Show ar fama CLUS diving to death by FLOYD FLOTD GIBBONS L LETS ETS dive right into this one with diver and distinguished adventurer walker kayes of new york city and remember that were not only diving deep down into the treacherous currents of the st lawrence river were diving head first into the river of adventure too what was walker kayes diving for in the st lawrence sunken sunke n treasure nothing of the sort it always the glamorous jobs that furnish the big thrills divers do a lot of prosaic work in between those treasure hunts you read about and old lady adventure has a habit of piling it onto the lads when doing a routine job and are least expecting it walker was inspecting bridge foundations tor for a railroad in august 1933 he was looking over the underpinnings of the famous victoria bridge which spans the st lawrence at montreal went down in dangerous current I 1 said that adventure always hits you when youre least expecting it maybe im in this case walker knew he was going to have trouble with the victoria bridge bridgeit brid geat at one spot anyway 1 I was inspecting the piers on the montreal side he says and at this point runs a treacherous rapid which had taken the lives of two bridge workers only the previous summer the noses of the piers reach too far out from beneath the bridge to enable us to lower a protecting screen to stop the current all ali we had to work with was a small platform just large enough for two men and the diver built on the nose of the pier down close to the water the pump worked by hand was up ort on the bridge and the air line passed down the pier A short steel ladder was lashed to the platform to enable me to descend the picture now watch it move walker looking like some strange sort of robot in his air filled rubber suit and round ball like steel helmet is ready to go down it is eight in the morning as he steps onto the ladder and little does he realize that at twelve noon four hours later he will still be down under the river fighting a life and death battle with a racing tide step by step he goes down hugging the ladder to keep from being swept downstream now his helmet vanishes under the surface and we dive down after him to see what happens the current is always less at the nose of the pier says walker so I 1 planned to examine that first then attempt to come up along the side of the shoulder after looking at the nose I 1 started upstream lying flat on my stomach to resist the current I 1 had moved about six feet when suddenly I 1 was struck with locomotive force A cross cur current r ent had caught me and was whirling me away from the pier out toward the middle of the stream I 1 helpless in the boiling foamy water in an instant I 1 was spun span around like a fishing troll crushed by tons of roaring water it all happened so quickly that the tender had no chance to snub the line 1 I was utterly helpless I 1 see for the water was a boiling mass of foam and I 1 could no more control my movements in that current than if I 1 had been a chip of wood but helplessness the worst of it an ever present thought in the mind of the diver is the danger of the suit inflating and blowing up like a balloon if the head gets knocked lower than the rest of the body the minute I 1 began to roll I 1 jammed my head against the air release valve to deflate the suit I 1 must have done it with too much force for the small brass shaft of the valve bent and would not work properly in the meantime I 1 was hurtled downstream an and 4 wedged into a rock fissure which for the moment saved my life tons of water were pounding against walker knocking the breath out of him and threatening to crush his body then to his horror he found that water trickling in through the broken air valve was slowly filling his suit he began trying to communicate with his tender the roar of the water made the phone useless and when he tried to signal by jerking the line the current made it almost impossible to feel the jerks from the all but unintelligible signals that did come through walker gathered that his tender wanted him to move down with the current and be hauled in at the back of the pier he fought his way out 0 the fissure his suit inflated and blew up in an instant he was picked up by the roaring water and spun around like a top then the dreaded blowup blow up came his feet shot up in the air and his head bead down as the suit inflated like a balloon his helmet banged against the rocks water splashed around inside it ile he was worse off than before and in that terrible current there was the imminent danger that his slender lifeline life line would part that line says walker was tied around my chest and the force of the current bent me backward the corselet collar was forced against my neck strangling me after what seemed hours a heavy rope was sent down to me the lifeline life line was taut as a violin string and all they had to do was loop the rope around it and the force of the current carried it down but now I 1 realized that I 1 was very weak and everything depended on getting that rope around me and securely tied it took me half an hour to get that rope tied in a simple clove hitch and then I 1 was completely exhausted I 1 gave a jerk on the rope to signal the tender prayed for the breaks and waited safe after four hours struggle e 1 I mind dying so much but the conelin loneliness ess was horrible after an eternity I 1 felt strong jerks on the rope and realized I 1 was about to be pulled in it was now or never and I 1 had about an even chance of getting out before the suit burst or I 1 was broken in two by the current but it was a strong steady pull much steadier than I 1 thought possible then suddenly I 1 was out of the water safe again my ily men had borrowed a winch from some telephone linemen working on the bridge and it was that which had pulled me out with such an even rapid pull it was a surprise to walkers tenders to see him alive he had been under water fighting for his life for FOUR HOURS A few minutes longer and he would have drowned drowned inside his suit by the water that trickled through the air valve my boys faces were chalk white when I 1 came out walker says but my own blue from strangulation must have looked worse than any of them 0 service |