The Chamber Divers, by Rachel Lance, PhD ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Rachel Lance, the biomedical engineer who authored the first book I reviewed here at Will o'the Glen on Books: In The Waves, about the fate of the Confederate States submarine CSS Hunley and its crew after the sinking of the USS Housatonic in Charleston Harbor on February 17th, 1864; is back with another deeply researched scientific thriller: The Chamber Divers.
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| The Chamber Divers, by In The Waves author Rachel Lance is a true-life scientific thriller that the reader will find is hard to put down. |
In The Chamber Divers Dr Lance has jumped forward in time 70+ years from the time of the Hunley to one of the most critical periods in modern history, the Second World War, bringing to light the efforts of a dedicated group of scientists who put their own bodies on the line in support of the Allied effort to conquer fascism.
The Chamber Divers draws the reader in with a prologue chapter about the ill-fated Dieppe raid, an infamously failed landing at the French resort town of Dieppe on 19 August, 1942. A 10,500-man Allied force assaulted Dieppe from the sea and from the air with the objective of capturing and holding the port, for a time, as a test case for a future, larger Allied landing.
There were many factors that led to the complete and utter failure of the operation (nearly half of the Allied force were captured, wounded, or killed), but chief among them was the lack of adequate information about the terrain and enemy defenses. The information-gathering effort prior to the landing consisted of sparse aerial reconnaissance efforts, and the composition and gradient of the beach, and its suitability for landing personnel and armored vehicles, was assessed on the basis of holiday snapshots.
With the 20-20 hindsight that is typical in the aftermath of massive failures of this sort, the Allied military authorities realized that extensive beach reconnaissance, and more importantly, undetected beach reconnaissance, would be key in the eventual assault on Festung Europa – and that hiding reconnaissance personnel underwater was going to be necessary to that task.
From that jumping-off point, and with a short but important and informative detour to Gilded Age New York City and the decompression sickness problems that plagued the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Dr Lance weaves a narrative that introduces us to a varied cast of characters which includes some of the most dedicated and intrepid scientific investigators you will ever hear of; names such as JBS Haldane, Helen Spurway, Elizabeth Jermyn, Hans Grüneberg, Martin Case, Jim Rendel, and Ursula Philip.
Dedicated and intrepid they needed to be, because investigating the world of the high- (and low-) pressure environments, underwater and in the upper atmosphere, that divers and submariners, and aviators in unpressurized aircraft, inhabit, is dangerous and exacting work. To understand the effects of these foreign environments on the human body, humans must be subjected to those conditions. The effects of those environments on the human body range from slightly uncomfortable to excruciatingly painful, and even life-threatening. Because of the risk to life and limb, the scientists who were conducting the experiments that expanded our knowledge of these foreign worlds (which lie mere yards below the surface of the ocean, and thousands of feet above us, in the upper atmosphere) couldn’t ask human subjects to volunteer. So they experimented on themselves.
In order to learn what effects exposure to high- and low-pressure environments have on the human body, how much CO2, how much pure (or just high-concentration) oxygen a human can tolerate, these scientists spent hours in hyperbaric chambers. Under conditions simulating exploration deep underwater, or confined in a submarine with a limited supply of air, they experienced symptoms that ranged from sinus pain, blurred vision, toothaches, and nausea to excruciating pain and bone-wrenching – even bone-breaking – muscular spasms.
A line can be drawn directly from the work these people did to the eventual victory of the Allied forces in World War II, because without the knowledge that was gained at such painful expense, the successful invasion of the European continent, and the eventual casting-off of the Nazi yoke from the subjugated people of Europe would not have been possible. The research that was conducted by these selfless (and maybe slightly wacko) researchers enabled the divers and submariners who scouted the stoutly defended coastline of Europe to gather vital knowledge of the water and beach conditions that would affect military landings. They were able to map – and later, on the eve of the invasion – neutralize, the manmade defenses that had been put in place to repel an invasion. In the days after the successful landings on the Norman beaches, divers continued their work, expanding the safe lanes of access to the shore that allowed the flow of men and materials that was necessary to expand the Allies’ tenuous toehold on the Continent and begin the inland push toward a final victory over Nazi Germany.
The story behind the creation of this book is also quite remarkable. Rachel Lance teed-up the research effort on this book just as the Covid-19 pandemic shut the world down, so digging into archives became more than slightly problematic. Despite that hard start, Dr Lance has produced a thorough and deeply researched book – qualities which, when combined with her light and sometimes whimsical touch when it comes to storytelling*, have resulted in a true-life scientific thriller that is a worthy follow-up to In The Waves.
In The Chamber Divers Rachel Lance recounts in admirable fashion one of the most unbelievable, yet 100% true, stories of the pursuit of scientific knowledge for the betterment of mankind that you will ever read. As with her first book, In The Waves, I give The Chamber Divers my highest recommendation.
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