In 1963, Jerry Bianco, a Brooklyn Navy Yard ship fitter got it in his head that he was going to build a submarine to raise the wreck of the Andrea Doria - a luxury cruise ship that had sank off of Nantucket only 7 years earlier. This would be achieved by depositing inflatable dunnage bags inside of the wreck and float it to the surface.

Even a small sub would take a large sum of cash to build, but Jerry managed get financial backing from interested treasure seekers and proceeded to build his dream.

In 1971, the sub was ready to launch. Crowds and local media were gathered at Coney Island Creek. The sub was too heavy to lift with the required ballast to keep it upright in the water, so the plan was to fill it with the ballast when it was in the water. The crane operator apparently didn't get the memo and lowered the sub into the water too fast. This caused the sub to flip over in the water and sink.

You can imagine the public response to this. Humiliation being the least of it, Jerry lost his financial backing and was not able to refine the sub for it's intended purpose.

He was able to dredge up the sub and properly fill the ballast, but it remained tethered at the dock behind his house in the C.I. Creek to be used sporadically for tugboat services and fishing on the creek. The sub remained docked there until 1975, when a storm washed the boat out and destroyed it.

The wreck is still there if you want to see it. The adventurous use it as a fishing platform, but it's only a pile of rust anymore.

From the few historic documents online, I have attempted to recreate Jerry's Quester 1 submarine in all of its original glory. the aft section is an approximation. if you have any views of this, please forward them.

Maybe someone can make a scale model of the Andrea Doria to go with this...