PERILS OF DIVERS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11658, 13 June 1912, Page 2

PERILS OF DIVERS.

SEARCH 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 shatered her port side from keel lo 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 tafirail is bent like old iron. And in and out of the sad, indescribable mass of wreckage a flash of silver occasionally glistens for a moment and glints near the helmets ot the men who seek the gold. That hash of white is< a hVh come to visit the new addition to the ocean's museum. Diver Fabian was the man who toiled along the Oceana's decks to the strongroom aft. while Lambert, a nephew of the famous diver who salved the Alfonso XII., off the Canary Islands, fought hid way to the specie-room in the forepart. Diving comes as naturally to Lambert as living. His family have dived for generations, and the indiarubber suit is as comfortable to him as are his clothes. L was he who entered the captain's cabin under the bridge on the 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 the room, and twice he struggled back, clinging to anvlhing his hands "touched, and bracing himself "against the flood. In several cases the '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 guide-rope like tops and wound their life-line round their helmets and bodies —and 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 line from the rope. Above the hull is a wilderness of wreckage. A, slip on the rope, a missed handgrip, and the diver would be carried away and his line and air-pipe tangled in the debris. No aid could get him clear before the tide had swept up at its strongest, and the 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 bullion room and slowly heaves out the ironbound chests, standing all the time upon a Iluor of solid silver four feet thick. When dragged out, a specie-box is shackled to a chain cable and hoisted up. Other divers on the decks above see that the rising box keep 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 xe 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 the saloons and cabins are so much floating matchwood; deck planks are forced apart; deckhouses, are 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 clear her out of the way of shipping.