Bernie Chowdhury

Like Chris and Chrissy Rouse, the protagonists in this gripping true story, I took to diving immediately and started to push my skill level up to instructor level, but stopped short of technical diving. I always felt that there was more to see and do at 60 feet in a kelp forest than in a sandy cave at 200 feet, and the extra equipment and training wasn't worth the risk. Chris and Chrissy pushed their diving to the limit, helping to pioneer the sport of technical diving, but paid the ultimate price. In some ways, this is a companion book to Shadow Divers. In that book, the diving death of Chris and Chrissy Rouse, while trying to identify an unknown German U boat sunk off the New Jersey coast, takes up one chapter. In The Last Dive, Bernie Chowdhury, a close friend of the Rouses, eulogizes them by tracing their diving career from their first dive class, through their cave diving exploits, to their pioneering work on deep wrecks, and finally to their complacency that ultimately leads to their death. Along the way, Chowdhury traces the history of the sport of technical diving, such as the advances in mixed gas diving, the use of cave diving techniques in wreck penetration, and the deaths or near deaths that drive those innovations along the way. A heartbreaking story with gripping underwater accounts of dive accidents and near accidents and the psychology of the people who get seriously injured, but are driven to tempt fate and go back for more.… (altro)

This book was recommended to me by someone who knew I really enjoyed the book "Shadow Divers". This book was almost as good. I enjoyed the father-son story at the heart of the book, and even the author's own story, but, for me, there was a little too much of the technical jargon. I continually glossed over all of the terms and descriptions of equipment. In the first couple of chapters the author gives so much technical information--which is needed to fully grasp what is going on (at least for us non-divers!), but after awhile I found myself wondering, "I wonder when we'll get back to Chris and Chrissy". So, that is my only complaint in this captivating underwater adventure, which left me sobbing.… (altro)

In ‘The Last Dive: A Father and Son’s Fatal Descent into the Ocean’s Depth’ Bernie Chowdury recounted the tragic story of the death of Chris and Chrissy Rouse in a deep wreck diving off New Jersey. Adventurous and ambitious, Chris Rouse and his son Chrissy embraced the more dangerous branch of sport diving – technical diving – with gusto. Chris and Chrissy started diving in quarry and shallow waters, but the pair wasn’t satisfied with that. They continued with cave diving, deep cave diving, then deep wreck diving. In four years they dived more than 600 dives, many of them to dangerous destinations as caves and deep wrecks. During a dive in foul weather to the mysterious U-boat found off New Jersey the two encountered problem in the wreck and later could not find their decompression gas tanks. They shot up to the surface without decompression and as a consequence experienced the excruciatingly painful decompression sickness, the bends. Chris died right away and Chrissy followed him a few hours later in the recompression chamber.

Actually this isn’t the only book written about the sad story. ‘Shadow Divers’ by Robert Kurson also covers the same tragic event. Some people say that Kurson’s book is better. I say they are different. Shadow Divers follows the story of the unraveling of the mystery of the U-boat wreck termed U-who, which is where the Rouses died. It devotes one chapter to the tragic story of the Rouses. Chowdury’s book tells the story of the Rouses (and their other technical diver friends including Chowdury himself) and devotes one chapter to the mysterious U-boat. Kurson didn’t know the Rouses, Chowdury is one of their close friends. Because of the difference the books feel different. Chowdury’s feels very personal, like a diary, a reminiscence of friends. This is one of the reasons that make The Last Dive more difficult to read than Shadow Divers. Chowdury’s book is a continuous rambling and musing of his friends and him and their activities. It lacks clear structure, and jumps from the past to the future then to the past again. It is choked full of names it is difficult to follow who’s who. It seems that Chowdury didn’t want to leave anyone out but it confuses me. He provided brief explanations to remind us who these people are, but it is done over and over again it makes it a bit boring.

Apart from that I think the book is an excellent read for divers, especially those who are interested in technical diving. It provides us with a series of account of real dive incidents and accidents, which is often fatal. Many people in the book ended up dead, and those who live know many who did not survive. Chowdury himself experienced the bends, but he survived while many that he knew didn’t. These chronicles serve as lessons and warnings for divers that diving has its inherent dangers and if we don’t poses the necessary physical and mental requirements we can end up dead as well. In the realm of recreation diving little mistakes due to complacency might not be fatal but in the world of the technical diving mistakes can mean loss of lives. In this way the book is useful and interesting.
… (altro)