LONG FIGHT FOR LIFE

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 221, 19 August 1931, Page 10

LONG FIGHT FOR LIFE

DIVER STUCK IN MUD. STRUGGLE FOR SEVEN HOURS. A remarkable rescue of a man from one of tho most horrible forms of death imaginable—slow suffocation under 15ft of mud—was achieved at Dagenham, Essex, recently. For seven hours, William Milton, a diver working on the construction of a new jetty in the Thames at the Ford factory at Dagenham, was imprisoned, lying on his side,unablo to move. Mr Milton’s “life-lines”—tho name for a time seemed ironic—wero jammed beneath a wall' of steel and were pinning him beneath tho deadly mixture of slime and oozing mud which is the bed of the Thames and the diver’s nightmare. The story of how tho accident happened, as told by the Daily Telegraph, is a simple one, but it is none the less amazing that it did not end tragically. An important part of the work in connection with building the jetty, from which the finished motor cars are to bo sent abroad, is the sinking of a number of enormous steel cylinders or caissons into the bed of the river. They are about 30ft high and 10ft in diameter. Their lower edges are extremely sharp, and cut into tho mud as they are lowered. When finally in place they are fill-* ed with concrete.

THE SAFTY ROPE SIGNAL. On Thursday it was noticed that something was wrong with ono of these caissons. It was still in its hollow state, and at low tide the level of the water in it was seen not to lie falling as it did outside in the river. It was clear that tho bottom was blocked up with mud, and that this was preventing tho water from escaping. Mr Milton was sent down inside the caisson'to dig away the mud and allow the water to escape. Within a few minutes the men on the jetty saw the level of the water in the caisson abruptly sink, and at the same time they felt a sharp tug at Mr Milton’s safety rope. Ftor a moment they did not realise what had happened, and it was not until another diver, Mr Davis, who was working in the next caisson, had descended into Mr Milton’s cylinder that the full horror of the situation was grasped. He had hacked away the mud at the bottom so successfully that the water rushed out beneath the steel wall. But the outrush was so terrific that it carried the unfortunate diver with it. Mr Milton was sucked under the edge of the cylinder and remained —lying on one side in the filthy mud — with his rope and air-tube tightly jammed under the wall of the caisson so that he could not move.

The task of rescuing him seemed at first almost hopeless. Blit noble efforts were made from all sides, and assistance was rushed to the scene from far and near. “IT WAS A FRIGHTFUL JOB.” But all these tremendous efforts from afar were not, as events proved, as useful as the efforts of the solitary diver, William Davis, who was working away all this time to rescue his imprisoned mate. His story is best told in liis own words, as he recounted

it on the jetty a few minutes after the rescue.

“It was a frightful job,” Mr Davis said. “I went down inside the cylinder first of all to find out what the matter was. My first task was to free his rope and his air-tube from within. I could see nothing all the time, as it is not possible to look out of the front of the kind of diver’s helmet we wear. In any case, Thames water is so dirty that it is never possible to work with your eyes. The whole thing has to bo done by touch.”

After Mr Davis had freed the rope it was possible for Mr Milton to work his way into an upright position. But now another source of fear became apparent to the workers, Mr Milton’s air-tube -went down inside the cylinder, and if he were to bo hnuled up again outside it would need to he twice the length normally required. Was it long enough? Mercifully it was. Mr Davis descended, and then went down again on tho outside of the caisson, bearing with him a machine known as a blower. With this he proceeded to “blow” away the mud beneath which Mr Milton was imprisoned, working his way through tho sixteen feet, tortuously, slowly, but ever surely. SUCCESS COMES AT LAST. “It must have been about midday when I touched him,” said Mr Davis. “Once we’d got that far, I was fairly sure he was safe.” He went on working and working at the mud, and by this time Mr Milton was slowly rising to an upright position. As the mud was hacked away, he began to feel himself being slowly lifted in the water by means of an additional rope which Mr Davis had brought down with him. He was half-way out of the mud when another horror possible. A number of wooden “twelve-by-four” beams forming the underwater .staging for the jetty blocked his way Ito freedom, and it seemed possible that the wretched man might be jammed again. But fate was on his side, ably assisted by Mr Davis, who gently and firmly guided his helpless workmate up ! between the beams to safety.