Carl M. Brashear; Diver Persevered After Amputation

Two years later, he was on the salvage ship USS Hoist off the southeastern coast of Spain. He was helping direct the recovery of a hydrogen bomb resting on a ledge 2,000 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea; the plane ferrying the bomb had crashed in the sea.

During the recovery, a cable on the ship suddenly faltered and caused a steel pipe to tumble to the deck. Mr. Brashear shoved another sailor out of danger, but he was hit in the leg and suffered massive bleeding.

His leg was amputated at the naval hospital in Portsmouth. With support from the hospital commandant, he began a stressful physical therapy course that would allow him not only to resume his career, but also help him reach his ultimate goal of becoming the Navy's first black master diver.

He made dives in a 290-pound suit to depths of 200 feet and tended to his wounds himself to hide the severity of the bleeding.

"Sometimes I would come back from a run and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump," he told an interviewer from the U.S. Naval Institute in 1989. "I wouldn't go to sick bay. In that year, if I had gone to sick bay, they would have written me up. . . . I'd go somewhere and hide and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it -- an old remedy. Then I'd get up the next morning and run."

In 1967, he persuaded skeptical officials at the Navy's Bureau of Medicine to clear him for diving duty. He qualified in 1970 as a master diver.

After retiring from active duty, he spent several years involved in classified work for the Navy Department. After the biographic film came out in 2000, he was deluged with letters from amputees, and he answered them all. He also began giving inspirational lectures.

His marriages to Junetta Wilcoxson Brashear, Hattie Elam Brashear and Jeanette Brundage Brashear ended in divorce. A son from his first marriage, Shazanta Brashear, died in 1996.

Survivors include three sons from his first marriage, Dawayne Brashear of Newark, Patrick Brashear of Portsmouth and Phillip Brashear of Sandston, Va., a member of the Virginia Army National Guard now stationed in Iraq; three sisters; two brothers; 12 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.