Rod Macdonald, Into the Abyss: Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World Review

Overall Rating

Good blokey Brit-diving book

Sloppy from a naval history perspective - which is half the point of a book about wreck diving and the inaccuracies (which could have been easily checked) seriously detract from the enjoyment of what should have been a really good book.

Rod Macdonald, Into the Abyss: Diving to Adventure in the Liquid World - Lent a copy by a friend - a big disppointment due to some very basic errors about the subject matter and I will think twice before relying on his Scapa guide.

At the risk of sounding like an anorak, here are some examples from the chapter on Prince of Wales and Repulse:-

p210 "..the sight of a tripod mast of an enemy battleship had struck fear into the hearts of ...sailors fror two centuries" - Tripod masts were first introduced in the early 1900s(or at the earliest late 1890s) not 1740s!

p210 "The loss of the POW was the first time that a battleship had been sunk by air attack in modern warfare" - Agreed, not many ships had been sunk by air attack in ancient warfare but what about the US battleships sunk in "the stunning raid by Japanese forces on Pearl Harbour (sic)" 3 days earlier referred to at the start of the para and the Italian battleships that were severely messed up if not sunk by the Fleet Air Arm at Taranto the year before!

p214 "..HMS Repulse, sister ship of HMS Hood.." -HMS Renown was the sistership of Repulse - Hood was one of a kind!

p216 "The second torpedo hit her bow about 20 feet back from the stern!!!!!" - stem?

p222 The underwater visability on the Repulse is far better than POW as a result of her smaller size..." - Repulse was 5' longer, had 4' deeper draught (but was 4" narrower!) than POW.