Brookline diver is right at home in the sea

BROOKLINE – It’s a world where things are topsy-turvy. The walls are above and below you, the floor and ceiling on your sides.

The whole eerie place is falling apart, and around any given corner, you could catch a bad break and be resigned forever to Davy Jones’s locker.

Does that sound like a nightmare? To master scuba diver Joe King, this world is his dream.

King, of Brookline, has logged more than 2,000 dives in his 50 years, including more than a dozen on one of the most dangerous shipwrecks in the world.

On Wednesday at the Brookline Historical Society, King will discuss his experiences exploring the Andrea Doria, an Italian cruise liner that, because of the risk, has been dubbed by some as the “Mount Everest of scuba diving locations.”

Fifteen people have died diving to the Andrea Doria, including three of King’s friends.

“It’s sad,” King said. “What can you say but it’s sad? You learn from it. I have more respect for the wreck. It’s humbling.”

King, a systems engineer and patent lawyer, is an explorer by nature. He has sky-dived more than 200 times and has explored jungles all over the world.

He traces his interest in scuba diving to watching “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” a television show from the 1960s.

King first tried diving in 1974 as a teenager after he and some buddies spontaneously bought dive gear at a flea market.

He ended up joining the Marines and abandoning diving for a while, but he got back to it in his mid-20s.

Eventually, King became certified as a technical diver, which, unlike recreational diving, which means he can go deeper than 130 feet, explore sheltered areas and know how to perform decompression exercises to return to the surface.

At first, King dove to see fish and reefs, but shipwrecks are his underwater observation item of choice.

“It’s the history,” he said. “It’s the aura. It’s like you’re on a whole other planet.”

King accumulated hundreds of hours of training and performed more than 1,000 dives before he finally ventured to the Andrea Doria about 12 years ago.

In its heyday, the ship was known for its luxury. It was the first of its kind to have three swimming pools – one each for the different classes of passengers.

The 697-foot-long Doria was carrying 1,700 passengers and crew when, in July 1956, it collided with The Stockholm, a small liner heading to Sweden. Some 50 people died in the collision.

The Doria now rests on its starboard side 60 miles southeast of Nantucket, Mass., and 200 feet below the surface. The ship is considered one of the world’s most dangerous areas to explore because of its depth, the cold and the currents – not to mention that it’s falling apart.

”It’s a very different wreck than it was in the mid-1980s,” King said. “It’s getting to be a junk yard.”

But the ship’s state didn’t detract King from diving to explore the ship, which is nearly two football fields long.

In examining ship plans, King has determined he has explored what was once the ship’s winter garden, the first-class gift shop, some staterooms, first- and second-class bathrooms and all up and down the promenade deck.

The visibility on the Andrea Doria is good in most places, King said, although other areas have powerful currents and can be treacherous.

Typically, he can explore for about a half hour before it’s time to go back up.

King has retrieved some artifacts from the ship, including a saucer used by second-class passengers; a kidney-shaped plate from first class, evidenced by its red and gold rim; and the plum hand-painted plate that was used by the wealthiest of passengers.

King hasn’t been back to the Doria since 2001 – he has been busy ice diving and exploring other spots around the world – but he may go back this summer.

Because the Doria is falling apart, unexplored areas are becoming exposed, including the cargo hold below decks.

There’s bound to be fine art down there, King said, along with a Chrysler concept car no one has been able to find.

For King, that’s a pretty tempting thought.

“Technical divers are born explorers,” King said. “We like going where no man has gone before.”

Karen Lovett can be reached at 594-6402 or klovett@nashuatelegraph.com.