THE DIVER'S JOB.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 261, 3 November 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE DIVER'S JOB.

ITS THRILLS AND PERILS.

DCWN W THE GREEN DEPTHS

WORLD'S MOST DARING SEA

BATHERS

There is no more perilous calling than that of the diver, who, once beneath the surface, carries his life in his hands. His lines may become entangled. If he takes a false step on sunken wreckage he may break his neck. He may be "blown up" from the bottom of the sea, a catastrophe that may occur when too much air accumulates inside a diving suit and a constant supply is being pumped in. In such a case the diver will rise to the surface looking like a rubber ball. With swollen veins and bursting lungs he must be dragged by his breast rope to the boat, and slowly let down again with escape cocks fully'open, until he recovers. Trapped! Such experiences are not pleasant, but what a diver fears more than anvthing else 13 an encounter with hostile fish. While working to recover some of the £3,000,000 worth of treasure from the Spanish galleon at the bottom of Tobermory Bay, one diver was repeatedly attacked by a vicious rock cod that "tried to savage his wrists. Snapping ferociously, the long, ugly creature followed him for three days. Eventually the diver killed his tormentor with an iron bar. Hansen, the famous diver, once fought a life and death battle with a giant conger eel. Another diver was repairing an old sea wall when, from a hole in the masonry, the head of a huge fish suddenly struck out at him. It was an enormous conger, which by some means had been trapped. The eel was a prisoner, but though it could not free its body, it kept itself alive bv seizins.' any unlucky fish that happened to pais its hole. Off the English coast about a yeaago a monster conger caught a bather by the leg and dragged him under water until he was drowned. When a fullsrown conger weighing about a hundredweight pets hold of a man's limb, the only thing is to cut off the fish's head, and even then its jaws must b«j prised open. It was in Tobermory Bay that a diver named Mackenzie, while bending ovsr some wreckage on the sea bed, was suddenly encircled by a tremendour eel, which coiled itself like a boaconstrictor around his body and tried to snap at him with its terrible jaws. Though utterly unprepared, Mackenzie fought valiantly. He had no weapons, but while the creature writhed around him he tried to strangle it with his hands, and was almost spent when, in the nick of time, he was hauled to the surface. After a rest he seized a steel harpoon and pluekily descended again to give battle to his adversary, but there was no sign of the conger. The Deadly Stingray. There are over a dozen varieties of devil fish greatly feared by divers. One of the most ferocious is the barracouta. a. long, narrow sea reptile that moves with, eerie swiftness through the water. This brute has an enormous mouth, both jaws showing teeth like those of a dog. He shoots at a diver like an arrow, and, should the man be naked, will snap off a limb in one bite. But, to the rubber-clad man under the sea, a foe even more formidable is the stingray. This ocean ogre fights with its long, whip-like tail, which is hard and toothed. A few years ago the well-known French diver, Cappadona, was attacked by a stingray while repairing a submarine cable off Toulon. The brute threshed furiously with his tail, the teeth ripping open the rubber of the diving suit. Cappadona could only slash away at the ray's head between the eyes, and signal to be hauled up. He was dragged from the water exhausted by the combat, and half-suffocated by tlie water that had poured through the rents in his suit. It must give a diver an uncanny sensation to see a shark hovering near, almost brushing him with its fins, and looking steadily at him with its wicked eyes. The shark is not always a coward; it can be savage and voracious. Usually, however, a shark will "move on" at request. A diver can send hir.i scooting away by turning on a jet of I air from his helmet, or by giving him a sharp rap on .the snout. In that intrepid diver, A. Lambert, a troublesome shark once met its match. While he was working off the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, fixins sheets of copper on a coal hulk that had been fouled by a steamer, the diver was annoyed by the persistent attentions of a shaTk. On its first appearance, Lambert opened the safety valve in hi 3 helmet and allowed some a'r bubbles to escape. The great creaturewas scared, and moved away. But next day it came again; and despite tempo rary repulses the misrhty shadow continued to hover around, coming ominously nearer as the work progressed. At last Lambert decided to come to jrrips with the lurking menace, to whom he must have represented a tempting meal. He signalled for a sheath knife and a looped rope, and. having obtained these, the diver proceeded to "play" his big fish. He used his bare hand as a bait, and when the shark turned on its back to bite, he slashed at it repeatedly with his knife.

While the huge fish was swishing about in fury, he quickly passed the noose of his rope over the body and signalled for it to be hauled up. He brought home the backbone as a trophy The octopus—a creature more monstrous and loathsome than any dra»>n of fairy tales —is the diver's deadliest foe. It has frightful, ghoulish eyes, a parrot-like beak, and •writhing, suckercovered tentacles as strong as cables. In Capetown Harbour a diver named Palmer was working at a depth of 25ft, examining the damage done to the' thmvegan Castle, when suddenly a hideous tentacle caught him by the lei. Nest moment three more of the foul arms coiled round him in quick Buccea-

Palmer had no weapons, but he was a powerful man. He fought the brute with his hands, trying desperately to keep its beak from ripping open his diving dress. When he had been grappling with the devil fish only a few minutes, its eight tentacles were round his body. Fortunately, his frenzied tug at the lifeline was quickly answered, and man and beast were hauled struggling to the surface. The men in the boat were horrified to see the diver emerge above the \vati_' battling for life in the embrace of what appeared to be a host of reptiles, bill with axes and knives they hacked him free of the tentacles and hauled him aboard more dead than alive. Conflicts between man and fish are to be expected in deep waters. But once the bed of the ocean witnessed a sce-e more extraordinary—a fight between two men. between two divers named Girvan and Jones there had long keen rivalry. Matters reached a crisis while the men were working together on a sunken wreck. A dispute arose as to which was entitled to salve nn article of value. Words led to blows. Jones, getting the worst of it, tried to a retreat, and had ascended a few fett of the short rope when Girvan pulled him down, and the combatants were at it again, hammer and tongs. The windows of Girvan's helmet were smashed in, and Jones, or liis rubber gear, at any rate—was considerablv battered. The affair would have ended in tragedy had not the violent straining at the lifelines caused the men in the boat above to haul both divers to the surface. The "duellists" soon recovered from the effects of their deep-water rough and tumble, and eventually became the best of friends.