Rapture of the Deep

At the beginning of 2007 Scott Stanley, Howard Spialter, Jonathan Walsweer, and another friend from the Westfield dive shop — 51-year-old Kevin Coughlin — decided make a spring pilgrimage to the warm waters of Key Largo. Scott's 23-year-old-son, Dave, was scheduled to go, but changed plans at the last minute.

Walsweer, who had also visited the Spiegel Grove before, had a wife and two little boys. He had been diving since he was eight years old and was an instructor. Coughlin's story was a little different: He was a single real estate investor. He had battled alcoholism and homelessness and blossomed into a success story. He had logged 300 dives around the world. Not as many as Scott, perhaps, but a respectable number nonetheless.

On March 14 the four arrived in South Florida. Scott called Marianne when their plane touched down in Miami; he wanted her to know that he was safe.

They had booked rooms at the Key Largo Suites Hotel, a two-story, beige stucco building that overlooks a marina. They didn't make much of an impression checking in; the manager was so busy that he never laid eyes on them. The four were just more divers who had come south for some fun.

In the early morning hours of Thursday, March 15, the four drove a half-mile in the cool, dry spring weather to the dock where the Scuba Do, a 34-foot custom dive boat, awaited. It was white with blue lettering; the name was painted on the bottom so divers could spot it. The boat offered good prices — $70 for a two-tank trip — an onboard shower, and a diver-friendly wooden deck on the back, which made it easy for gear-laden divers.

That Thursday morning the Scuba Do took about an hour to reach the wreck and docked at a mooring ball attached to the ship. The men made two dives that day, descending to 142 feet below sea level. On at least one of them, the men entered the Spiegel Grove's bow, which is nestled below the sandy sea surface.

That night Walsweer called his wife, Regina. He said that he was having a good time, but didn't elaborate. Regina didn't press him for details of his day; her husband went on so many dive trips that it was as routine as a jaunt to the grocery store. "I updated him on what the kids were doing," she says. "I don't even think I asked about the trip. I never worried about him, especially when he was with Scott."

The next day they once again boarded the Scuba Do early and headed for the wreck. They were each armed with two compressed, 80-cubic-foot air tanks filled with Nitrox — a mixture of 28 percent oxygen and 72 percent nitrogen, which would allow them to go deeper and stay longer. The 74-degree water was a deep sapphire blue, a bit choppy because the winds were blowing at fifteen knots. Plunging in, the men followed the descent line that connected to the white buoy and the Spiegel Grove.

Before entering the ship at its mid-point on the port side, each diver attached one of his air tanks to the outside of the ship, just in case it was needed for the long ascent to the Scuba Do. The four knew they must rise slowly to avoid the dreaded "bends," or decompression sickness.

Upon entering the ship, the men placed strobe lights at the entrance, then swam in. They didn't use the nylon lines — called dive reels — that they had brought with them. Instead they scattered strobe lights as they went.

Then they swam inside, using their flashlights as a guide. They squeezed into tight corridors and down a 40-foot crawl space — which had been used by sailors to descend into the pump room and other spaces in the ship's belly. They glided past some 70 feet of rusting steel to the starboard side.

They floated down colorless corridors, gazing at walls pockmarked with rust spots that glowed a flat grey. A few fish floated past them on some of the higher decks — a 600-pound grouper was rumored to have taken up residence near the bridge — but as the men descended into the ship's belly, the interior was devoid of life, save for the translucent plankton that danced in the flashlight beams.

At some point, they wedged through a hatch the size of a 27-inch TV, and found themselves in the pump room — the place where Spialter had allegedly panicked just months before. Again it was pitch black, except for the flashlights slicing through the dark water. They were at 140 feet below sea level, where light and colors had been stripped away, leaving only a stark landscape of water and metal.

It was around 9:45 a.m., about fifteen minutes into the dive. Since the men were only using 80-cubic-foot tanks, they knew they only had about twenty minutes of oxygen before they would need to emerge, switch to the back-up tanks, and ascend.