EASTERN WRECKMASTER
Ron Young tells me that he is not able to dive any more. His back and other joints, and an asthma attack, have told him that it is time to quit. So the waters of the east coast of Britain, which he has largely made his own as far as wreck books are concerned, will feel his fins no more. But his loss is the wreck diver's gain. It gives him more time for book research.
     In Diver August 2001, I found myself reviewing two volumes of his first books, entitled The Comprehensive Guide to Shipwrecks of the North-east Coast, and I said that I admired his audacity. "Comprehensive" indeed!
     But, you know, comprehensive was pretty nearly right. Certainly his two new volumes of The Comprehensive Guide to Shipwrecks of the East Coast, which move us farther south from Robin Hood's Bay to Skegness, are even more comprehensive. Volume One covers wrecks from 1766 to 1917 and Volume Two (which follows shortly) takes us right up to 2001.
     Each book reports on more than 240 wrecks - some 500 in all. Young is obviously delighted by the amount of information he has been given by divers and researchers. He describes this contribution as "mind-boggling" and there are so many contributors that he uses several pages of his books to thank them.
     Because he writes about being comprehensive, and as so many East Coast wrecks were the result of torpedoings, it is no surprise to find that his introduction is all about the U-boat war of 1914-18, and that he adds an enormous, enlightening, section at the end about the missions of various U-boats in East Coast waters.
     I accused him of being a U-boat fanatic, but he doesn't disagree, saying that he always wondered what happened to the U-boats which sank the ships listed in his books.
     These books are full of photographs, full of facts, and full of the sort of things divers want to know. Wreck-divers' books, without a doubt.
Kendall McDonald

That tingling feeling
Halfway through the third chapter of Bob Cole's The Decompression Matrix, my left foot is tingling.
     My symptoms remain stable through Chapter 4, which is about women and diving. By Chapter 6 I have an aching left shoulder. Getting up for a pee, my right leg has gone to sleep. I notice that the urine looks darker than usual.
     Reading about decompression brings out the hypochondriac in me. The better the book, the worse my symptoms. The Decompression Matrix covers decompression theory, diving practices and decompression illness.
     It is based on the author's tried and tested lecture material, with the slides carried across and used as graphics in the book, though in some cases I would have liked them to be reproduced a little larger. Towards the end of it, I am enviously eyeing the O2 cylinder from my rebreather lying in the corner of the room. By that measure, it must have been a good read.
     Bob Cole's explanation of decompression models is both clear and frustrating. He provides one of the best explanations of the basic principles I have yet read but, as with all books on the subject, there isn't enough theory to allow you to sit down and program the model on a spreadsheet. You have to read scientific papers for the hardcore mathematics and I have yet to find a book that nicely bridges the gap.
     Those hungry for the latest on decompression theory will be left salivating. The Reduced Gradient Bubble Model (RGBM) is briefly introduced, as is the concept of deep stops, but there is no discussion of the controversial practice of reducing shallow stops. Gradient factors are only hinted at.
     Nevertheless, this is a book that should be in every diver's collection. It is concise, readable and contains more than 95% of what divers will ever need to know.
     I have to stop writing now, and scratch that rash on my shoulder.
John Liddiard

SELECT WRECKS
A very pretty example of the expensive books that we used to describe as "coffee-table" - that was my first impression of the heavily illustrated, glossy-paged Shipwrecks of the Channel Islands, by John Ovenden and David Shayer.
     On more detailed examination, it became clear that these 202 A4-size pages were not aimed at those divers who expect their books to detail hundreds of wrecks for their diving holidays. That guide book to the Channel Islands remains to be written.
     Of course, this book will be of great interest to wreck-divers. There are only 23 wrecks in the book, two of which, the Guernsey Roman ship raised from the harbour of St Peter Port and the Alderney Elizabethan ship, are of great archaeological importance.
     Two other ships covered still have divers looking for them. These are important too. The Vierge de Bon Port was laden with gold and jewels when sunk in 1666 within four miles of Guernsey's west coast, and the second was the Royal Navy's flagship Victory (the one before Nelson's) and is a 100-gun first-rate, sunk on the Casquets in 1744.
     Heading the search for this Victory is the famed Isle of Wight diver and archaeologist Martin Woodward, whose priority wreck list it tops.
     Most of the other wrecks include interesting diving detail, but the real pleasure comes from the years of research which have gone into this book.
     The extensive reports on wartime casualties such as USS PT509, sunk in 1944, and HMS Charybdis and HMS Limbourne, both lost in 1943 off the Brittany coast some 50 miles from the Channel Islands, are classic examples of research brought to life by good writing. Superb underwater pictures are another bonus. This is the first of a planned series.
Kendall McDonald

MEDICAL WIZARDS OF OZ
Written by three Australian diving doctors and a diving scientist, Diving and Subaquatic Medicine is the best book on the subject I have come across. It is aimed at doctors and paramedics who tend to divers' ailments, and is ideal for the instruction of divers and diving physicians.
     Now in its fourth edition, the book has been extensively revised by the original three authors and newcomer Dr Robyn Walker to cover the latest developments in equipment and techniques. In addition, no fewer than 19 internationally acclaimed medics have generously contributed their specialist expertise.
     It's good to see a strong contingent from the UK among them, including Drs Phil Bryson, Ian Calder, Chris Edge and David Elliott.
     The format, layout and content of the book are all excellent. The contents lists the entire spectrum of medical topics and the balance of coverage for each subject is just right. The generous use of colour and black and white photographs, diagrams and so on makes a useful contribution to understanding and appreciating the clinically based text. Many illustrations appear for the first time.
     As would be expected of an Aussie publication, the book passes the "no-waffle" test with flying colours. Aussie humour also sneaks through at every opportunity. On spearfishing injuries, for example, an explicit photograph of a skin-diver with a spear impaled in his chest is described: "The five spear prongs penetrated the pleura and pericardium on the left side. The 2m spear caused excessive leverage and pain when the victim laughed or breathed."
     I readily forgive the failure to acknowledge my graph on survival expectancy in cold water (first published in 1972) but it's a little harder to forgive a description of the history of the diving helmet in which Augustus Siebe is yet again wrongly credited with its invention.
     This is despite a reference to The Infernal Diver, which incontrovertibly describes the invention of the diving dress by the Deane brothers. But these are quibbles. Well done the Aussies!
John Bevan

Channel subs from the outside in
Most books about wrecks contain at least some useful information for the diver. But only a few offer so much detail that they become standard reference works, classics in their author's own lifetime.
     You don't need to spend long with Innes McCartney's Lost Patrols, Submarine Wrecks of the English Channel to know that you have a classic in your hands.
     Into 183 A4-size pages, McCartney has poured his enthusiasm, his research and the results of eight years' diving the German U-boats of both world wars sunk in the Channel.
     His book is divided into six geographical sections covering 121 submarines. Each tells in detail the history of U-boats sunk in the section, their correct positions and modern diving information, and adds details of others yet to be located, making the total lost in the Channel up to 158.
     The writer has dived and identified 32 of the submarines. Nine wrecks are the result of peacetime accidents and are British and French casualties.
     Every page makes it clear that this is a diver not only writing for divers, but for naval enthusiasts and historians of submarines. Some of the pre-Innes U-boat reference books of past years will now have to be rewritten, as McCartney's diving discoveries make it clear that some of the losses could not have happened where and when the experts said they did.
     There are 54 underwater colour photographs of outside items on the U-boats named in the text. Black and white historical photographs of the subs appear on practically every page. Each section has a chart showing loss positions.
     Certain parts of the book are aimed directly at wreck-divers. McCartney includes a particularly good 12-point guide to U-boat identification, and each point can be observed from outside without breaking the war-grave rules.
     Lost Patrols has the great merit of being a first-class read. Every wreck-diver will want this on his bookshelf and every diveboat skipper will need one in his cabin.
Kendall McDonald

A LACK OF INSPIRATION
Frogmen employed rebreathers back in the 1940s. These crude devices were limited in performance and many of their users did not return to tell the tale. Fifty years on, the rebreather was re-invented for the leisure-diving public.
     Diver sent me to learn about an early version of this new generation of rebreathers 12 years ago. I was daunted but went on to become a fan.
     I was trained by Peter Readey who, with Stuart Clough, was the original evangelist of simple rebreathers for leisure diving. This was in contrast to the triple-redundant life-support systems intended for man's first walk on Mars, and being tested in Florida cave systems by Bill Stone. Peter has long since relocated to California, where he now makes his Prism rebreathers for the US Navy.
     There followed a period in which every manufacturer seemed to be showing a box with a length of vacuum-cleaner hose as its prototype rebreather. We had to wait for Draeger to produce a version you could actually buy, even if its British-made Atlantis didn't take kindly to sea water. Its much-improved Dolphin is a semi-closed circuit unit.
     We still had to wait until the British company AP Valves (now APD) took the brave step of manufacturing a fully closed-circuit design, the Inspiration. This is CE-marked and properly available.
     Rebreathers are now in the next generation of development. All manner of makes and models are surfacing for sale, mainly in America. Halcyon, CCR2000, Frog, Kiss, Azimuth and Megalodon are just some of the names mentioned in Mastering Rebreathers by Jeff Bozanic. For most people, however, the subject remains as bewildering as I originally thought it to be.
     The book reads like a NAUI manual for a structured diving course. It takes you step by step through history, physics, physiology, individual design and diving techniques and details on using individual models.
     I was pleased to see Peter Readey's name mentioned. "Peter took me under his wing as a novice rebreather diver, and enriched my knowledge significantly," says Bozanic. Readey is credited here as a co-contributor, and there are also credits for reviewing editors that include well-known names such as Dr Bill Hamilton, Billy Deans and George Irvine. It has a foreword by Richard Pyle.
     I have only one criticism of the book, but it's a big one. The APD Inspiration is conspicuous by its almost total absence, apart from some details in photographs. Why this is I don't know, but as it is the only closed-circuit rebreather in full mass production, and the only one that can be legally sold in Europe, it makes the volume look strangely irrelevant to readers this side of the Atlantic.
     The author seems to have committed a major sin of omission. However, I am sure that many people here who already own rebreathers or are interested in them will find this an absorbing book. I did.
John Bantin

Revenge of the Atlanteans
Free-divers enjoy communing with nature and can get quite spiritual about their pursuit. Legendary record-breaker Jacques Mayol became a passionate advocate of alternative theories of man's ancestry.
     Along with his philosopher-brother Pierre, Jacques believed that modern civilisation was directly linked to an ancient kingdom of Atlantis, centred on the Bahamas plateau. Ancient wonders such as Egypt's pyramids, colossal walls in the Andes and man-made underwater structures in Okinawa were called in as evidence that "a primordial common Sacred Science was the true origin of all human knowledge".
     Some might call this as crackpot as the theory that we were spawned by extra-terrestrials, but how otherwise, Mayol argues, could homo sapiens have developed to its present dizzy level of sophistication in such a relatively short timespan?
     That supposed level of sophistication is not entirely represented by the brothers' novel The Ten Kings Of The Sea. Written to convey their convictions about our Atlantean heritage to a wider public, it has now, following the suicide of Jacques Mayol, been translated into English.
     The book is about three men, a young treasure-hunting diver, a mercenary film producer and an ex-Nazi skipper (known conveniently as Jerry), all of whom fail to engage our sympathy or interest in their quest for sunken treasure off the Bahamas.
     The trio are always on a clear collision course with Atlantis, but unfortunately the book plods where it should excite and, despite its promising subject matter - ancient mysteries, haunted islands, lost treasure and male rivalry - consistently fails to build up any sort of tension.
     To be fair, the authors strive not to lay the mysticism on with a trowel, to the extent that very little happens at all until the final section. The characters don't even put to sea until halfway through the book, and the underwater possibilities are repeatedly squandered.
     Promising situations loom - disappearing boats, weird storms - only to subside a few paragraphs later. It's not easy to imagine Hollywood getting excited.
     The other problem is that the characters rarely stop talking to each other, and do so in an oddly stilted way. "I immediately searched the area and it didn't take long for me to notice a protuberance that distinguished itself neatly from the abundant surrounding corals..." gives a flavour. But we'll be charitable to the brothers and blame that on the translator.
Steve Weinman