If you haven’t tried it, I’d recommend it. Eery and amazing. I dove on a wreck on Sunday, a sunken submarine.
Dropping 90 feet below the surface with no structure to act as a guide seems endless, like a exercise in futility. “What the fuck’s this? I could be in the middle of nowhere finding nothing” was my first thought. Then the ocean floor came into view and I finally got a bearing. From there, in all directions light blue nothingness. No trace, no trail, nothing but barren ocean. He said to go West so I went West and then, from nowhere, she appeared. 20 feet off the bottom, blackness descended. Enormous. Her Conning tower came into view and her gaze was upon me. Vast, dark and only the beginning. From being completely hidden to being completely inescapeable in a moment is alarming. I couldn’t shake her if I wanted to. I suspect that feeling is just the way a ship would have felt in her presence. I couldn’t see her beginning and I couldn’t see her end but there she was. She was death. She was over and she was decaying but she was there. Sunk between 1924 and 1927, a WWI vet, the J-4.
Even in her absence, out of the water, I can still feel her. I don’t think I’ll forget that first image; blackness coming into view. I can see it again and again in my mind’s eye and each time I do it’s no less dramatic. Fucking haunting. Fucking beautiful. It was fucking amazing.