Where Divers Dare by Randall Peffer

Author:Randall Peffer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-03-10T13:15:57+00:00

PART FOUR

Discovery

35

Regrouping

Late July–September 2011

Maybe Steve Gatto should be feeling a little low after coming up empty on this search trip, but he’s not. He always gets a good vibe when he spots the lighthouse on Montauk Point at the extreme eastern tip of Long Island, New York. The lighthouse was the first public works project authorized by the new United States of America, in 1792. Standing on Turtle Hill, the Montauk Light rises 110.5 feet above the earth beneath. It’s an immense red and white candy-striped obelisk, flashing a white light 18 nautical miles to sea to warn mariners that they are approaching shoal water and the fierce currents that surge between the end of Long Island and Block Island to the east.

But it’s not the history of the lighthouse that endears the light to Gatto. For him the lighthouse is usually the first sign of a landfall when the dive boat that he’s aboard is homeward bound after days at sea at the wreck of the Andrea Doria or some other ship sunk east of Montauk. These landfalls for Gatto always carry with them a sense of accomplishment. For days he and his dive buddies have been literally immersed in a world of dead ships and dead humans. And on this morning of July 28, 2011, Montauk Light has risen above the western horizon winking a welcome home message out to Gatto and the other men aboard Tenacious.

Even though the sun has been up for hours as the dive boat bashes toward shelter through a building southwest wind and rolling seas, in the morning haze Gatto pictures bonfires of beachcombers on the shores of the state park that surrounds the lighthouse. He imagines eggs and diced potatoes cooking over open flames and smells the wood smoke while he takes a sip from his coffee mug and braces himself on the bench seat at the dinette table. Tenacious pitches and rolls toward its slip at the Star Island Yacht Club in Montauk Harbor, tucked on the north side of the point.

Maybe he can already smell the scents of fried fish and clams, too, cooking in the restaurants ashore because suddenly he’s feeling hungry for the first time since dinner last night 110 miles at sea when Tenacious was mowing the lawn during the fruitless search for U-550. He’s looking forward to tying up the boat, unloading his gear, and heading down the road to John’s Drive-In for an immense chocolate shake. Maybe he and his buddies didn’t find a lost German U-boat, but it has been a good trip. For the past few hours the men aboard Tenacious have been chattering up a storm, telling each other that they have definitely ruled out a whole lot of ocean bottom where the sub isn’t. This certainty is a good thing to Gatto’s way of thinking because the last thing you want after one of these search trips is to be left with a feeling of doubt. At this moment the crew

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