Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness

by Neil Swidey

The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results  A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.”   In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel—its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth’s deepest ocean trench—to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive.   Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death.   An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the book—which Dennis Lehane calls "extraordinary" and compares with The Perfect Storm—is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population’s rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk—how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred—and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe.   Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel—behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible—lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science, Audiobook, Adventure, Engineering, Survival

434 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Neil Swidey is author of Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness (Crown: February 2014). He is also author of The Assist, a Boston Globe bestseller that was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, and co-author of the New York Times bestselling Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. A staff writer for The Boston Globe Magazine, Swidey has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and has twice won the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. His work has been featured in The Best American Science Writing, The Best American Crime Writing, and The Best American Political Writing. He lives with his family outside Boston.

Reviews

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook version of "Trapped Under the Sea", and without faulting Neil Swidey, the author, I had trouble visualizing the tunnel project under Boston Harbor which is the heart of the book. The tunnel is so huge, and so foreign to any normal experience I or 99.99% of the rest of us will ever see, it was just hard to appreciate. What helped me, and may help others, is reference to the sketch below which I found at http://www.mwra.com/harbor/graphic/di...


The book describes the tragedy which occurred during construction of the Deer Island Waste Treatment plant underwater tunnels in Boston Harbor.

Divers were sent into the tunnel to remove diffuser line plugs, miles from their tunnel entrance, AFTER lighting and ventilation support was removed. With no lights to see where they were going, and inadequate air to breathe, it was a dangerous job. Swidey describes the dangers the divers faced, and how the tunnel designers, constructors, and management, unable to determine how the plugs could be removed safely when the job ended, turned the completion project to an inexperienced and overconfident contracting engineer. As you read the book, you know something bad is going to happen on the job, you just don't immediately know exactly what, when, and to whom it will happen. Swidey does a good job explaining the project and its flaws, and telling the personal stories of the men and families of those impacted by this tragic event.

[Jean-Paul Adriaansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you would write a fictional story about five men who are send into a 9 mile dark tunnel under the sea without ventilation with an never tested breathing system, composed with duck tape and plywood ...
readers would say " we know it's fiction but please don't exaggerate."
However, this is what really happened in Boston in 1999. Five divers went in, three survived.
Municipal authorities facing a very expensive deadline, super greedy big corporations, subcontractors hoping to get more lucrative orders and scared to fall out of the grace of the big boys, they all put their trust in a pompous engineer.
Only the divers had suspicions and doubted the whole operation, they were silenced, and it cost them dearly.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting - and sad, and frustrating - story, but, alas, I didn't find the telling as compelling as many other readers. My sense is that this would have been a truly excellent short book (say, something under 250 pages), and the right editor could have turned it into a classic - something to rival the work of some of the extremely successful and popular "new journalism" rock stars -- think Erik Larson (the best of the lot in my book, no pun intended) or Hampton Sides or Jon Krakauer or Mitchell Zuckoff, and maybe even Michael Lewis (although he's somewhat of a horse of a different color).... But, in the end, there just wasn't enough in this book (to my mind) to justify its length. [As an aside, I couldn't help comparing this book - at least partially about divers - to Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers, which I thought was far superior, and I recommend without hesitation.] Granted, I appear to be in the minority on this, and the book came to me highly recommended, so maybe I'm missing something (and I admit that could be the case).

On a more positive note: I thought the book opened with a bang, immediately seizing my interest; I also found Swidey finished strong, and his concluding observations were on point, thoughtful, and thought provoking. I'm glad I read the book for those two aspects alone.

Ultimately, however, I think the book is exactly what the author implied it was: a repackaging of a years of (most likely) excellent articles about an interesting and infuriating story. If you're intrigued by stories involving massive public works projects, add this one to your shelf - there's plenty of good material in here. If you're someone who likes complexity theory (introduced to many popular fiction readers in Michael Crichton's classic original Jurassic Park (a darn good book, not equaled by the sequels), this is a non-fiction anecdote/case study worth your time. (As an aside, it's easy to forget how good (and creative and path-breaking) much of Crichton's early work was, but I digress....)

In retrospect, I think the lengthy (and, in many ways, inaccurate) title reflects my frustration with the book. Potential spoiler alert here, but only if you're completely unfamiliar with the public record... Yes, five men were trapped under the sea (briefly), but - in many ways - the most important actor in the book is the sixth man, whom the author concludes escaped responsibility for his criminal negligence. And, in many ways, one of the most interesting features of the author's relentless research is that he introduces you to the extraordinarily broad and diverse cast of characters that contributed to (or were impacted by) the disaster and/or participated in the aftermath.

Having said all of that, kudos to Swidey for sticking with the story for so long. He provided a valuable service - not only to the survivors and their families (and the families of those who were not as lucky) - but a a significant public service to future workers whose lives may be spared (and/or better protected) as a result of using this high profile project and disaster as a teaching tool, lesson learned, or easily applied anecdote with regard to the calculus involved in weighing project completion costs and deadlines against worker safety.

[Agnė · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

Neil Swidey's "Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness" is a distressing story of five men who were sent on an impossible mission that changed their lives forever. With the accuracy of a journalist and the captivation of a storyteller, Neil Swidey explores a two-decade long Boston Harbor Cleanup Project, a multimillion-dollar engineering marvel which somehow came down to five divers being sent into the end of a dark, airless,10-mile-long, dead-ended tunnel under the sea to finish off the job. This story is a textbook example of how very smart people can make really dumb decisions which lead to devastating results.

THUMBS UP:

1) Relevant.
This book is a must-read for every Bostonian because it puts a price tag on the clean waters of our Boston Harbor. However, this price is not measured in money but rather in dedication, courage and sacrifice of the "ordinary heroes," the construction workers, who turned an engineer's dreams into reality.

2) Informative.
If you are interested in the ins and outs of the Boston Harbor Cleanup Project, this is a perfect book for you. But even if you never heard about this project before (just like me), by the end of the book you will be an expert on it. It seems like the author didn't leave out any details and he managed to present them with such a clarity that I found myself equally interested in all the aspects of the story, from personal recollections to technicalities of engineering, law and politics.

3) Well researched and exceptionally written.
I am utterly impressed by the author's extensive research, but even more impressive is his ability to put all these facts together to create an appealing story. To be honest, I always thought that nonfiction books are not my cup of tea as I often find myself tangled in all the details. But maybe the key to a great book is a good writing rather than an interesting subject?

4) Touching yet objective.
"Trapped Under the Sea" is a collection of harrowing personal accounts. However, the author somehow still manages to set a relatively objective tone. Thanks to his extensive research and extraordinary reporting skills, Swidey is able to present the story from the multiple points of view leaving enough room for the reader to form his own opinion on the matter.

VERDICT: 4.5 out of 5

Just read it. You won't regret.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5 stars)Advanced Reading Copy.

"Trapped Under the Sea" tells the true story of a group of construction divers hired to do some dangerous work to finish the Deer Island (MA) sewer pipe project, far below Boston Harbor and out to the ocean. Due to some questionable (some would say criminal) corporate decisions, some of the divers died, leading to an exhaustive investigation. The first part of the book introduces us to the main players. The second part describes the tragedy and the events leading up to it. The final third showcases the investigations that followed, as well as the effects of the event on the survivors. The third act is where the book fell apart to me as it was just too repetitive, micro-analytical and long.
The divers are interesting, the story of the event is suspenseful and movie-worthy but the denouement was just frustrating and could have been better with some judicial editing.

[Mishehu · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPOILER: Simply outstanding. TUtS is a first-rate piece of reporting on an unheralded chapter in the history of the Boston Harbor cleanup. It is a superbly engaging human interest story, and a moving testament to the life, work, and sad passing of two young men. A terrific book on all measures.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

It sounds like the plot to a far-fetched disaster movie. Five men are more than nine miles into a tunnel that dead ends. All they have for light is what they brought. They're connected umbilical like to a breathing system because otherwise they'd lose consciousness and die from lack of oxygen. Suddenly, the breathing system fails. And, by the way, the tunnel they're in is some 400 feet under (yes, under) Boston Harbor.

But as Neil Swidey explains in the plainly told but engrossing Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness , that is just what happened in July 1999. He looks at almost every aspect of what led to the men being in that situation, the variety of people involved and the ramifications. In doing so, he looks at almost every aspect of the event, often through the eyes and thoughts of one of the trapped men, D.J. Gillis. And while some of the contributing factors are rather complex, the reporter for The Bowston Globe Magazine renders it all in coherent detail.

The background may be as outside the norm as the event itself. For decades, Boston Harbor had been the end point for human waste from Boston and nearly 50 other cities and towns. Half a billion gallons of sewer water and some 140,000 pounds of lightly treated sludge were being discharged into the Harbor daily. By the 1980s, the sludge had decayed and settled to the ocean floor, creating a disgusting mud known as "black mayonnaise." A lawsuit led to a multi-billion dollar project was planned to try to clean up the harbor, including a massive sewage treatment plant on Deer Island that would be "the destination for every toilet flush in the eastern half of Massachusetts." The project, overseen throughout by a federal judge, also included the world's longest dead-end tunnel. Extending nearly 10 miles under Boston Harbor, it would carry treated sewer water away from Boston Harbor to discharge it deep into Massachusetts Bay.

Akin to another Boston megaproject, the Big Dig, the tunnel alone took twice as long as planned, almost a decade, and cost the general millions of additional dollars. One last step remained for the tunnel to be complete, removing 65-pound plugs that had been placed in each of 55 30-inch wide pipes leading from the side of the tunnel to risers that would actually discharge the water to protect the miners. Not only were the plugs in an area where the tunnel itself was only five feet high, they were to be removed only after taking out the extensive ventilation, electrical and transportation systems used by the miners. That meant the area also would not have enough oxygen to breathe. The solution? Use commercial deep sea divers, although they would not be able to wear the equipment they normally use.

A reader is struck not only by how jerry-rigged the solution was but how relatively harebrained it seemed. An untested breathing system designed for this task by an engineer with a small Spokane, Wash., commercial diving firm would be placed in one of two Humvees. The Humvees were connected back to back because the tunnel was too small for them to turn around, requiring one to be pointed into the tunnel and the other out. Hoses would extend from the breathing system to allow the men to walk to the side tunnels and crawl into them to remove the plugs.

Swidey takes the interesting approach of placing the moment of disaster in the book's prologue. From that point, he traces the stories of the men and companies involved, how the plug problem arose and this particular solution was chosen, and takes the reader inside the disaster and ensuing investigation and aftermath. Thus, Trapped Under the Sea tells not only the personal aspects of the story but the institutional ones, including how not wanting to take ownership of the problem or its solution seems to have led inexorably to disaster. He makes both interesting.

The book shows the payoff of Swidey's hundreds of hours of interviews with those involved and years of study of the project. It allows us to understand both the men and the processes. It also provides some unique insight into the men involved. In fact, weeks after reading the book I am still struck by the incident that, despite all the horror, sticks in the mind of one of the survivors, one that involves a 2½ inch strip of skin.

Given how extraordinary the event was, many readers may wonder why they never seem to have heard of it. It seems to have been swallowed up by the "important" news dominating local and national media -- the effort to recover the body of John F. Kennedy, Jr., after the plane he was piloting crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard. As Swidey observes in his extensive notes, six columns of the front page of the next day's Boston Globe dealt with Kennedy. The story of death and nail-biting survival involving five men trapped 400 feet under Boston Harbor was relegated to an item in the local news section.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)

[Lostshadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells a compelling real life story and explains a bunch of technical things that readers are less likely to be familiar with (diving, sewage treatment, the law), in ways that are easily understandable but don't feel overly simplified. I came away from the book feeling that I understood what went wrong and why.

Its not without it's flaws, there are certain digressions that, while its clear why the author included them, don't really flow into the narrative very well. (This may be dealt with in the published version.) Also, we don't get to learn as much about some of the players as I would have liked, but I suspect that's partly due to who was more likely to be cooperative with people writing about this incident.

Well worth the read if the description sounds even vaguely interesting to you.

[Reese Copeland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. It is compelling and reads almost like a first person account. Mr. Swidey did a fantastic job of putting the story together in a comprehensive manner for those of us that are not fluent in the career of diving. I appreciated his explanations of things I would not have understood otherwise, as well as his writing about a subject and tragedy that is still tender in the hearts of the victims. On many occasions, I was able to empathize with the pain and heart break he was able to put into words of the story. It is something that people should read as I do not even remember the event at the time it happened. One thing rang true and says with me. Those that passed away as a result of the incident were truly, ordinary heroes.

[Kasey Estupiñan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really comprehensive book about the Deer Island Tunnel incident. I was honestly fascinated by all of the ins and outs of the tunnel construction, the careers of construction divers, and all of the failings that led up to the tragic accident that occurred. The epilogue did a really nice job of tying everything up at the end.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not heard about the huge Boston harbor clean up project. Of course this might have something to do with the fact that I do not live in Boston or have never visited. Yet when I saw this book as one that I had a chance to review I jumped on it. I do enjoy reading about true stories. If the stories are told right then my as the reader will grow attached to the people in the stories. Which is what happened in this book. Getting to know DJ, Riggs, Hoss, Billy, and Tim, I felt like I had known these guys for a long time.

While at times I did feel like I wanted to know more about the project and not about the guys and their lives, I did realize that knowing their stories is part of the whole story. Also, this book is thick but it reads fast. I am sad that good people had to lose their lives due to poor choices by big corporations. If you are a fan of nonfiction then you should check this book out.

[Elizabeth☮ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really intense read. Five men are sent into a tunnel ten miles beneath Boston Harbor to fix an engineering issue that couldn't quite be solved before putting lives in peril.

The five men are skilled in deep sea diving, but are sent into a tunnel with little to no assurances of safety. The conditions in which are they are forced to work are harrowing.

This is a story of corporations vs. the little man. Of the men that build the blueprints of the engineers that can not fathom the muscle and risk that goes into completing the project. It is a glance into a risky enterprise. And it takes an honest look into politics and who takes responsibility for the mishaps that occur on the job (take a guess: no one).

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book itself really should have just stayed as a set of magazine articles (which it started as) because it has some padding that doesn't feel like it adds much. But while it's about the harrowing work of people trying to do a construction project in a tunnel miles under the ocean, it's a more interesting picture of how messed up the contracting process can lead to incentives directly counter to worker safety. In general, the issue of contracting for government services and what that means for the effectiveness of all types of government is both a fascinating and extremely dull issue, but to see concerns I have about the ramifications of it for white collar purposes show up here in a distinctly blue collar issue is kind of interesting.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptionally well-researched and well-written. A must-read for anyone interested in organizational behavior, team dynamics, project management, engineering, Boston, or just a really well-told story.

[Shell Hunt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love to pick up books that surprise me and educate me. I don't love it ALL the time, but I really enjoy that little spice in my book list.
Trapped Under the Sea definitely fit the bill in more ways than one.
The book is a non-fiction book about the Deer Island Tunnel "incident", where two men died and three more miraculously survived.
It's an extremely detailed account of the Deer Island Tunnel from conception to completion. The tunnel was built to help mitigate the gross sewage that polluted the Boston Harbor, by pushing out sewage into the ocean more than ten miles beyond the treatment facility.
The tunnel itself is an engineering marvel never done before, but the actions post-production is the real meat of this story. The tunnel has these risers that go from the tunnel up every so many feet. While the tunnel was built, there were these plugs to stop any storm or accident fueled ocean-water from absolutely destroying the workforce. After the tunnel was built, those "plugs" had to be removed and no one (including the production company) really knew how to do this. After a bounce around between different companies and contractors, they recruit two companies to help remove the plugs. One man from each company died due to negligence and finger-pointing.
That was my best try to explain it in layman's terms. I'm not a professional underwater diver/welder nor am I in project management or construction-so this book was educational.
I'm sure that this book will be more appealing to someone more educated in any of those fields. A lot of times in this book, I felt like I didn't know what was going on and I was struggling to remember all the different companies/executives/divers/etc. There are SO MANY people in this book with names (justifiably to show ownership).
The divers in this book suffered so much more than anything/anyone I have ever heard in any profession and it's horrible what executives put the little guy through.
This review is almost just a collection of thoughts, but that's what you get from me with a book like this.
So I don't know whether to recommend it or not. It's interesting, DETAILED, and very sad. I know there is an audience that would really enjoy it to the fullest, but it's probably not me.

[Michael Huang · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit too detailed at times, this book is a nice piece of journalism documenting the accident in the final stage of the Boston harbor sewage tunnel construction. The tunnel is designed to carry treated sewage 9 miles into the sea to be released. With the project, Boston’s harbor turned from a place with raw sewage to a clean place it is today. However, like other projects, there is a cost. In this case, two divers died from failure of the breathing system. There is a complicated series of events that led to a particular (and not very good) plan of sending a bunch of divers into the unventilated tunnel using experimental system put together in a haphazard way. Numerous warnings were unheeded in the first two days of the divers’ operation. One the third day, tragedy occurs.

In terms of who is responsible, the book did a good job to show that it’s a complicated situation. A few people may be blamed more than others, but ultimately such a tragedy is often the result of a series of questionable decisions that any one of which one might get away with without causing death. The cost is not just the death toll. Even the three divers that avoided death and got some settlement from the accident carry traumas in their later life. One of them fell victim to opioid addiction which led to bank robbery and incarceration.

The book is a good reminder to us that a lot of big projects that society benefit from shouldn’t be taken for granted. They often carry human costs in the form of injury and death and losses to the workers’ family.

[Madalene · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many barriers to reading this book, and yet, it's still worth it. Despite being a very technical and exhaustive review of a terrible quality problem involving finishing the work on a 10 mile long undersea tunnel meant to dump (treated) sewage into the ocean, including all the things that went wrong, with a total of three pictures, all other items being explained solely through text; it's actually quite engaging. Recommended to me as a companion piece to "The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error" it is indeed a story of industrial quality gone wrong and serves as a really useful case study for those who work in any quality or construction adjacent field.

There are some big takeaways around how to ensure that people at all levels can speak up when things appear unsafe, but the best quote in here comes from page 71:
"Researchers in organizational behavior point out that as trust levels go down within a group, group members' creativity and willingness to seek new options also decrease. When intense time pressures are added to the mix, opposing sides tend to become even more fixed in their positions, relying more on cognitive shortcuts. They're unable to work collaboratively to solve a problem because they have become locked in an adversarial contest: If you win, I lose. But with both sides so hardened in their positions, all they were doing was ensuring that they'd have to spend more time together in the tunnel."

Two minor quibbles with this book: when it comes time to explain PV=nRT, the lengthy description isn't effective - would be better to literally share this equation for how it affected some of the gas tanks. And, this author falls on the habit of describing the hair of the women in the book when he doesn't do the same for the men - something that is luckily becoming rarer in 21st century books.

It's almost as if we discovered the same thing Google researchers discovered 20 years after this case: psychological safety is the top factor that makes for the most effective teams. The lesson may stick a little better with this dark tale than the bland recent articles, however.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mechanical and technical stuff aside, the audiobook version captivates anyone who wants to learn about the dangers inherent in the men and women who underwater engineer from the divers to the welders whether it's shallow or deep, in the United States or abroad. Holy hello. It's a thriller and dangerous proposition as evidenced by this story in Boston, with event unfolding that both killed and changed the others' lives forever.

It's told with attention to relationships of the men as well as the emotional and physical impacts of their work especially after the disaster. Yet Swidey also shares the economic and political capital of these projects including the consequences after a disaster has occurred. It was a fascinating audiobook and story that I didn't know anything about.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was a heck of a story, and I'm glad I had a chance to read the accounts of the men who worked on this project and learn about the tragedy and its aftermath. Swidey had some very smart things to say about how circumstances align to turn deadly and where to place blame, and about how men like these are remembered as "heroes" who "sacrificed" rather than guys who were paid to do a job, told to trust the people in charge to keep them safe, and ultimately failed by a system bigger than any heroic action they could have taken themselves. As much as I appreciated the author's perspective and clear explanations, the writing didn't quite click with me as much as it seems to have worked for others.

I'd say recommended if the subject matter of megaprojects is something you're into, it's a fascinating investigation into all the moving parts of such things.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Senseless tragedy. The author does a great job of building the story with all the red flag incidents, pass the buck decisions, and ignore your intuition and advice of others. Very interesting read.

[Abby Whittington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insightful and devastating. A meaningful read for anyone interested in Boston's history and the underground workings of its water treatment facilities.

[Courtney Smith Atkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read on real life choices.

[Audrey Approved · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a read to make you feel claustrophobic! Trapped Under the Sea is the story of the final building stage of a wastewater treatment facility at Deer Island on Boston Harbor. The facility planned on plumbing the wastewater underground and into a 10 mile horizontal tunnel built underneath the sea, before releasing the waste thru fifty-five separate riser pipes into the Atlantic Ocean. During the decade long construction project, engineers and project managers had chosen to cap each of these fifty-five riser pipes with large safety plugs. But in order to finally complete the project, these safety plugs had to be removed - requiring commercial divers to enter the 10 mile tunnel under damp, dark, and an oxygen-deprived environment to perform this task.

This is the story of the men that were paid to perform this work - and how out of the five that went into the tunnel, only three came out alive. It's also a story about engineering ethics and risk tolerances, and how the shuffling of corporate blame and responsibility can create situations that cost lives. While the technical disaster aspects reminded me a bit of Higginbotham's Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space and Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, I sometimes felt like the author was stretching his content too thin to constitute a >400 page book and because of this, it lagged a bit towards the end. If this had been a shorter read, it might have been a 5-star for me! Would still highly recommend if the synopsis piques your interest.

[Ashley Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that this book continues after the tragedy. How these things affect people is so important and fascinating.

[Jesus Ramirez · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the case of a troublesome task in need of assistance, what is better than an engineering plan to fix it. The way the characters and scenarios are set into place are fantastic. No continuation of the story will proceed without the assurance of the author's brief explanation and detail on a new subjects. This book will guarantee a future civil engineer, or an engineer in general, a marvelous experience. The compelling story of the five main men will bury the reader in emotion and attachment, and it is sure to not disappoint.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my biggest joys in having a book blog, is in being able to read nonfiction books I would never had heard of otherwise. I've always read nonfiction, but in the past is was on subjects I already knew about, or it was a book someone had suggested, or given to me. Blogging has opened my nonfiction eyes, in ways I never though about when I started Wordsmithonia. I've been exposed to people and events I have never heard of, been fascinated by subjects I would never have thought about on my own, and most of all, it's given me a better sense of the way other people view the world.

With Trapped Under the Sea, I feel as if a piece of our country's history, which I would almost bet most people outside of Massachusetts aren't familiar with, has been exposed for all of us to see. Our national media seems to focus on the latest political scandal, or piece of celebrity gossip. Stories that should be making national headlines don't. I think it would be safe to say that more people know about Britney Spears shaving her head, than know the names of the men who lost their lives in the Deer Island tunnel. And I would also think it's fair to say that even the majority of the people who were exposed to this story in the news, don't remember it know, and probably never knew a ton of the details to begin with.

From what I can gather, this book actually started off as two part story in The Boston Globe Magazine. Running in August of 2009, Swidey delved into the lives of the divers involved, and finally put voice to their story. What started off as that two piece story, has turned into one of the best examples of narrative nonfiction I've had the privilege to read in quite a while.

Most of you already know that I'm a huge fan of the two Mitchell Zuckoff books that I have read. Frozen in Time and Lost in Shangri-La are two of the best examples I can give of what a good narrative flow is in a nonfiction book. Both, Mitchell Zuckoff and Neil Swidey, have a way of telling a story in it's most natural form. Trapped Under the Sea reads like a well crafted novel. This is not a dry spewing forth of names, dates, and events. This is a well written, compelling story of the lives of those affected by the tunnel disaster, and of those that contributed to it's happening. It's a fascinating look at the decisions that led to this event, and it doesn't shy away from the consequences of it either. Where most authors may have ended the story at it's logical conclusion, Swidey takes us into the aftermath, chronicling not only the investigation, but how the personal lives of those involved were changed by the events that day. It doesn't shy away from the messy details, or the negative ways in which the men who survived, spiraled out after the disaster.

I'm sure some are going to read this book as an indictment of the greedy corporate climate, that so many like to point fingers at. And I'm sure that they would be valid in those thoughts, even if that's not what I took away from this book. Instead, Trapped Under the Sea, was a celebration of the human spirit and drive that compels so many of us forward..

It celebrates the men who would even think of going into a 9.5 mile long tunnel under the sea bed. It glorifies the spirit of those would would do so, even into an environment that has no breathable air, or any safe way out if something were to go wrong. It makes us proud to be part of a species that can even dream that big, who even thinks of building a tunnel that far out to sea. It honors all of those who have given up their lives, in the name of human progress and innovation. It's a testament to what has driven this country since it's founding, but it's also a warning of what happens when the goal becomes more important than the lives of those trying to reach it.

[Mirrani · Rating 5 out of 5]

There isn't a word to describe this book. I started this review about ten times and just kept backing up over the first line because I simply couldn't describe it that easily.

Trapped Under the Sea is the tragic story of five divers who went down to work in the Deer Island Tunnel in Boston. It not only covers the lives of the divers in an interesting and captivating way, but it tells the story of the people who worked above them, the men and women who made the choices on the project and who were given the difficult task of assigning blame when everything came to a sudden stop because of the accident in 1999. Swidey has a gift for taking research and turning it into a compelling story rather than just a list of facts and made me feel as if I had met the divers in person. I can not imagine the amount of time and effort that was put into this book in order to properly memorialize those who died and honor those who lived on.

Starting on the day of the accident, then moving backward in time to properly introduce you to the miners and others involved in the project, there is a sort of mystery involved. If the news you were watching at the time focused on the John F. Kennedy, Jr. plane crash, then you probably missed the news of this event, which was hidden behind all of that publicity, meaning you will instantly be curious to know who survived and how everything happened. The build up to the final events was in no way a means of capitalizing on a bad situation, but a true memorial, a way of making you see with your mind something that even the divers said you could not understand if you had not been there. My only issue with this very fluid transition through time was that sometimes a character would meet someone and the story perspective would change without much notice. You would be reading about one person's life, then they meet someone and you're following that person's life. These transitions were the only thing that threw me and were not frequent.

I could not put this book down, yet I found it took me some time to get through, which seems an odd combination until you realize that this is the kind of book that seeps into your soul so that it can help you live the experience. I think it is the perfect way to honor those involved and to bring to light the struggles that those in the industry face every day just so the general public can be comfortable in their lives.

Note: Though this book was a free gift from the author, the content of my review was in no way influenced by the gifting. The book speaks for itself and my review would have been worded just this way even if I'd gone out and bought it.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars originally posted at http://readaholiczone.blogspot.com/

By reading the blurb I had come to the conclusion that the book was going to be about a team of divers and the tragedy that took place while they were in the tunnel causing two of the divers to perish, but this book is about a lot more than just the divers disaster. None the less, this read takes a close look at the unnecessary deaths of blue-collar workers caused by the almighty dollar that large corporations put before the worker who trusts them with their lives. Even though this was a high-risk job, human beings with families who loved them died due to pure incompetence. I think that laws need to be changed so that in obvious cases like this one, where the individuals whose neglectful actions end in someone's death, should do mandated jail time.

The book begins at the source of the original problem; Boston Harbor has raw sewage dumped into it, causing it to be “the dirtiest harbor in America” or as it was called “The Harbor of Shame”. Therefore, came a solution the second largest state of the art sewage plant would be built so the treated remains would go through the 9.8-mile tunnel under the sea floor and be discharged out into Massachusetts Bay. Well, as the book explains in great detail it was not that simple neither was the content of the book. As I explained above, it starts with the contaminated Boston Harbor and with an astounding explanation of every single fact that did not end until the individuals involved in the tragedy moved on with their lives.

This read is packed full of all types of facts and you will learn an abundance of assorted information from diving, how an underwater tunnel is built, all the different tools used in building the tunnel and used underwater, sandhogs, bag lines, breathable O2 mixtures and the consequences if they are not mixed right, the truth is this list could fill multiple pages. The author did a brilliant job of putting together all the facts about every aspect of what happened, but at times I felt bogged down with all the information. Therefore, the prose is not badly written it feels overwritten also containing an overabundance of facts.

Even though I am partial to non-fiction and enjoy learning new things I am torn by this book. It was not bad yet I did feel overwhelmed by it. I learned so much information that I did not know before, but with this book I found myself checking how much was left to read way too many times. This book is for a specific type of reader, one who thrives on this subject.

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so expertly researched, impressively detailed, and captivatingly written that it appealed to my logical, ethical and emotional sides. Though I knew absolutely nothing about waste treatment plants, engineering projects or big corporations going into this, I didn’t have trouble following because everything was clearly explained.

The prologue jumps right to the moment where all hell breaks loose in the underwater tunnel, then the narrative shifts to the Boston Harbor pollution mess, the construction of the waste treatment plant, the major players involved, and the increasingly unnerving setbacks that cropped up while finalizing the tunnel, which leads back to where the prologue left off. The final third of the book recounts the investigation, legal battles, and the struggles of the surviving divers to put the underwater tunnel nightmare behind them.

This compelling read reveals the massive amount of planning, money, effort and time involved in huge “engineering marvels,” and it exposes the risks that may be taken toward the end of projects where time and money pressures, as well as dangerous complacency, can lead to shortcuts and carelessness. It’s heartbreaking and infuriating that completely avoidable deaths occurred during the final stage of the Boston Harbor’s waste treatment plant’s construction because the people in charge became negligent and rash.

This book certainly changed my perception of industrial structures (not only do they cost a lot in terms of money, but also sometimes in terms of lives), and I’ll definitely be more apt to stand up for my safety if I’ve ever asked to do something I have doubts about at work. Highly recommended for anyone interested in history, non-fiction, engineering, or sea related disasters.

My only gripe is that I wish some photos of the waste treatment plant and the relevant people had been included. (Maybe they are in the finished copy?)

Note: I received an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[♞ Pat Gent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me preface by saying, "I don't read much contemporary non-fiction." I'm not a fan of the genre, but I pulled this one because it had such good reviews from other readers on here.

I didn't not like it, which means it's probably a great example of the genre. As non-fiction, it's well researched, well written, with the characters expanded in a way that makes their ultimate fates even more tragic than that of a simple stranger. You care about them. You care about their families. You want to have frontier justice handed down to the corporate machine that devoured them in its greedy jaws.

I found it depressing. Mostly because it's just such a classic example of the Peter Principle - people elevated to their level of incompetence, making decisions that they have no knowledge or experience to make, endangering the lives of those they are responsible to protect. There's enough blame here to go around - lack of adequate oversight, corporate greed, willfully uninformed CEO's, OSHA's bumbling mishandling, the MWRA's obsession with the bottoms line, the engineer in charge, the lowest bidder system that was contaminated by allowing the consultant to bid on the project after being allowed to see the bids, bosses unwilling to speak up when they were uncomfortable with what was happening because they didn't want to "rock the boat." It's all enough to make you sick to your stomach.

Every small cog in every wheel possible slipped out of alignment on this project, and as a result, two men paid with their lives. And most of us didn't even hear about it. How sad is that?