A DIVER'S ADVENTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1036, 27 April 1912, Page 4

A DIVER'S ADVENTURE.

in spite of ail the precautions that are taken to make it safe, the work of the submarine diver is one ol peril. This incident shows how unexpectedly the most dangerous situations may arise. Captain Olsen has worked below the surface tor more than forty years, and this adventure, he says, is one of the very “tightest” iu the course of his experience.

Il happened m Boston Harbour in the fall of 1909, when vvorkiug on the steamship Birmingham, that had sunk between Castle Island and Buoy 9. The Birmingham was being broken up for what junk could be recovered from her, and Captain Olsen was attending to the submarine end of the work, sending up what parts oi the ship could be saved.

The veteran diver was fastening a cable about a heavy steel plate still clinging to the side of the wreck, so that it could be hoisted to the surface, when a big ocean steamer, outward bound, passed dose above the spot where he was at work, about fifty feet below. The swiftly-revolving propellers of the steamship churning the waves set the water in such active motion that it caused a sudden violent lurching of that portion of the wreck to which the steel plate was clinging. The cable slipped from its place round the plate, and the sharp hook on the end of it, in hying up, came within less than an inch of catching the rubber hose through which the life-suslaiuiug supply of air was being sent down to the diver and tearing it away from its connection with the protecting helmet that covered his head. Had the air-hose been torn away, Captain Olsen in all probability would have met death by drowning beiore he could have been hauled up through the fitly feet of water to the sunace.

instinctively he threw up his left arm to protect himsell from the iiymg hook ol tue cable, but its sharp pomt caught his thumb, ripping it wide open the whole leugth ol the sort iuuer side, causing an extremely paiuiul injury, which disabled him for some time after. But he managed, after a time, to send up that plate, and then he had bimselt hauled up, as it was impossible for him to use the injured hand any longer.