Kip Powick Posted January 12, 2005 Share Posted January 12, 2005 The airline referred to is Cathay Pacific and the Captain was a friend of a good friend of mine, who presently flys for Cathay. Cave diver's last wish Attempt to recover body goes horribly wrong January 10, 2005 Johannesburg: "If something goes wrong, leave me down there. I want my final resting place to be in Boesmansgat." The meaning of world record diver Dave Shaw's instructions to his team on Friday night was clear: he knew there was a real chance he would not survive his attempt to recover the remains of another diver from the 271 metre-deep Boesmansgat cave near Dani‘lskuil in the Northern Cape, the third-deepest freshwater cave in the world. Shaw also said specifically that should he not return, no divers should follow his example and risk their lives in trying to recover his body. Tragically, Saturday's meticulously-planned dive went horribly wrong and Shaw failed to return from the bed of the cave. What exactly happened to him will probably never be known. Australian-born Shaw, 50, a Hong Kong-based airline pilot, had found the body of Deon Dreyer, 20, on October 28 last year, when he clinched the record for the deepest cave dive using special rebreathing equipment. When he returned to the surface, he promised Dreyer's parents, Theo and Marie, he would go down again and fetch the remains of their son, who had died in the cave on December 17, 1994. Technical diver Derek Hughes, a member of the recovery team, said that on the night before the dive, there had been a team meeting where the final preparations were outlined. "If something goes wrong," Shaw had told the team, "leave me down there. I want my final resting place to be in Boesmansgat." Before the dive began in the early hours of Saturday, Shaw had pulled Hughes aside and given him the number of a friend overseas. "He told me that if anything went wrong, I should phone this person who would then break the bad news to Dave's wife in Hong Kong." The plan was for Shaw to dive to the bottom of the cave, where he would place Dreyer's legs in a body bag before cutting him free of his equipment and placing the rest of the body in the bag. He would then take the body up to the 220m level, where his number two man, Don Shirley, would take the body to a third diver at 150m while he began the long, slow process of decompression at 220m. Shirley would have begun his decompression at the 150m level while the third diver took the body to the next man up, and so on until the body bag reached the surface around 7.30am. But Shaw never returned from the bottom. At a dive briefing on Friday, Shirley said he was "Robin to Dave's Batman". "I'll be watching my watch closely, and if I don't see him coming towards me after six minutes then we abort the plan to fetch Deon and Dave becomes the priority. I will go after him." As it turned out, that is exactly what happened - and Shirley nearly also lost his life in the process. As he went down to look for his friend, the water pressure at 250m crushed critical components of his equipment and he was forced to turn back. About 10am on Saturday, three hours after Shaw went into the water, Hughes made the telephone call he had promised Shaw he would. Police diver Theo van Eeden was supposed to have surfaced with Deon Dreyer's body and handed it over to Theo and Marie Dreyer, who were at the site with their minister. "Marie was tense. She was looking at me in this determined way when I surfaced. I looked at her and I just shook my head. "I think the family was massively disappointed. But they didn't know at the time that something had gone horribly wrong," Van Eeden explained. Theo and Marie Dreyer had travelled to Boesmansgat to find closure - instead, the person who went to fetch their son's corpse didn't come back. A family friend said the Dreyers were devastated. Shaw had become a friend - and they were racked with guilt. But Hughes said Shaw, who had been an explorer who pushed the boundaries, had known the risks involved. "A few minutes after he surfaced on October 28, when he found Deon's body, he told me that he wanted to go down and fetch it. He hadn't ever met the parents. They didn't ask him to do it; he offered. Now victim and recoverer are lying side by side. "This expedition was more than retrieving a body. Sure, it was part of it, but he came here because it was another cave adventure. He was passionate about diving." Another of the divers, Peter Herbst, said: "As long as there are deep holes, there will be people like us who will want to go explore them. "There's a little boy in each of us and Dave was drawn to the adventure aspect of diving." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kip Powick Posted January 12, 2005 Author Share Posted January 12, 2005 Website and photo of the deceased diver. Captain Shaw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAYDAY Posted January 12, 2005 Share Posted January 12, 2005 Sorry to hear about the loss of your friend Kip. It sure looks like Dave lived his life to the fullest during his time on earth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st27 Posted January 12, 2005 Share Posted January 12, 2005 Did I read 271 metres???? Unbeleivable!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warren Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Sad conclusion to this story in today's (the 14th) Globe. Don't know how to post the URL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfhunter Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto.../BNStory/Front/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kip Powick Posted January 14, 2005 Author Share Posted January 14, 2005 Good in one way, in that the bodies of the deceased were recovered but very sad in another. I'm sticking to "sport" diving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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