Philip J Sayers is Managing Director of London Hyperbaric Medicine Ltd., a company that specialises in treating people suffering from decompression sickness, also known as diver’s disease or the ‘bends’. Prior to establishing the company in 2000, Philip worked for 12 years in the commercial diving industry on the inland waterways and the coasts of northern Germany. In 1988, he undertook three expeditions to the wreck of the Nazi flagship Wilhelm Gustloff , lying off the Polish coast, then went on to design and manufacture professional and military diving equipment for the German and Swedish Armed Forces. In the mid 90s his business expanded to include the design, manufacture and installation of hyperbaric diving chambers. Philip now lives in north Essex.
January 1945, East Prussia. Admiral Dönitz orders the evacuation of 5 million German soldiers and civilian refugees, who were cut off in the eastern Baltic seaports of the Bay of Danzig and surrounded by the Russian Red Army. In the Prussian city of Königsberg, the infamous Nazi Reichskommissioner, Erich Koch, organizes the disappearance of fabulous treasures from the castle museum, then escapes the doomed city before the Russians arrive.
In the Gotenhafen naval base in the Bay of Danzig, a 17 year old radio technician, Franz Kurze, witnesses the storming of the transport ships by thousands of panic stricken refugees, and the loading of a secret cargo the night before they escape across submarine-infested waters.
1988. The British diving contractor, David Carter, discovers an untouched shipwreck off the Polish coast. Marietta, a maritime art historian, and Franz, accompany him on a diving expedition to the Stolpebank. An old secret, shared only by him and one other survivor haunts his memory as they search the wreck for sunken treasure……
This book is dedicated to the memories of my good friend and fellow diver Erich Kaufhold, and to Rudi Lange who survived the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945. Without Erich’s enthusiasm for the hunt for sunken treasures, and Rudi’s first-hand accounts of the events leading up to and surrounding the largest maritime catastrophe in history, the writing of this novel would not have been possible.
