Diving into Darkness: A True Story of Death and Survival
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
On New Year's Day, 2005, David Shaw traveled halfway around the world on a journey that took him to a steep crater in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa, a site known as Bushman's Hole. His destination was nearly 900 feet below the surface.
On January 8th he descended into the water. About fifteen feet below the surface was a fissure in the bottom of the basin, barely wide enough to admit him. He slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight, leaving behind the world of light and life.
Then, a second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. This was Don Shirley, Shaw's friend, and one of the few people in the world qualified to follow where Shaw was about to go. In the community of extreme diving, Don Shirley was a master among masters.
Twenty-five minutes later, one of the men was dead. The other was in mortal peril, and would spend the next 10 hours struggling to survive, existing literally from breath to breath.
What happened that day is the stuff of nightmarish drama, but it’s also a compelling human story of friendship, heroism, ambition, and of coming to terms with loss and tragedy.
On January 8th he descended into the water. About fifteen feet below the surface was a fissure in the bottom of the basin, barely wide enough to admit him. He slipped through the opening and disappeared from sight, leaving behind the world of light and life.
Then, a second diver descended through the same crack in the stone. This was Don Shirley, Shaw's friend, and one of the few people in the world qualified to follow where Shaw was about to go. In the community of extreme diving, Don Shirley was a master among masters.
Twenty-five minutes later, one of the men was dead. The other was in mortal peril, and would spend the next 10 hours struggling to survive, existing literally from breath to breath.
What happened that day is the stuff of nightmarish drama, but it’s also a compelling human story of friendship, heroism, ambition, and of coming to terms with loss and tragedy.
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Customer Reviews
Richard Hawkins Said: The hubris of daredevildom ( Aug. 2nd 2010 )
I'm an avid diver, with almost 400 dives under my weight belt, yet I still haven't got my Advanced. I started diving at the age of 48. Dave Shaw was doing extremely dangerous dives very soon after he started diving: going to extreme depths around his fiftieth dive, etc. In spite of this, he may have survived on that body-recovery dive in a sinkhole in Sth Africa if literally everything hadn't gone wrong. This is a suspenseful story, well-written and definitely of great interest to anyone into diving and the potential for disaster while diving (it's a morbid curiosity of mine to imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong whilst diving).
BR Said: Must read for divers! ( Jul. 21st 2010 )
Diving Into Darkness is a page turner! All divers should read as a reminder of the thrill and danger of the sport.
Charles T. Harden Said: Excellent story ( Jun. 9th 2010 )
This book does an excellent job of telling the story, presenting the perfect level of technical information for non or beginning level divers, and conveying the personal passion people develop for any sport truly they love. And as with any activity, there are always risks involved. (I am a trimix certified technical diver (good to 220') working on my next level of certification.)
A. Orr Said: A fantastic biography of David Shaw's diving achievements. ( Jan. 23rd 2010 )
This book is a fantastic piece written about David Shaw's diving accomplishments. It is impossible to put down and can be read within a few days. The book can easily be read by anyone with any interest in diving. There is no need for a technical knowledge base prior to reading the book.
I give it a strong 5 out of 5 stars. Well done, Phillip Finch.
medi Said: Is It As Good As Shadow Divers? ( Oct. 2nd 2009 )
It is inevitable that comparisons will always be made between great books within the same genre. Such is the fate of Phillip Finch's "Diving Into Darkness". This engaging book concerning the the rarefied world of deep diving will forever be compared to the ever-popular "Shadow Divers" by Robert Kurson. In both sagas the story unfolds at unimaginable depths where even the slightest mishap/mistake can and does cascade into a fatal event.
Notwithstanding further comparisons, "Diving Into Darkness" is a about a diver (David Shaw) who in the span of only 5 years went from a "rank beginner(diver) to one of the most accomplished and ambitious divers" in the history of sports diving. The depths to which Shaw achieved (700 ft to 900 ft) were often record dives on a non rebreather apparatus; "more men have walked on the moon."
In June 2004, during a cave dive at Bushman's Hole Shaw descended to an astounding depth of almost 900 feet. What he inadvertently discovered was the body of a young cave diver lost to a diving mishap some 10 years earlier. Though the author makes little note of the fact that Shaw is deeply religious and that Shaw had a previous dream envisioning that he would discover this body, Shaw felt that God has guided him to the body so that he can retrieve it for the still grieving parents of the young diver. All this would be little known to the world except for the fact that the mainstream media picked up the story; a story in which the media (newspapers, magazines, radio, television and a video team) intended to document this Herculean effort to retrieve the body at the bottom of a 900 ft deep cave. This is diving at the extreme!
Unfortunately all does not go as planned and as a result, the media and the reader witnesses a tragedy in the making. Phillip Finch documents this in a manner where the reader is aware of the inescapable tragedy but can't stop reading the next page, much like witnessing a train you know is going to crash but you can't stop looking at it.
As is common with all great extreme adventure stories where human boundaries are tested, this story involves the elements of courage vs. calculated recklessness, altruistic goals vs potentially deadly practicalities and perhaps foreseeable tragedy vs. almost averted tragedy (sadly, "what could have been").
For those of us who are scuba divers, and even those of you who are not, this is certainly a book worthy of read. Is it better than Shadow Divers? You tell me.
Lastly, I must add that I read this story as it was originally titled : Phillip Finch's "Raising The Dead" An Australian Story of Death and Survival. While the title is slightly different the novel is exactly the same ("word for word") but is a different edition of the same book.