Inside the Cold, Dark World of Deep-Water Shipwreck Diving

For three years, Pennsylvania-born scuba diver Chris Donnelly prepared for the underwater expedition of a lifetime: a journey to the SS Andrea Doria. The so-called “Mount Everest of Shipwrecks,” it’s located off the coast of Massachusetts at a depth of 250 feet. Donnelly, a technical diving instructor trainer who operates the Philadelphia-based Blue Crew Divers center, had been exploring shipwrecks since he was 16, racking up thousands of certification hours at dive sites around the world, but the Andrea Doria posed a unique challenge.

“It’s one of the coldest, darkest wrecks in the world,” he says. “There’s a lot of drama and ego surrounding it.”

Despite careful preparations, not everything went according to plan during his first mission to the famed wreck, a 700-foot Italian luxury liner that sank in 1956 after colliding with another vessel, killing 46 passengers. (The wreck has also claimed the lives of 18 scuba divers.) Rough seas kept the divers out of the water for two days, and when the conditions finally improved and Donnelly took a long stride off the boat and into the water, he was wearing so much weighted gear that one of his fins snapped upon contact with the water’s surface.

“I remember thinking, ‘Am I good enough to do this? Have I done enough training?’” he recalls.  

After regaining composure, Donnelly began his descent, feeling for the anchor line as he sank lower and lower. At around 180 feet, he caught his first glimpse of the ghostly wreck.

 “I’ll never forget her emerging out of the darkness,” he says. “It’s a moment that will be burned in my memory forever.”

While many dream of seeing deep-water wrecks like Andrea Doria, most divers will never make it to such depths. It’s one thing to admire a wreck from its exterior at around 60 feet—which any recreational diver can do on holiday in the Caribbean—but another thing entirely to penetrate deep-water wrecks, some of which are located 200 to 300 feet below at temperatures around 45 degrees.

To do that requires hundreds of hours of technical, specialty training, and “build-up” dives, not to mention learning how to use gear like insulating drysuits and rebreathers (an apparatus that absorbs a diver’s carbon dioxide and recycles the unused oxygen). Many divers will also opt to use nitrox- and helium-blended breathing gasses to go deeper and stay longer—certifications in and of themselves.

“It’s like navigating a stranger’s house in the dark,” says Eric Albinsson, the instructor development and training executive at the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI).

Discarded fishing nets or mangled machinery could be blocking passageways. Rust, mud, and silt may rain down from the ceiling of the wreck, making it difficult to discern your surroundings. And studying the deck plans only gets you so far, says Donnelly. He notes that in the case of the Andrea Doria, which rests on its side, much of the ship’s infrastructure has deteriorated because of gravity, oxidization, and worsening environmental conditions, rendering historic blueprints obsolete.

The shifting nature of the wreck is also part of its allure, and not just because of the physical challenge or potential research opportunities it represents (in 2016, the notorious now-shuttered submersible company OceanGate led an expedition to the Andrea Doriain the name of scientific advancement). Every year, storms in the North Atlantic cause new treasures to spill out, whether Richard Ginori china or ceramic friezes by Italian artist Guido Gambone. Not that your average Andrea Doria diver needs the cash: Peter Gimbel, an investment banker and heir to New York’s Gimbel department store chain, was the first to dive the wreck after it sank. Today, it can cost upwards of $25,000 to get the certification, training, gear, and the crew necessary to reach the site.

But if you think you can buy your way onto an Andrea Doria expedition, think again. Next summer, Donnelly will lead an invite-only expedition to the wreck with a squad of divers that he has been training since the start of last year. 

“I don’t care if you have all the money and the resources in the world—if I haven’t trained you personally, or if you haven’t trained with someone I know, it’s not happening,” he says. 

PADI’s senior director of brand, Julie Andersen, notes that shipwrecks have historically attracted a certain subset of divers, a more diverse pool of enthusiasts are signing up for the company’s shipwrecking certification because of wellness trends like cold-water immersion. Moreover, new wrecks are being discovered every year, she adds, like the fleet of 7,000-year-old Neolithic canoes found near Rome or the Indigenous “metropolis” unearthed under Wisconsin’s Lake Mendota.

“Yes, shipwreck training involves a higher level of commitment, but it can also open a world close by,” she says. 

Ready to take the plunge? Here are five shipwreck dive sites that make for once-in-a-lifetime adventures. 

Scapa Flow 

Located in Scotland’s Orkney Islands, about 20 miles north of the mainland, Scapa Flow served as the main naval base for the British Home fleet during the World Wars. Today, it’s home to one of the largest concentrations of World War I wrecks in the world, including the SMS Markgraf, a König-class battleship and protected war memorial that lies almost completely upturned in 147 feet of water. 

“Not only are there wrecks on a massive scale, [but] these war ships have now become artificial reefs brimming with marine life,” notes Rob Slight of Kraken Diving, the only dive school in Orkney.

RBJ & Chris Corey 

This dive site off South Florida comprises not one but two wrecks stacked on top of each other: the U.S. Army dredge Corey N Chris and the 226-foot freighter Ronald B. Johnson, both of which were sunk as part of an artificial reef program. Besides the site’s two-for-the-price-of-one factor, Donnelly says it’s one of his go-to spots to take divers in the lead up to the Andrea Doria for its deep depths of up to 270 feet and warm waters with good visibility. 

SS Thistlegorm 

Jacques Cousteau rediscovered this Red Sea wreck—a freighter carrying military equipment during WWII—in 1955. Today, it’s one of the most popular scuba diving sites in the world, estimated to bring in roughly $5.5 million in revenue per year. It’s considered a recreational dive site (the shallowest part is about 50 feet deep), but there’s a whole world to discover onboard from tanks and armored vehicles to Jeeps, rifles, and even Wellington boots. 

Rainbow Warrior

In 1985, Greenpeace’s flagship vessel, Rainbow Warrior, was on its way to protest French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll, near Tahiti, when it was bombed by agents of the DGSE, France’s main foreign intelligence agency. It now rests off the coast of Matauri Bay, where it exists as a memorial and an artificial reef brimming with colorful jewel anemones, reef fish, and swaying ecklonia kelp. 

The Great Lakes

You could spend a lifetime diving the Great Lakes, home to more than 6,000 shipwrecks—of which about 2,000 have been found—many of them in excellent condition because of the cold freshwater environment. One of the most famous of the wrecks is the luxury steamship Gunilda, which, despite being submerged over a hundred years ago, still has exterior painting, wood paneling, and its deck structure intact, leading Jacques Cousteau to call her “the best-preserved, most prestigious shipwreck in the world.” Other underwater oddities include the Prohibition-era floating casino and speakeasy Keuka and one of the nation’s first steel-hulled vessels, the Sport, which was the first shipwreck to receive historic underwater landmark status in Michigan.