Welcome to another edition of Diving Gone Wrong. In this video, we're gonna go over three stories involving diving or water with each one progressively more horrifying than the last. I have to warn you, the final story has an event in it that is as close to an actual nightmare as I've ever covered on this channel.
With that said, viewer discretion is advised. [music] An hour north of Charlotte, North Carolina is a long concrete dam that spans the length of the Catawba River known as the Oxford Dam. Completed all the way back in 1927, it's 10 or so large sluice gates control the flow of water downstream and are responsible for the water level in the manmade Lake Hickory.
With it being the age that it is and it supplying the surrounding area with water and power, it was in need of some maintenance in April of 1998. So on the 16th, the three-person dive team arrived at the dam to seal off leaks on valves that were thought to be letting too much water through. Before they entered the water, the team was told by plant workers that the valves were in the closed position.
This is essential to ensure the divers weren't sucked into any pipes by the massive suction force that they create. But after the first dive was conducted, the diver reported that he thought the valves were in the open position after all. This was then verified by the plant workers.
So from the get-go, there was either some miscommunication, or the position of the valves wasn't even actually checked. The diver returned to the surface and a winch was started to close the large gate valve. Then, the plant workers and the dive team all took turns cranking the winch manually to slowly close it.
One of the dive team members was the last person on the crank, and the team then asked the plant workers if it was actually closed this time because the indicator showed that it was still open. The plant workers told them that the indicator never showed fully closed, so instead, just crank the handle until it doesn't turn anymore. After that point was reached, the plant workers told the dive team supervisor that there was still a serious leak and that the diver should be really careful.
This was relayed to the diver, and then the supervisor also told him to take his time and not take any chances. They had plenty of time and could figure out a different approach if this was unsafe. The diver then got on his helmet and harness attached to a long umbilical and entered the water.
He then started swimming to the valve down a large pipe stem. All of a sudden, he screamed out over and over on the radio that the current was taking him. The supervisor called back to him, but right away, the line was dead.
The team all pulled on the umbilical line, and when it reached the surface, they found that the end that was attached to the diver had broken off of his harness. This umbilical had all of his communication lines and his air hose that needed to be attached to his helmet for him to breathe. The plant workers immediately cycled the gates open, hoping that he might be flushed out to the other side, but there was no trace of the diver.
Eventually, rescue divers arrived and both teams worked together to figure out a plan to find him before it was too late. The other two divers searched briefly while being cautious of the powerful suction force, but they also found nothing. Eventually, all of the valves were closed completely, allowing the plant workers to unbolt several gates for the rescue divers to enter.
And finally, over 12 hours after the line was broken, they managed to get deep inside a lower chamber of the plant and found the missing diver. Unfortunately, he had drowned hours earlier when his helmet was first attached. Thankfully, there was no tearing on his wetsuit or any other damage to his helmet, so he hadn't been forcefully sucked through any small openings.
But they did find that his lifeline connection was still attached with a small amount of rope. The connection between that rope and the main line was missing a small thimble that might have otherwise prevented the rope from breaking apart. But unfortunately, after it broke, the diver was sucked into a fully open valve and down into one of the large tubes.
Those final moments in the darkness inside of the dam must have been terrifying to say the least. The dam is still operational to this day. When Maddy was seven years old and her cousin, Alysa, was nine years old, the two of them went to a local swimming pool with some family of theirs.
In total, it was each of their moms, Maddy's newborn sister, and her two stepbrothers who were quite a bit older. At the time, neither of them knew how to swim so they were using those little arm floaties to float around in the pool instead. After a couple of hours of playing around and swimming, they were tired, so they both got out to have a snack.
That day as well, it was a bit cold for a summer day, so they happened to be the only family that was at the swimming pool. Upon seeing the two kids get out and no other families using the pool, the lifeguard on duty decided it was the perfect time to take a break and put up an off-duty sign on the lifeguard chair. A few moments later, Maddy's stepbrothers dove back into the pool even though the lifeguard wasn't there because they were older and could swim with no problem.
Alysa's mom then told the two young girls that they had about 15 more minutes, and then they would be leaving for the day. Maddy and Alysa really wanted to try the hot tub before they left, so the two of them finished their snack and then walked over to where the tub was in the courtyard. They stood at the edge for a second and looked into the bubbling water and decided it would be fun if they both jumped in at the same time.
Then, they took a few steps back, counted to three, and then they took a running jump right into the middle of the tub. And just as Maddy hit the water, she realized they had both taken off their floaties and sunk right to the bottom of the tub. And even worse, right as they jumped in, Maddy's baby sister started crying, diverting their mom's attention.
Then, because everyone else was packing and the two older boys were swimming, it was too loud for anyone to notice the violent splashing now coming from the hot tub. Maddy screamed under the water, but no sound escaped to the surface. Hot tubs aren't usually all that deep, and neither was this one, but the two girls were not big for their age.
Standing straight up, their heads were still below the water surface, and in their panic, they were so focused on gasping for air and pushing off from the bottom that they couldn't grab the walls or the sides or move towards the edges where they would've been safe. In addition, because they'd never tried to swim before, not only did they have no idea what to do, all of the bubbles bubbling in the water made it even more difficult for them to stay afloat. In just a few seconds of panic, Maddy and Alysa went into complete survival mode and were doing anything and everything to get to the water's surface.
This included fighting each other. Just a few seconds earlier, Alysa was Maddy's cousin, and the two of them were laughing and playing. But now, she was just an obstacle in the way of her survival, and Alysa, without realizing it, felt the exact same way.
The two of them began shoving each other deeper, trying to get levered to get their heads out of the water. They clawed and pulled and hit each other, desperately trying to climb each other's sinking bodies to survive. But because Alysa was a bit older and bigger, Maddy started to lose the struggle.
She fought harder than she'd ever fought in her entire life, but against her will, her limbs got slower and weaker. Soon, all she could see were the bubbles and the color of Alysa's bathing suit as she went limp in the hot tub, and Alysa continued to thrash around on top of her. She even started to kick her head down toward the bottom of the tub as her lungs spasmed, and all she saw was the dark bottom of the tub.
She was just moments away from losing consciousness when an arm reached in and pulled each of them out of the tub and then onto the concrete. One of Maddy's stepbrothers had realized that he didn't see either of the two younger girls and found them with just seconds left before it was too late. As soon as he pulled them out of the pool, he started slapping their backs and pushing on their chest, and the two of them coughed up an unbelievable amount of water between huge breaths of air.
When they were finally able to breathe again, instead of speaking, they just sobbed. For a long while after, Maddy coughed and coughed and her stomach burned from all the chlorine water she had swallowed. Before leaving that day, the two girls looked at each other without speaking and mutually acknowledged that each other was sorry, but also realized that just moments earlier, they were completely ready to drown one another for a single breath.
It was just sort of understood that in that moment, they weren't who they were - there was only life or death. And it wouldn't be until years later that Maddy fully appreciated the complexity of the situation. Incredibly though, not long after the incident, Maddy started taking swimming lessons and wasn't afraid of the water, but was always cautious not to let other people swim too close to her.
1978 was a bad year for oil production in the North Sea for the Beryl Alpha oil platform. And because of this decline in production from previous years, the oil company that owned the platform made the decision to continue performing dive operations over the course of the winter. The hope was that by taking advantage of short periods of good weather, they could catch up on all sorts of maintenance and improvements to increase the platform's production.
So on the 26th of November, a ship known as the Star Canopus was dynamically positioned on the northeast side of the platform in preparation for work to begin. The crew's task was to attach some sections of pipe far down in the platform's legs at a depth of 334 feet or 102 meters underwater. Now, for a job this deep, scuba divers can't just swim down, complete the task, and then come back up.
The decompression time would be way too much for it to be practical. So instead, they would be using something known as a dive bell. In case you've missed some of my other diving videos, a dive bell is a metal chamber divers can live in that is pressurized to the same depth as the depth they need to work at.
This is so that divers don't need to go through a long decompression after each shift. Instead, they'll live and work out of the dive bell for up to a month until the job is done, and then they'll just do one long decompression stop at the end of the job. It's much more practical this way, but this also means that divers have to live in these cramped dive bells in pretty rough conditions.
They're essentially just a small one-room chamber with some beds, food, and a few other creature comforts resting on the ocean floor or suspended off of the ocean floor. For the depth of this job, the dive bell was gonna be suspended about 60 feet or 18 meters off of the ocean floor by the Star Canopus on the surface, Obviously, the ship needs to be relatively stable to keep the bell suspended and the divers are close to where the work is being completed. So the Star Canopus was fitted with a state-of-the-art dynamic positioning system.
This system automatically adjusts the ship's throttle and direction to maintain its position in the water and keep the dive bell in one spot. But crucially, despite the system being state of the art, it was rated for a maximum of up to 20-knot winds coming from the broad side of the ship. That day, the weather was forecasted to have gusts of up to 40 knots in the evening, so the crew was prepared to stop operations at any moment and return to the bell to be retrieved from depth.
Right at around 8:30 PM, squalls of 40 knots started gusting in and battered the ship around, forcing the captain to end operations. Divers then returned to the bell and waited for conditions to improve, and at around midnight, at the 12-hour shift change between divers, the weather improved and the captain ordered for work to continue. The weather was expected to worsen again the following day, so this might be their only window in a 48-hour period.
In fact, even when they started working again, conditions weren't great with gusts between 15 and 20 knots. Finally, at 2:40 AM, the bell was launched again from the ship and slowly lowered to the operational depth of 334 feet (102 m) and to the base of the massive Beryl Alpha platform legs which extend all the way to the ocean floor. About half an hour later, the two divers inside, Tony and Michael, were ready to begin work and Michael was gonna take first shift.
The bottom of the hatch of the bell was then opened. Michael put on his dive helmet which had a long umbilical attached to it for gas and power to power his lights, and then he dropped into the freezing cold, pitch-black water. You have to remember - at this depth, the light from the surface has already decreased, but that didn't even matter because it was nighttime anyway.
So all he had were the lights from the bell and the lights in his helmet that just get swallowed up by the dark water. Any fish or other creatures in that area would be hidden from him unless they swam close enough to disturb the water around him. This makes an already difficult job even that much more uncomfortable.
Michael then moved his way over to the protruding section of pipe to begin working, but just eight minutes into his dive, the captain called down to have him return because of incoming squalls. He returned to the bell and waited inside for 40 minutes until the wind died down, and then he got back to work at around 4:00 AM. This time, he was able to work solidly for another hour and a half until the wind changed directions and began blowing from the north at 40 knots.
With the direction the ship was facing, this broad side of the ship have overpowered the dynamic positioning system. Ordinarily, the captain could take control briefly and keep the ship in place until the gust passed, but this was a sustained 40 knots, forcing the captain to sound the alarm for the divers to return to the bell. This alarm reached the dive control room, which then communicated this down to the divers, and Michael immediately returned to the bell once again.
He pulled himself into the chamber and took off his helmet while Tony started reeling in his long umbilical cord. As far as the divers were concerned, they had responded quickly and they were safe inside the bell. Unfortunately, conditions on the surface have gotten so bad that the wind blew the Star Canopus into the overhang edge of the platform.
This impact snapped the ship's mast off which then slammed into the deck below. It was also causing the ship to be pushed towards another floating platform beside the Beryl Alpha, known as the Haakon Magnus. As the wind continued to batter the ship, the captain desperately tried to swing the bow away from the legs of the Haakon to avoid scraping the hull against the legs and potentially damaging the ship.
He also initiated the dive abort alarm, meaning that it was officially time to pull the dive bell up. Conditions were much too severe to continue. This alarm was picked up by dive control and then communicated down to divers below, but something was preventing the divers from sealing the bell's hatch.
The captain called dive control again and asked what was going on. They needed to pull the bell up right away, but dive control explained to him that something was preventing them from sealing the bell. Dive control then contacted the two divers and learned from them that in all of the movement, the umbilical had wrapped around something in the water before they could pull it in fully - essentially blocking the hatch from being closed.
With how desperate the situation was, Michael suggested diving out quickly to unhook it, but dive control strictly forbid him from leaving. It was just way too dangerous. He could get separated from the bell in the high winds, leaving him stranded at 300 feet (91.
4 m) under the ocean. Instead, dive control told them to throw the helmet into the water and then try pulling it back out and see if the umbilical might become unstuck. They did this, but it was still snagged, and by then, the captain called down again and asked what was going on.
This time, dive control called down to the men and told them to just cut the cord. It was time to abandon the umbilical. Just then, the dive bell smashed into the base of the platform because of the movement of the Star Canopus.
Incredibly, this would actually jiggle the umbilical enough for the divers to seal the hatch. And as soon as they did, they called up to let dive control know they were ready to be pulled up. Right away, the bell started being lifted and dive control watched the men inside the chamber.
From their monitor feed, they watched Tony call at the depth as they were being pulled up. 300 feet, 270 feet, 240, as they were getting closer and closer to the safety of the ship. At 98 feet (30 m), Michael stood up and waved his fist in the air and shouted all stop.
Right away, dive control stopped the ascent and watched the monitor closely. It looked as though Michael was listening to something, and then they realized what he was hearing. From the control room, they had a clear view down to the bell's umbilical and guide wires, and saw that they were leaning towards the bow of the ship.
These should have been hanging straight down. The trolley they were hanging from was also shaking and vibrating violently, and then all of a sudden, the video feed went dead. In the wind, the ship had blown across the anchor chain of the Haakon Magnus.
Unlike the Beryl Alpha, the Haakon was anchored by large chains extended out from the legs at an angle. As the bell crossed over the chain, the cable snapped and and severed all of the connections to the Star Canopus, causing the bell to plummet to the ocean floor. This included all of their life support systems.
300 feet later, the bell slammed into the ocean floor in complete darkness. They now had no light, no heat, and no way to get in contact with the Star Canopus. Amazingly, the men survived the initial fall, which could have been fatal all on its own, but with their hot water supply disconnected, their only source of heat was now gone.
The North Sea is not a warm body of water, especially in November. So the temperature inside the bell started to drop rapidly. On the surface, the Star Canopus was already in rough position because of the wind and ensuing waves.
They now had to try to locate a relatively small metal object on the ocean floor in complete darkness. The bell also had no lights or positioning system on it, so the search would have to be done manually by vision alone. And if they didn't work quickly, the men inside would soon freeze to death.
And inside of the dive bell, the men also came to a horrifying realization. Dive bells usually have something known as a clump weight attached to them to keep them negatively buoyant to counteract the buoyancy of the air inside the chamber. In emergencies, the clump weight can be detached, allowing the bell to float to the surface.
But the specific bell they were in had secondary locking pins on the exterior of the bell. The hatch to exit the bell was on the bottom, which was now firmly planted into the seabed, preventing them from exiting and detaching the clump weight. This meant they were completely powerless until they were found by the surface team, slowly freezing to death in a dark metal chamber on the ocean floor.
And tragically, they wouldn't be found until it was too late. The men might have been frozen by the time the bell was first spotted around four hours after it sank to the bottom, but they were officially pronounced dead when it was finally raised from the ocean floor a full of 13 hours later. When it was finally raised, the bottom hatch opened and Tony's body fell out and floated to the surface.
As a result of this, Michael's death was ruled as a result of hypothermia, whereas Tony's was as a result of hypothermia and drowning. Dive bells now come equipped with flashing strobe lights to locate them more easily as well as a transponder to determine their exact location. Thank you all so much for watching.
As a reminder, there is a Scary Interesting Subreddit for story suggestions. I'm also accepting subscriber-submitted stories if you've had anything happen to you that you think might fit the channel. Feel free to submit those directly to the email found in the description.
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And once again, thank you so much for watching, and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
