Well-known underwater explorer Richie Kohler (of Shadow Divers and Deep Sea Detectives) and Best Publishing Company invite you to join the expedition to unravel the Mystery of the Last Olympian: Titanic’s Tragic Sister Britannic.
The book gives you a firsthand account as Richie Kohler takes readers on the intriguing journey from the rise of the magnificent Olympians to the fateful day in 1916. He then moves forward in time through multiple expeditions beginning with the great Jacques Cousteau who located the ocean liner in 1975. Each successive team that risked their lives uncovered new clues, but it was not until 2009 when Richie and his dive partner definitively pinpointed the secret that had eluded them.
Finally, in July 2015, Richie and a small team attained the goal of documenting their findings that answered the century-old question as to why all the engineering solutions built into the mighty Britannic could not save her from sharing the same fate as Titanic.
Experience the expedition as Richie and his team unravel the mystery of the HMHS Britannic:
- With damage to only one compartment, the ship should have been able to stay afloat, and yet she sank twice as quickly as did Titanic. How was that possible? - Was the hospital ship criminally torpedoed as the British press claimed, or did she ineptly blunder into a minefield, as the Bismarck Government countered? - Violet Jessop survived the sinking of Britannic and Titanic. Experience her intriguing story.
One man's perspective on an elusive wreck- one of Titanic's sister ships. I didn't know there were 3 of them, nor that Britannic went down faster than Titanic herself, while in use as a hospital ship. By the end of the book I knew probably more than I wanted to about the ship, but more interestingly, about the personalities of the divers who explored the wreck as well as the technical problems and solutions they found. Technical and political problems continue to stand between the divers and the answers they seek about this wreck. Were the doors between compartments open or closed at the time of sinking? Was it a mine or a torpedo that caused the sinking? Did the hinges on the compartment doors fail? How many of the luxury fittings were present while she was being used as a hospital ship? By the end the reader knows the answer to most of these, but there are many more.
Britannic is a tale of how one of the great ocean liners of the early 1900's, never saw a single paying passenger but rather tragically met her demise only days after the conclusion of the first world war and nonetheless from an unmanned weapon of war. Richie Kohler has had some amazing adventures in diving, and I consider 'Shadow Divers' to be one of my all-time favorite books. This book was an amazing walk through the short life of Britannic and the tragedy that unfolded in the Agean sea. It did not however contain the excitement, nor the thrill portrayed in his previous books. The story regarding the preparation needed to dive the wreck of the Britannic and the support required for such effort is fascinating to read about but you came to this show with hopes of learning more about the actual wreck. Overall, this genre of book has become my go to for the time being, but I felt a little disappointed with the content of this book. I can say without fail, should Richie Kohler write another book on his adventures in wreck diving, I will read the book. Wreck diving is just too damn cool.
I got "Mystery of the Last Olympian" as a Titanic history buff, and read it to learn more about the younger sister ship, Britannic. I was a fan of "Deep Sea Detectives" when it was on the air, and read Richie Kohler's book on the Titanic from a few years ago.
"Mystery" is 70% a book about technical diving and 30% a book about the Britannic. That's fine, and the book was an easy read, but if you are looking for a deep dive (pun intended) on the ship itself you will not find it here. On the other hand if you've ever been curious about the ins and outs of sending scuba divers 400 feet under the ocean's surface, this is a VERY informative resource.
It's not shadow divers. Ended far too abruptly and just reprinting a diary for the second half seemed lazy, one mystery solved, I wanted to hear much more on penetrating the ship but got little, even the dive they did do far inside was covered very briefly. Disappointing