine. Divers can get lost if they venture inside the crumbling wreck. The ship's quirky history also propels divers. It sank on a foggy night in July 1956 after colliding with the Stockholm, a Swedish liner headed in the opposite direction. Amazingly, only 51 people died in the accident. More than 1,700 were saved by other ships racing to the scene. When the Doria went down, no ship in the world was considered as safe or as fast or as beautiful. Its designers had painted the ship's hull black, angled its bow sharply and plated its stern curvaceously. Even tied to the pier, the Doria looked swift. Its public rooms were full of original artwork from Italian artists of the 1950s, and realistic murals depicted Italian cities in different eras. At the dawning of jet travel, the Andrea Doria recalled a more genteel time, when a first-class ticket across the ocean from Rome to New York was considered the sweetest luxury. At the same time, the Doria was fully modern - it was air conditioned, and it had more ship-to-shore telephones than any liner afloat. When a diver takes a teacup from the Andrea Doria, he has not just proved himself as a diver, though that may be his primary motivation. In a way, he is becoming part of the extraordinary story of the ship itself. |
