By Clive Cussler, and Craig Dirgo
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2002
ISBN # 0399149252
Price on dust jacket $27.95 (Powells.com $8.95)
Book Site
Purchase this book here.
I reviewed the first Sea Hunters book here. For those who don’t care to read the other review, the Sea Hunters books are about the efforts of Clive Cussler and friends to find historical sea wrecks as well as other interesting lost bits of history.
This second book was very similar, but had a bit of a broader range of topics. Clive didn’t even go on all of the trips, the trip to find PT-109 was run by Criag Dirgo, and that chapter was written by him. This isn’t a bad thing, simply interesting.
I can’t say for sure, but this time around it felt like the historical novelizations that precede the text about each search were longer and more in depth. Sometimes I liked this, and sometimes I didn’t. I appreciate Civil War history, but I’m not truly a buff, so I got a little glassy eyed after hearing about the 5th sea battle or so. On the other hand, I really enjoyed reading about the White Bird, and PT-109. Ya win some, ya lose some. I don’t fault the book for this.
Some interesting things they hunted for in this book:
- The Mary Celeste, which was found abandoned in the Atlantic (found)
- The White Bird, the plane flown by 2 Frenchmen attempting to beat Lindburgh to the punch (not found)
- The Carpathia, which picked up the largest number of survivors of the Titanic (found)
- PT-109, John F. Kennedy’s boat in WW2 (not found)
- The airship Akron (found)
There were a great number of Civil War things searched for as well since Clive is a Civil War buff, some found, some not.
I think on the whole I didn’t like this one as much as the first, but they were so similar that I can only assume it was a mood thing. It’s still a good book, and I’d still recommend it.
