Three Miles Down — James Hamilton-Paterson

Somewhere on the seabed of the Atlanctic ocean lie two casualties of the Second World War: a Japanese submarine, the I-52 and the liner SS Aurelia. Separated by almost a thousand miles of ocean and sunk more than fifteen months apart, these two vessels have one thing in common - they were both carrying several tons of gold. In October 1994, James-Hamilton-Paterson was invited to join Project Orca, a team of people who set out to tray and find the wrecks and the gold. For their expedition, the group chartered the russian research ship, R/V Akademik Keldysh, with its crew of dedicated oceanographers and its world-famous MIR submersibles. Hamilton-Paterson chronicles the tensions which arose between the British 'buccaneers' and their Russian hosts who, in the aftermath of the collapse of communism, have had to fund their scientific research by resentfully taking on commercial work. Yet this book is so much more than the tale of a hunt for 'filthy lucre'. James Hamilton-Paterson gives one of the rare eye-witness accounts by a non-scientist of what it is like to free-fall to the sea bed for three hours in a tiny sphere two metres in diameter, and spend the next fourteen hours drifting about in a lightless world of dunes and outcrops.