Setting the Hook

The 1956 collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm triggered a night of sheer terror for the Andrea Doria’s 1,134 passengers and set in motion one of history’s most dramatic rescues at sea. From the moment the Andrea Doria settled on the sea floor in 240 feet of water, skilled amateur divers have risked their lives to simply touch her broken hull. In 1981, wealthy adventurer Peter Gimbel enlisted the aid of commercial salvage divers to torch open the Andrea Doria’s Foyer Deck doors in search of treasure and answers. The unprecedented access to deep within the sunken ship’s interior enticed growing numbers of sport divers to explore the wreck in increasingly daring quests for a piece of the “Mt. Everest of wreck diving.” Not all returned alive.Peter Hunt crewed on five Andrea Doria diving expeditions during the early 1980s aboard Steve Bielenda’s legendary research vessel Wahoo before becoming a Navy carrier pilot and settling in Washington State. Nearly twenty years after first exploring the Andrea Doria - and following twelve months of arduous Pacific Northwest dive training in the newest equipment and techniques - Hunt hugged his wife and children goodbye and returned to New York to dive the Andrea Doria once again. The experience transformed him forever.Setting the Hook explores the Andrea Doria and extreme diving through an introspective odyssey of memory and history back to the dangerous underwater world of northeast shipwrecks. Extreme adventure, thirty years of technical diving, and enduring friendships merge in a personal tale of learning to accept life’s oldest challenge.