A Curious Incident

Last week’s post about ghosts reminded me of something that happened exactly three years ago today. I still don’t understand it, but maybe you have an explanation.

Bill McLean, who runs our dive shop, has asked me not to use the name of the wreck in this story. “We take a lot of first timers out there,” he said. “They’re nervous enough already.” So I’ll just say that this happened at a St. Lawrence site near Brockville, one known to most Eastern Ontario divers.

We were with a charter out of Rockport, run by a cheerful operator from Montreal I’ll call Mike. It was a cold, miserable day, grey and threatening drizzle. But the river was still warm, and the first dive had gone well. After some discussion Mike decided to take us downriver and do one more dive.

There was a boat moored to the buoy when we got there, a bright yellow boxy looking thing from Brockville with a load of boisterous, nervous beginners. It was growing late, and getting darker. We slipped quickly into our gear and into the water, followed the line past their boat to the buoy, and dropped below the swells.

Viz was poor: once under we could see neither the surface nor the wreck below. We passed a couple of divers safety-stopped at fifteen feet and continued our descent.

At the bottom, in the shadow of the wreck, we paused for a moment to get our bearings. The current was strong, but manageable. We were just about to kick off when I felt someone touch my leg. I turned.

There was another diver floating beside us. I hadn’t seen him approach.

He gave me a “buddy up” sign, two index fingers together. At first I thought he was asking whether Valerie and I were buddies, and I nodded. He nodded back, repeated the buddy up sign, and then pointed at himself and signed “OK”.

I realized with mild annoyance that we had just acquired a third buddy. Maybe he had started the dive alone and changed his mind. Maybe his buddy had had a problem and headed up, leaving our new friend with tank full of air and a dive to finish. But in any event, he was our buddy now.

We finned up, drifted up and over the rail and began to explore the wreck. As we finned slowly toward the stern, I remembered all the warnings I had read in training about diving with an unknown buddy. Everything I had been taught and every article I’d read said “bad idea”. All those warnings had, of course, assumed that you’d have a chance to say “no”.

Despite my misgivings, the stranger seemed to be pretty competent – good buoyancy, calm breathing, and he seemed to know every nook and cranny of the wreck. As he sank below the deck through a large hole, I noticed that his fins were well worn, and trailing threads of weed. “Probably a good sign”, I thought. “At least he’s been diving for a while.”

Valerie and I had agreed to start up the line with 1000 pounds of air. At 1200 I signalled a return to the bow, and she nodded. I turned to our third buddy, but he was already moving toward the line, where he stopped and waited for us.

The three of us began our ascent together, Valerie and I holding the rope, and our companion rising with us. I noticed as we slowly rose that our companion’s mask was of as old as his fins, with frayed straps and a single, oval lens. It appeared to be lightly fogged…his features were indistinct. But the light was fading fast, and the water seemed to be growing chillier.

We reached the knot that marked fifteen feet and looked down for the diver. He was about five feet below, gazing up towards us. He flashed an “OK” sign, and then, to my surprise, began to sink back toward the wreck. Nonplussed, Valerie and I looked at each other. She had about 200 psi more than me in her tank, and gestured that I should head up while she followed our buddy down to see what was wrong. But before she could begin her descent, the diver shook his head emphatically, pointed at us both, and gestured a forceful “thumbs up.” Then he sank and disappeared down into the dark.

They hadn’t taught us that one in our open water basic, but we both reacted with the same instinct…get to the surface, and tell the people on his dive boat.

But to our surprise, when we reached the surface, the other boat was gone.

We clambered aboard and I explained to Mike that there was a diver, apparently alone, still on the wreck. At the words “diver down” Mike reached for his BC and tank and began to slip them on. Then he paused and looked at me.

“Did you happen to notice what sort of equipment he was wearing?”

“I don’t know,” I said, surprised. “Older stuff. Pretty beat up. A really old mask, oval shaped. Look, do you want us to go back down too? I’ve still got…”

“It’s okay,” said Mike quietly, gazing over the side and down into the water. “It’s okay. I know that diver. It’ll be all right.” He slipped his BC off and slumped down onto the seat.

“What do you mean, okay?” Valerie was angry. “He’s still down there. We thought he was with that other boat, but they must have left him here. Aren’t we going to…”

“Look out here,” said Mike. ”Look hard”. He pointed at the surface around the buoy.

“Do you see any bubbles?”

The water was still and flat as a gray mirror. There were no bubbles anywhere.

“It happened about ten years ago”

Mike was speaking very quietly.

“I brought the two of them out here. Married couple. She was nervous. She had just done her open water, but you could tell she wasn’t into it. He was pushing her to do it, though. He kept looking at her like not doing that dive would be the end of the world, and it would all be her fault. So they went down. I shouldn’t have let them, but it was a big group, and I figured they’d be okay.”

He stopped for a moment. Valerie put her hand on his shoulder.

“Everyone else came up, and I started to get worried about them. I went down and found her below the deck. Her spare reg was tangled up in some timber. I guess she panicked, and he wasn’t close enough to help her. I brought her up and got her on the boat. We cut her suit off and I tried CPR, but she was gone.”

“Oh, my God,” said Valerie softly. “That’s horrible”

“Yeah.” Mike took a deep breath. “They found one of his gloves near the wreck, and they found him a day later, about a mile downriver in some weeds. The autopsy said heart attack. I think he lost her on the wreck and was trying to get back to her. If he had just been there…with her…”

He shook his head, then glanced at us.

“A few divers have seen him since. Always couples. And always in October.”

Valerie and I held each other all the way back to the dock. There was no conversation on the boat; we unloaded in silence, and no-one suggested beer and pizza.

We haven’t been back to that wreck.