[.ca] Dark Descent: Diving and the Deadly Allure of the ... (ISBN 1932378871)

A FASCINATING READ!:
Dark Descent: Diving and the Deadly Allure of the Empress of Ireland is a book for everyone! I am definitely not a member of the diving community, though if I were I would love the book as a guide to equipment and techniques. I am, in fact, alternately revolted and fascinated by extreme sports and the people who practice them, a combination of feelings that compels me to seek understanding in books like Dark Descent. This page-turner of a book goes a long way towards providing enlightenment and does it in a most interesting way. Deep wreck divers are tourists! McMurray's abbreviated yet complete rendering of the Canadian ocean liner Empress of Ireland's history and the tragedy of her 1914 sinking on a routine voyage from Quebec City to Liverpool reads like a Michelin guide to an exciting historical site. Immediately one feels that reading about it isn't enough. One is compelled to visit. The bulk of the book is a history of tourism, a very difficult kind of tourism, to one of these sites. In tightly written, chronological chapters, McMurray describes all the expeditions to the Empress, as they illuminate the technical progress of diving and, more importantly to this reader, the motivations of the divers and the rivalries and sportsmanlike competition between them. Though the retrieval of artifacts provides a financial incentive for early explorers of the wreck, diving continues after the government of Canada declares the wreck off limits to salvage. Why? All tourism involves a certain amount of discomfort and risk, and it is really these that make the tourist feel as if he or she has a special connection to the past, somehow more real than the experience of reading a book or watching a program on the History Channel. In such moments of actively reaching for connection, we feel most alive. That is why we travel, why we climb mountains. The chapters of this book describe this feeling of being fully alive, fully connected to the past, as it is experienced in a unique way by each of a series of explorers over the last ninety years. As the author says so well, in describing one of his own dives on the Empress, "I told myself I was really here. It was touching a powerful story, bearing witness to a profound and heart-wrenching tragedy." For a reader not yet ready to make that ultimate trip to the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, this book provides the next best thing to actually touching this story. Dark Descent is a great read!

Perfect marriage between writing and diving:
By being both a writer and a diver Dark Descent doesn't suffer from the weaknesses other books such as the Last Dive (by a diver)or Shadow Divers (by a writer). This amazing book is well written, powerful and poignant. His story encompasses everyone, from the passengers, to the survivors, to wreck divers, salvagers and others under the spell of the Empress of Ireland. The initial history lesson complete with maps and anecdotes gives the reader a good background for the story. Mr. McMurray's personal experience makes it easier to understand why people are so entranced with the Empress. My husband hasn't finished the book yet and already wants to dive the Empress. I was happy to read that a practice ship for recreational divers is available for people to train on before embarking onto the Empress and that others experience cold, murkey water that's so prevalent in Rocky Mountain diving! The photos, though black and white, were beautifully inserted into the right places. I've already checked out a copy of Deep Descent about the Andrea Doria! ENJOY!

Could have made room for some better quality photographs.:
Make no mistake, this is as complete a work on the ship "Empress of Ireland" as one might wish to find. The story of the tragedy itself is told in fascinating detail and the individual accounts of personal loss, survival and even the death of a professional salvage diver in the days following the demise of this once great ship reveal a level of research which is both thorough and complete. It all happened in 1914, only two years after the loss of the Titanic but also only a few months before Europe would be plunged into a conflict which would become known as the Great War, or the War to end all Wars. How curious, therefore, that the story of the Titanic lives on - and on, and that that of the Empress of Ireland seems to have become lost alongside the wreck itself. Anyone wanting to know anything at all about the Empress of Ireland need hardly look further than this book - which is, indeed a job well done. My only criticism is reserved for the standard of reproduced photographs - some of which are no bigger than postage stamps and many of which are not clear. First class reference material for historians, anyone with an interest and, especially, those contemplating diving the wreck itself. Read the book first, you might just change your mind. NM