The Soul Knows the Way Home

On the morning of August 29, 1973, Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson had finished an eight-hour shift beneath the Atlantic Ocean. Their small submersible, Pisces III, had been laying telephone cable nearly sixteen hundred feet below the surface, 150 miles southwest of Ireland. The hard part seemed over.

Pisces III had returned to the surface and was waiting to be lifted aboard the support ship when something went terribly wrong. Seawater rushed into a machinery compartment, making the vessel suddenly heavier, and it began falling backward into the Atlantic. Inside, equipment broke loose. Chapman and Mallinson curled themselves against the walls of the six-foot crew compartment and waited for the impact. Thirty seconds later, Pisces III struck the ocean floor.

They were alive, but now the arithmetic began. They had already been underwater for eight hours, and the oxygen remaining was expected to carry them only into early Saturday morning. So, they did almost nothing. They spoke as little as possible and barely moved. Above…