PERILS OF DIVERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15002, 25 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

PERILS OF DIVERS.

SEAKCH FOR SUNKEN GOLD.

OCEANA TO BE BLOWN UP.

The Oceana will never be raised. She lies athwart the tides, a battered, disabled monster, her decks strewn with debris, the planks of her foredeck torn and gaping; and a great V-shaped wound has shattered her port side from keel to taffrail. The bottom of the ship lies firmly embedded in the sand, two masts have been snapped off since she sank, and her funnels have been crushed like tin and lie across her deck. The deckhouses have been smashed, davits are broken and twisted, the taffrail is bent like old iron. And in and out of the sad, indescribable mass of wreckago a flash of silver occasionally glistens for a moment and glints near the helmets of the men who seek the gold. That flash of white is a fish como to visit the new addition to the ocean's museum.

Diver Fabian was tho man who toiled along the Ocean's decks to the strongroom aft, while Lambert, a nephew of tho famous diver who salved the Alfonso XII., off the Canary Islands, fought his way to tho specie-room in tho forepart. Diving comes as naturally to Lambert as living. His family have dived for generations, and the indiarubber suit is as comfortable to him w are his clothes. It was he who entered tha captain's cabin under the bridge on tho hurricane deck and broke open a writing table to get the keys of the specie rooms. Twice he was lifted out by the current and washed out of tho room, and twice ho struggled back, clinging to anything his hands touched, and bracing himself against the flood. In several cases tho divers have had to let go their hold on the guide-rope and float up to the surface as the current directs. If they had not released their grip the tide would have spun them round the guiderope like tops and wound their life-line round their helmets and bodiesand the end would have been swift and painful.

The descent of the diver is fraught with danger. It means going down a taut rope, hand over hand, for 60ft. The tide, even at its mildest, is strong enough to sweep a man out in a straight lino from the rope. Above the hull is a wilderness of wreckago. A slip on the rope, a missed handgrip, and the diver would be carried away and his line and air-pipe tangled in tho debris. No aid could get him clear before the tide had swept up at its strongest, and tho boats above could not hold to their dangerous moorings against the tide.

Once the divers reach the shelter below the decks of the liner they can work in moderate safety. But even then the surge of the Channel rollers, as they lift and fall upon the wreck, makes standing difficult. The bullion-rooms are four decks down in the vessel. One diver works in each bul-lion-room and slowly heaves out the ironbound chests, standing all the time upon a floor of solid silver four feet thick. When dragged out, a specie-box is shackled to a chain cable and hoisted up. Other diveTs on the decks above see that the rising box keeps clear of wreckage. Working by Touch.

All this work is carried out in darkness. The men cannot see an inch ahead of their helmet glasses down there between decks. They work by touch as blind men, but they know by now every inch of the ship, for before the salving commenced the divers spent days studying large-scale plans of the Oceana. The wreck, they say, is in a sorry state from the batterings of the water. Furniture and fittings in tho saloons and cabins are so much floating matchwood; deck planks are forced apart ; deckhouses aro in ruins; spars and wirerigging ropes are tangled on the topmost deck. Boats have gone, and the iron davits are twisted into strange shapes.

When all the gold and the silver has been safely raised, dynamite will shatter the old liner's bones, and dear her out of the way of shipping.