One of the most exciting sea rescues of the twentieth century occurred during a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico in 1995. Ever since, lawsuits have made it almost impossible to find out the complete story of what happened. Now Michael Krieger tells the heroic truth of this astonishing drama."All the Men in the Sea" begins in a cloud of silt peppered with 400-pound groupers 160 feet below the surface at the bottom of the Mexican Gulf where two divers are about to complete their work on a section of pipeline leading from the offshore oil field to the Yucatan Peninsula. The divers had to finish their section of pipeline so that the diving company could get their $27 million payment for the project. The company was behind schedule, but when Hurricane Roxanne approached, the divers had to return to the barge on the surface and its decompression chamber. Any mishap that might force them to leave this chamber prematurely would result in every blood vessel in their bodies popping like a champagne cork.Hundreds of workers lived on the barge, but the divers were the elite.

It was the diver supervisor who told the barge's captain that compa.