Submerged - 9781557045058

One of the world's leading underwater archeologists recounts experiences from his 24 years as founder and head of the elite, award-winning Submerged Cultural Resources Unit (SCRU) team of the U.S. National Park Service-adventure writing at its best. In Submerged, Lenihan (the co-author with Gene Hackman of the novel Wake of the Perdido Star) takes the reader on a kaleidoscope of underwater experiences-to ancient ruins covered by reservoirs in the desert southwest, to the lower rings of hell to retrieve the bodies of drowned divers, to gripping accounts of personal survival in underwater caves, ships, and submerged buildings. Among the astonishing, often harrowing assignments he recalls: The Isle Royale shipwrecks: Surveying ten large ships sunk from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries in the middle of the frigid and deep Lake Superior. The USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor: Executing the largest mapping project ever conducted underwater, and his personal impressions as, the leader of the first expedition to explore and video the entire ship in 1983. Investigating the hull of the HL Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship, in Charleston Harbor during the Civil War. Resurveying of the ships sunk by atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll, including the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga/I> and Japanese battleship Nagato. This fascinating book, written with a mixture of wonder, intensity, pathos, and humor, is not only a unique adventure book, but a work that records, in one volume for the first time, the historic and social significance of the underwater research programs conducted by this remarkable unit of the US National Park Service. Maps, 20 color photographs, index.