Just finished Shadow Divers and Last Dive for the second time.  What's next for NE Wreck
interests?

Under Pressure

Deep Descent

Where Divers Dare

read The Last Dive again

Cool, Last U-Boat came today, can't wait

If you want something educational, Deco for Divers by Mark Powell

So I ordered Shadow Divers Exposed, is that going to be the tie breaker on Chatterton controversy in Last Dive vs. Shadow Divers?

LOTS of people think that Gentile's book was motivated out of jealousy.  I don't know if he was ever on the Seeker for any 869 dives.  I know that at the end of the day, we'll never know. We're going to get opinions from various people, and statements from various people that were there. I personally think that if Robert Kurson had lied or drastically misrepresented the events of the discovery of the 869, that Chatterton and Kohler would have told him to go fuck himself instead of working with him again on a second book a few years later.

I also can't see Chowdhury's version of the Rouse's deaths being accurate because I can't see an experienced combat medic knowing that Chris was dead, but begging the Coast guard Helo to take him with Chrissy anyway. Shadow divers says he begged the rescue swimmer to leave him behind and just go with Chrissy. And while the claim of Chatterton doing 90 minutes of CPR is likely BS, the phrase "you're a little slow on those compressions" is the exact phrase that an advanced rescuer would tell a first responder, I've done so myself, word for word, several times.

As a medic, Last Dive rang false there.  Add to that, Coast Guard is gonna do what Coast Guard is gonna do, so it's more likely that Coast Guard ended up doing what they felt was right and taking the body, not being talked into doing something they didn't want to do.

EMS, samaritan CPR, views on liability, oxygen administration, etc. has changed quite a bit in the last 25-30 years though.  As late as 2005 I knew of patients coming in by boat where CPR had been in progress for hours.  USCG boat eta to the scene was 60 minutes, then 60 minutes back, no AED, that was always hard to respond to.  Alot of emphasis was placed on "as long as we have the strength to go on, we do it, let the doctor call it."  (Actually that made it into The Guardian, probably courtesy of one of their technical advisors.). BLS standards today probably call for it still, I've just never worked BLS very far from a hospital, so once I started I never stopped - as ALS we're encouraged to do field terminations now.

Yeah, I was taught in the late 90s to go until I couldn't.  Now our protocols call for 30 minutes of full code after our arrival, not counting what FD has done, then we call med control for a time. IIRC, Chatterton is quoted as saying he'd been going for 90 minutes. I know he was younger then, and was in pretty good shape, but that's a LONG time for one person to go.  If it had said "we've been doing cpr for 90 minutes" I'd of course have no issues believing it. I don't see it necessarily as Chatterton lying. Lots of stuff gets lost in translation through all the interviews, editing, etc. I don't expect any book to be 100% accurate.

I think the reason I tend to lean towards the Last dive being the more accurate of the 3 is that Chowdhury and Gentile weren't there, and I'm unaware of anyone that was there contradicting it.

I read Setting the Hook about diving the Doria. That was fun.