Sea Hunters 2 [Paperback]

Clive Cussler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2003

"The Sea Hunters II" is a sequel to the author's "The Sea Hunters", also written with Craig Dirgo. Cussler is one of the world's foremost maritime diving experts and has formed a charitable institution, NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency which searches for lost ships of historic significance. NUMA is also the name of the government agency in the author's Dirk Pitt adventure books. In this book, Cussler relates NUMA's recent activities and takes his fiction into the sphere of fact and in a series of daring and audacious dives seeks to reclaim wrecks lost beneath the surface of sea, lakes and swamps. Each of the sections of this book contains both an exciting account of the loss of the wreck concerned and Cussler's attempt to bring it back to the surface. Here Cussler and Dirgo recount the discovery of a seventeenth-century man-of-war, Civil War Ironclads, the wreck of the Marie Celeste, the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic and JFK's PT 109. This book is sure to entrance Cussler's legions of devoted fans as well as the increasing number of people fascinated with extreme sports.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Well known for his series of action adventure novels starring Dirk Pitt, Cussler is also the founder of the nonprofit National Underwater and Marine Agency, a group that searches for shipwrecks of historical significance. The group does not salvage any artifacts; they simply note the wreckage location and turn their information over to appropriate agencies for further study and planning. In this fast-paced narrative that doesn't tinker with the earlier Sea Hunters' successful formula, Cussler and his teams search for 300 years' worth of wrecks as varied as La Salle's 17th-century flagship, a dirigible lost in a storm off the New Jersey coast in 1933 and the famous PT-109. Cussler traveled along the coast of Texas, up the Mississippi River and to the jungles of the South Pacific in search of historically important wrecks of all sorts. Cussler first provides the historical background for each tragedy (sometimes inventing dialogue when there are no survivors to interview), then dives into his own adventures. One of Cussler's unsuccessful searches took his team to the Maine wilderness, where they tried to locate the wreckage of a French airplane that crashed in 1927 on its way to Washington, having crossed the Atlantic nonstop, before Charles Lindbergh. On the other hand, his crew found the RMS Carpathia (the ship that rescued the survivors of the Titanic), which had been sunk by a German U-boat off the Irish coast in 1918. Cussler's artful writing style and varied experiences while searching for historical treasures make this a first-rate adventure book sure to please any student of history and the odd Pitt fan who takes the plunge.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is nonfiction, but it's still pretty thrilling: Cussler recounts the efforts of his organization, NUMAR the National Underwater and Marine Agency to dredge up lost ships with historical value.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Random House (July 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099445557
• ISBN-13: 978-0099445555
• Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 1.4 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,410,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Masterful Blend of History, Adventure and Humor, December 7, 2002

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sea Hunters II (Hardcover)

Several years ago I picked up a copy of THE SEA HUNTERS by Clive Cussler. Although I had enjoyed nearly a dozen of his Dirk Pitt novels, a book about the true adventures of the real NUMA team sounded interesting. Interesting didn't begin to describe it. By the time I'd finished reading, the book was a bestseller and I was a lifelong fan. I began tapping into his NUMA website (www.numa.net) on a regular basis to see what new projects were afoot and what discoveries had been made. Last spring, I was lucky enough to interview Cussler on the release of his latest Dirk Pitt novel VALHALLA RISING and was rewarded with even more information about his research into maritime history. It's this history that forms the basis for both his fictional stories and real life expeditions and his dedication to contributing to that body of historical knowledge is admirable. In THE SEA HUNTERS II, Cussler's avid interest and unselfish pursuit is simply defined: if it's lost, he wants to find it.

THE SEA HUNTERS II, like its predecessor, contains not only accounts of the various expeditions undertaken by Cussler's National Underwater Marine Agency but also gives readers a historical recreation of the events that took place at each fateful site. Utilizing the archives of governmental agencies both here and abroad, as well as available eyewitness accounts and personal records, Cussler engages the reader with reenactments that set the stage for his narration of each NUMA discovery. The first five sections of the book concentrate on NUMA's exploration of Civil War wreckage, focusing on the copious naval battles that took place over control of the Mississippi River and the eventual siege of Charleston. Cussler's professed love of southern history and the ships that played a part in it is evident as the tales of heroism and tragedy unfold upon the waters of the mighty Mississippi. Other chapters of THE SEA HUNTERS II recount the international exploits of Cussler and his fellow researchers in the far corners of the world from the warm Caribbean waters surrounding Haiti to the treacherous shores of South Africa and the tumultuous seas of the northern Atlantic.

One of the most fascinating stories is the mystery surrounding the Mary Celeste, a "ghost" ship whose crew disappeared without a trace and spawned a legend that has tantalized maritime enthusiasts for decades. While much of the tale is speculation, NUMA was finally successful in pinpointing the resting place of this fabled ship. Another mystery that still remains unresolved is the disappearance of the plane and the pilots who attempted the first transatlantic crossing from Paris to New York. NUMA's research uncovered convincing evidence that The White Bird actually achieved the first nonstop crossing --- prior to Lindbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis --- they just didn't make it all the way down the coast to New York. Their crash site remains undiscovered in the boggy wilds of Maine, but the story of NUMA's attempts to locate it while sorting through the fuzzy first-hand recollections and baffling psychic revelations make for great reading.

Perhaps the most famous and heavily exploited maritime tragedy was the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic in 1912. The Carpathia, the ship that attempted to rescue Titanic survivors, is featured prominently in all accounts of that fateful night but, beyond that, she sailed out of the picture never to be heard from again. Cussler, of course, was not content to leave Carpathia as a footnote in Titanic's history, thus the further adventures of Carpathia and her final demise by a German U-boat become a chapter of NUMA's history as well.

With the release of THE SEA HUNTERS II just before the holidays, this reviewer hopes many of you will find a copy in your stocking Christmas morning. It's 400 plus pages are a masterful blend of history, adventure and humor --- enlightening and entertaining --- as Cussler intended. His lifelong mission has been to leave the world more enriched than he found it and perhaps to inspire us all to follow a similar path in our own way. "Each day is future history. So don't step lightly. The trick is to leave tracks that can be followed."

--- Reviewed by Ann Bruns

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Sea Shall Claim Its Own., March 28, 2005

By 

Betty Burks "Betty Burks" (Knoxville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sea Hunters II (Hardcover)

This second volume covers recovery efforts of twenty years, 1981-2001. They've searched for the location of the futuristic blimp, Akron, lost in 1933 and White Bird airplane which crashed in 1927, in rural Maine. The lost locomotive east of Denver in 1876 was the first insurance scam. Pirate ships can be traced back to Jean Laffite in 1821 who spent the last years of his life in America under an assumed name.

He gives a fascinating hyposis of what might have happened to cause the captain and crew of Mary Celest to abandon ship and how each died. Since there were no survivors, this is a good case of "modern history writing" using some imagination and supposition, slightly dramatized. Here we have details of the deaths and burials at sea, even the captain asking the German brothers, last two survivors, to kill him. They, too, succumed to the elements. It's strange that their lifeboat was never found. Twelve years later, the Mary Celeste hit the coral reefs near Haiti and sank. Clive Cussler was in on the filming of a failed recovery 116 years later, as the coral growth had covered the shipwreck with no way to cut through it, making it unrecoverable. It was the grave for a Ghost Ship of notoriety.

Success came with the recovery of the Confederate sub Huntley after being submerged for 136 years. Other Civil War casualties they searched for included the Confederate raiders, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama and ironclads Arkansas and Louisiana (among others) and the Union frigate Cumberland and ironclad Carondelet. Seems he always came South in August. They searched for the Revolutionary War sub Turtle, the twin sisters cannons from San Jacinto war, swamp angel gun used during the Civil War, and a steamer called Stonewall Jackson. New Orleans was the first steamboat to go down the Mississippi River.

In addition to writing his novels, C. C. will narrate a series of SEA HUNTERS documentaries on famous shipwrecks for Eco-Nova of Nova Scotia. Look for them on PBS.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, much like last, but still different., December 31, 2002

By 

DMF - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Sea Hunters II (Hardcover)

This book is full of "Cusslerettes" - those short, facinating narratives into the world of history. Forget the failed searches and insight into his life (though they too are written wonderfully and a pleasure to read) and enjoy the incredible tales of men and machines set in situations that dumbfound. Those short stories were real page turners- and true!