This film contains some strong language
I've lost comms to Diver 2.
We're losing one of my divers here.
Won't move, it won't move.
Where is he at now?
Slack to 2.
We're running out of time here.
I can't move up, I can't move up.
Slack 2.
We can't give you any slack.
It's stuck.
Hang in there, buddy.
It won't move.
Bridge, you've got to get us back over there.
RADIO: Topaz, Topaz, Topaz, Aberdeen Marine Control.
What's your position? Over.
Aberdeen Control, we are 64 miles northeast of you,
heading for oilfield block 22/14b. Over.
Thank you, Topaz. Update when on job. Over.
Ah. Four in. Hiya, Rob.
How are you doing, sir? How are you doing, Chris?
Yeah, good, mate. Yeah, hi, Ali. Chris, you all right, mate?
Good, thanks. Just noticed you've got that. Yeah, sorry!
It's... Yeah, Morag wanted a bit of a tour of the ship.
Good day, yeah. Good morning!
Mustard's always worth having.
Let's see if we get him...
That's Jimmy Kyle from the Black Isle.
HE LAUGHS
Might have to edit this one out.
So I know I like to make out that life on board's pretty spartan,
so what I'm about to show you is obviously going to dispel that,
unfortunately, because behind me...
..is a bona-fide sauna.
Behind door number two, believe it or not...
..sunbed.
When Christopher went offshore,
we enjoyed sending videos to one another.
We've got a new calf on the croft today, isn't it beautiful?
That's the big news, big news from home.
Hi, guys.
It gave us a little part of each other,
we could share in each other's lives while we were apart...
..and it reassured us that we were both happy.
ALL: # We wish you a merry Christmas
# We wish you a merry Christmas
# And a happy New Year! #
Merry Christmas, Lemons!
SHE GIGGLES
It was a really, really exciting time in our life.
Did you get the little sign?
It's gorgeous.
We were due to be married in April of that year.
We were building a house at that time too.
Enjoying that?
LAUGHTER
Beep-beep!
And I had started a new job as the head teacher
of the local primary school.
We had so many plans for the future.
It was wonderful.
OK, I think we're running. Hi, Morag.
Six lads sleeping in there,
but it looks like the lights are all off in there.
And what you can actually see on the outside there is the little camera
they use to monitor us, and that's pointing into the toilet,
so they can watch us have a shower.
Think what you will.
I had a good understanding of Christopher's work.
All of these tunnels,
gasses and depths.
Christopher often described it as...
..going into space but under water.
Nice to see you. Yes. See you in 28 days.
Yeah, thanks, mate. Yeah.
So this is the moment of truth when we get on board,
when we check the board to see who we're going to be in sat with,
cos that can pretty much make or break your trip.
That's the two other people you're going to be spending the next month
locked in a tin can with, so...
And see if you can see at the same time as me.
Yep, Team 3, Chris Lemons, Dave Yuasa, Duncan Allcock. OK.
David Yuasa interview.
B call mark.
Hi, Dave. Hi.
There's some people that you get on great with,
other people that you don't get on well with,
and no-one wants to be in with a knob.
Duncan, I knew very well.
I'd worked with him over the years quite a few times.
He's got a very good reputation on the boat.
You do have to be a certain breed to work in an RV -
slightly unhinged, erm, a little bit abnormal.
You don't have problems, they have solutions.
Certainly the guys that I've worked with...
..are one of a kind.
Dave's a very cool guy.
He doesn't get stressed, he doesn't get anxious.
Very, very logical,
but keeps himself to himself.
I'm not famed at work for being a particularly emotional person.
I think a Vulcan is how a few people have described me.
Chris was relatively new, I'd not dived with him.
But I think he'd dived with Duncan quite a few times
and Duncan was his sat daddy.
That sounds weird now I've said it out loud!
I was there for Chris's first sat
and then we did four sats in a row after that together.
The bond you get with that is massive.
I got to know him very, very well.
He was a very amiable guy.
I had a little word with Duncan, said, "What is this Chris guy like?"
And I got the thumbs up and I was happy to go in with him.
RADIO: Staff control, we're six hours away from the job.
This is Ivor, he's suffering from aches and pains,
bruising, joint discomfort, skin numbness sensations.
All right, boys?
As you can see, there's not a huge deal of space.
Probably only half a foot or so between the bunks down here.
Dunc's in there getting his ready.
And then this is the living end.
Got sort of benches and a bit of a table.
One of very few portholes we've got,
so that's pretty much the only sight of the outside world
that you'd have.
So I've got crawl through these little tunnels
to get from place to place.
And down this way is what we call the wet pot,
so I'll just push that door.
Basically, the toilet and the shower room,
so various ablutions and that kind of thing.
Yeah, if I stand my full height,
there's absolutely everything I can knock my head on,
it's a real pain for me as well.
I've always got gashes all over me.
And the magic of it is...
..once you've done the full circuit, you're back to...
You're back to where you started and a cup of tea. Cup of tea.
And a cup of tea, yeah. Mind my chocolate stash.
CHRIS LAUGHS
That's ridiculous, Duncan. How much have you got in there?
Just a bar for every day. A bar for every day!
I've only started just to check them out, yeah.
I'm glad I'm in with you.
OK, lads, if everyone's ready, we'll go for blowdown.
OK, lads, we'll stop and check for leaks.
SPRAYING
On this particular job, we were working at 100 metres,
so they pump into the chamber the equivalent pressure
of 100 metres of water in heliox,
which is a mix of helium and oxygen,
and then we are effectively at an equal pressure to the seabed.
That's the seal confirmed.
I'll continue with the blowdown.
HIGH-PITCHED VOICE:
As soon as you get a breath of helium gas,
you start speaking with a squeaky voice.
OK, cheers.
The first 30 seconds is always quite humorous.
After that, the novelty wears off.
OK, lads, we've reached depth. Blowdown over.
RADIO CHATTER
Sat is a very odd environment to live in.
There's very little privacy.
Your whole world seems to shrink to the size of the system.
Living in sat is extremely intense.
I think everybody copes with it differently.
Most divers have got two personas.
They've got their work persona and their home persona.
At home, I'm David, a father of three.
And Dave is a professional diver.
He, erm...
He's responsible only for the job in hand.
Chris was definitely a little more anxious.
Not been sat diving long.
Trying to make that he's keeping up with everybody else,
that he has got all the right equipment,
that he's not going to embarrass himself,
but very conscious that people are watching his every move.
Quite a lot of pressure.
He wanted to look good for everybody.
He wanted to be a good diver.
The best diver.
Before I got into sat diving,
I always kind of looked at the North Sea as the premiership of diving.
There's a lot of DSVs there,
there's a lot of diving going on there.
And this particular job, the field we were working at
was about 12 hours' steam away from Aberdeen,
so that puts you pretty much in the middle of the North Sea.
The North Sea can be unpredictable
and the weather wasn't very good at the time.
The boat was moving around a fair bit.
The North Sea is definitely one of the most dangerous environments
in the world.
The water temperature is four degrees on the seabed...
..which is a killer.
MORAG: I realised there's dangers in the job, I realised that.
But Chris would reassure me continually that he would be safe.
That he wasn't in harm's way.
I thought that he was happy in his saturation tank.
So, no, I didn't ever worry.
RADIO: Aberdeen Control, Aberdeen Control,
this is Topaz. Over.
RADIO: Go ahead, Topaz. Over.
We are on oilfield block 22/14b.
Holding to start work immediately, over and out.
Ready? Yeah, I'm ready.
OK. Everything is on zero.
One, four, five, six running, OK?
That's all thrusters in DP mode.
You have two GPSs selected for the reference systems. Yep.
RADIO CHATTER
OK, Captain, we are on DP now.
OK, boys, five minutes' notice to getting in the bell.
Well, the divers are my puppets,
I'm the conductor of a small band.
They are my hands and my feet...
..and they essentially do what I ask them to do.
When the divers are in the water,
I am the most important person on the vessel,
and everyone will defer to me.
OK, first man entering the bell.
Duncan was the bellman, he wouldn't be diving that night.
He'd be in the bell, looking after the divers.
Dave Yuasa was Diver 1,
and Chris Lemons was Diver 2.
Bridge, that's bell off the system at 20.13.
20.13.
OK, boys, taking you down now.
Bridge, that's bell left surface at 20.21.
Thank you, coming through now.
Reached working depths of 90 meters.
When you're lifting the helmet onto the diver's head,
you look into their eyes, you can then see if the diver's happy
or frightened out of his wits,
because you can see more white than eyes.
At no point that evening was Chris anxious.
He was raring to go.
He wanted to prove that he was as good as everybody else.
Got something, mate.
Press the leaks, Chris.
That's Diver 2 in the water at 20...
That's you on onboard graphs, Chris.
Duncan, Diver 2's umbilical.
When the diver is out of the barrel, he is completely reliant
on his umbilical.
It gives him his hot water which he needs to keep him warm.
Gives him gas to breathe
and also lighting and communication with the surface.
It is literally your lifeline.
Diver 2, that's you clear to drop off the bell.
Dropping off the bell is one of my favourite parts of diving.
I love the feeling of weightlessness.
You're effectively flying down to the seabed.
If your visibility's bad,
you really don't know what you're dropping into...
..or when you're going to be landing.
It's a dark and confusing place to be on the seabed.
It can be extremely easy to get lost.
Diver 2, the job should be 30 metres to your northwest.
The umbilical is your physical tether to the boat.
And if you ever need to get back to the bell,
you will follow your umbilical.
That's your route back to safety.
In the dark, it's almost harder to get to the job than to do the job.
The seabed plays tricks on you.
The first ten minutes is quite a stressful time.
I notice it in their breathing.
Bridge, both divers on the job at 20.49.
The structure we're working on is called a manifold.
Inside there, you've got a number of wells.
The oil will come up out of the ground
and from there it gets piped off to a platform.
The job in hand was going to be to remove a piece of pipework...
..and we were going to float in a new piece into its place.
When you're working with divers, you are almost reaching
through the screen and turning the knobs for them.
You do get emotionally involved with them.
You feel their successes and failures in the water.
Then, basically, you see your A and B?
We're opening and closing them in a sequence to do a pressure test.
Once you've got your divers on the job,
as bellman you can relax a bit more.
See what I've got in me sandwiches for half-time.
There's never a day I go to work and I don't enjoy it.
My first inspirations for diving...
..were definitely from watching Jacques Cousteau on the TV...
..and thinking, "That is exactly what I would like to do."
Visiting coral reefs.
Swimming along with all the animals.
It just looked absolutely superb.
It was a dream for me to be a diver and...
..go under the sea.
And, er, Dave, you keep working. All right. Go ahead. Shut it.
Christopher came to diving a little bit later in life.
He was looking for direction.
So we're reading no leaks.
Diving was something that was extremely passionate about.
I would never have considered asking Christopher to take
a different career path. Never.
That's what he wanted to do.
That's what he was passionate about.
If I was as passionate about a job like that as Christopher was,
then I wouldn't want anyone to stop me,
so I definitely wouldn't stop him.
That night the weather was not good.
There's an 18-foot swell, 35 knots of wind.
We were on the limits of diving.
But it wasn't undiveable.
Weather was rough but the North Sea - nothing special.
It was perfectly safe...
..if you can call this job safe.
It's not. Come on, it's not a safe job, yeah, so...
I was in charge for controlling DP computer.
Keeping vessel in an exact position.
So divers can be safe in the water.
At this moment, vessel will steady.
And then it started.
ALARM BLARES
I saw alarm which I never seen before.
Immediately after this alarm, more faults coming one by one.
We have really big problem because we are losing control of the vessel.
We are losing position.
The bridge gave me an amber light.
Its suddenness and the immediacy of his voice told me
that this wasn't a normal amber light.
Leave everything there. Leave everything there, Chris.
So I wanted my divers back on this bell as quickly as possible.
Get out of the structure, boys.
Go for the bell, Diver 1. Diver 2, come up when you can.
Stand by to come on, Diver 1 and Diver 2.
Roger that. No problem.
In a series of seconds, we had a red light.
I have never had a red light.
The bridge had lost control of the vessel and its navigational system,
so it will drift with the weather and as soon
as we got to that stage, it was a sailboat.
I was surprised at how quickly the ship moved.
It rapidly picked up speed.
Because we had no control over the ship,
we had no control of what was happening on the bottom.
Divers were still connected to the bell
and bell connected to the vessel,
so basically we can drag the diver.
It's the worst scenario which DP on diving support vessel can expect.
Go back underneath the bell.
When we came out of the structure, I was expecting the bell
to be basically in front of me over here.
I could tell from the root of my umbilical that in fact it was now
behind me and the manifold itself was in between me and the bell.
They had to climb their umbilicals up the side of the structure,
traverse across the top and climb their umbilicals back to the bell
for their safe haven.
But the structure was the obstacle that they had to clear.
Climb up onto the structure, boys.
When I was nearly at the top, I noticed that Chris didn't seem
to be going any further.
I could tell something was wrong.
Chris had a loop of umbilical wrapped around the structure.
He was trapped.
It started to get tighter and tighter.
I've never seen umbilical this tight.
Chris could see the tension in it.
He was asking for slack out of the bell. He couldn't get the slack
out of the bell because the ship kept moving away.
Chris, we cannot give you any slack.
We've got an enormous ship, 120 metres long by 20 metres wide,
being pushed by 35 knots of wind...
..and Chris was our anchor on the other end.
I didn't see a scenario where he was going to get out of this.
Chris's umbilical went so tight that he actually started
pulling his stainless-steel umbilical rack off the wall.
I was shitting myself.
I was literally waiting for the inevitable - just to all go
through the hole in the floor -
and if I got between it and the hole, I would be going out with it.
Chris, you've got to clear that umbilical yourself.
I'm trying to make my way back to Chris to help him.
We're maybe less than two metres apart.
The visibility's good enough that we can look
into each other's faces.
I can see that he's in trouble.
But that's now me at the end of my umbilical...
..and I can't get to him.
His umbilical is getting thinner.
I can hear it creaking.
HIGH-PITCHED CREAKING
It's the noise that something makes before it breaks.
Trying to move.
Last comm to Diver 2.
As I was getting pulled away from Chris, it was almost
like watching a film.
And that was the last I saw of him.
METALLIC RIPPING
And I could hear his umbilical ripping...
..as the strands in the umbilical broke one by one.
Bridge, I've lost all eyes on the job.
There was nothing I could do now to help Chris.
There was no way of getting back to him at that point.
I turn around and start climbing back to the bell.
There's a lot of resistance.
It felt like I was climbing back through a river.
I don't think I was thinking too hard
about the tragedy that was unfolding.
At that point my priority was to get back to the bell
and look after my safety.
I'm worried that maybe I'm going to get pulled
into another structure down there.
And I knew that if I got caught up in one of them,
it would have made a very, very bad situation a lot worse.
I was hoping I was pulling Chris in but, in my heart of hearts,
I knew I wasn't.
Erm...I knew there was nothing on the end.
Hot water hose came in first.
Broken and tattered at the end.
And I had another couple of wraps of umbilical to pull in
before a broken end of his gas hose came in.
WHOOSHING
Now that is making quite an immense noise.
WHOOSHING CONTINUES
I put my hand on the regulator to turn it off.
You'd never ever turn a diver's gas off when he's in the water.
It's tantamount to killing him.
I did feel as though I was letting Chris down.
That was the end of his lifeline to the bell.
I, erm, I could've cried at that point.
I didn't know whether to be sick, cry, whatever.
I just shouted, "I've lost my diver! I've lost my diver!"
And, er, I didn't know what was happening to Dave,
so I had to be sensible and pull myself back together.
I got back onto the stage underneath the bell
and I waited there.
That's when I had a little bit more time to think
about what had happened and what was going to happen.
In air diving, you've always got the option of being able to swim up
to the surface, but in sat diving, the only place you can go,
literally the only place you can go...
..is the bell.
Normally you're connected to the bell by your umbilical,
but he's got no umbilical.
The bell isn't anywhere near him.
He's got no options at all.
I knew he was out there on his own
and all he had was his two bail-out bottles.
If we lost our main supply in an emergency, we would have enough gas
in the bottle on our back to get back to the bell.
It's not designed to keep you on the seabed for any length of time.
There's no other gas he can get to.
It's limited to what's in his bail-out bottles.
And they're not that big.
It is literally five minutes.
We had a time-critical window to get back and recover Chris.
So I got everybody up.
We need every mind focused in case we miss anything.
I was in the next team that was supposed to go diving.
And the life support supervisor came on the comms quite serious
and he said, "Stuart, I've got a problem."
I said, "Well, does that make it my problem or is it just your problem?"
And he came back with, "We've left a diver on the manifold.
"We're going to set in the medical gear.
"The other diver medic, just go and get ready."
There's always several diver medics in saturation.
You have to have one in each team.
Usually it's... It's cuts, it's grazes.
I was scared because this was something
that was so out of a normal working routine.
You don't want to have to be involved in something like that.
It's not going to end well.
The situation was desperate.
I mean, we're still out of control, drifting away from Chris.
The computers to control the dynamic positioning weren't operational.
They were redundant, all three of them.
The computer that was running the DP...
..had failed.
The backup, which ghosts it all the time...
ALARMS BEEP
..had failed.
And the master computer had failed as well.
So you have a situation where the impossible has happened.
The vessel could not be controlled using the computers.
WAVES CRASH
So we are just drifting.
We have to try to...
..to get back control.
Captain decides to take computer out of the loop
and use fully manual system.
This system is designed to use in the harbour,
when you don't have waves, wind is not too much.
The bridge crew had to learn how to control the ship with, er...
..four thruster handles.
Problem is that they are installed on two consoles.
One man doesn't have four hands.
No-one ever anticipated having to do this.
I never saw captain and chief officer doing this before.
Sometimes it was going very well.
And then was coming one big wave.
WAVES CRASH
It was changing our heading again.
OVER RADIO: Bridge, you've got to get us back over there.
They want us to be there quickly, but we are doing what we can do.
ENGINES RAMP UP
In saturation, you start to get a bit of a sixth sense
for your particular vessel - the sounds it makes.
The engines were thrusting really heavily.
ENGINES RAMP UP FURTHER
The boat was moving around in quite an erratic way.
It was moving from side to side.
That was quite a rough ride on the bow.
HE BREATHES HEAVILY
I was constantly trying to calm myself down.
I knew Chris, I knew Morag.
I was wondering...
..how I were going to explain it to her that...
..we went on a dive and he never came back.
Um...
Yeah, I was struggling to contain myself.
WAVES CRASH
Even though I could work out that he's run out of gas,
I had to believe that Chris is still alive and recoverable.
First we had to find him.
And the ROV was the only tool I had at the time that was functioning.
ROV, can you try and find my diver, please?
The ROV can swim in the water maybe 150, 200 metres
away from the ship without too much problem.
So we headed to the structure.
It was the most logical place to find Chris.
RADIO CHATTER
But we didn't know whether or not
Chris was on top of the structure or beside it, on the seabed below.
It was very long feeling when this ROV was flying, flying, flying.
It was explained to me that it was an idea
to give Chris some sign that we are coming back.
So he can find extra energy, power to stay alive.
It was getting closer and closer,
and I remember staring at the ROV screen, black and white,
asking, "Can anyone see anything?"
We willed that structure to appear.
Then...it appeared.
The ROV technician said, "Craig, he's all right."
I said, "How do you know that?"
He says, "Well, he's waving at us."
Before we arrived with ROV...
..I was sure that we'd recover him.
After this, I didn't know.
You have to remember that that's not just some person.
That's the human who you know, who was sitting next to you...
..passing in the corridors.
One hand for the ship at all times.
There we go - health and safety.
He was coming to the bridge sometimes.
Hi, Chris, how are you?
Very well, thanks, how are you? Oh, I'm fine, thanks.
Now you can see him...
..absolutely alone.
A lot of people were shocked at the image,
but I took a massive boost out of that. One, he was on top
of the structure, which is crucial for his recovery.
And he was twitching.
He was still alive.
We were still some distance away from where we needed to be.
We still didn't have DP control of the vessel.
We were moving back to the structure manually...
..which was very difficult.
The ship didn't seem to be making the progress as quickly
as we thought, and everything was slowing down in time.
Slowly but surely, the twitching...
..it stopped.
In my mind's eye, that was a final phase for Chris.
Some couldn't face the reality of it.
They didn't want to be involved in a situation that would...
..would be a very dark time.
I think all those thoughts were starting to run
through people's minds - what happens next?
After 25 minutes...
..we couldn't really find anything...
..to grasp.
We were sure that it was going to be a body recovery.
It was odd, being on the bell, thinking about what had happened.
I don't remember being particularly upset about Chris.
Shit happens. He was...
He wasn't my best mate.
He wasn't one of my kids.
It was a diving job and it had gone wrong.
I started praying as hard as I could.
I'm not a religious person at all, but...
..in moments like that...
But at no point did I lower myself to think that we weren't
going to get him back.
Definitely not.
There was no way where...
..I was going to go home and explain to Morag that Chris
wasn't coming back.
We try everything to get DP system back online.
We never had first options and last options.
We never had checklists - what to do
step by step in case of problems like this.
It was more like a brainstorm and trying everything what we can try.
One of the last options was to do a hard reset.
There was nothing else what we can do.
And we wait.
We've got to get a good card soon.
You know, we pulled all the bad cards out, we've got to start
getting some luck now.
Lucky for us, the system gets back online.
Oh, it was amazing! Good news.
It was a massive relief for me and everyone on the bridge.
As soon as DP was back online and we put the vessel in auto mode,
we can move straight back to Chris.
But maybe we are too late.
Now we were making real progress.
We were getting closer and closer.
My adrenaline's still flowing.
I want to get it done.
I kept asking, are we nearly there yet?
Dave was keen to go.
I remember holding him back.
Duncan, take up all of Dave's slack.
It's like having a dog on a leash.
Until I give him some slack,
he can't go anywhere.
Craig was telling me the distance.
You've got 50 metres to run.
30 metres to run.
20 metres to run.
I could see the lights of the ROV.
I could see Chris.
OK, Dave, you're through to go.
I wasn't surprised by what I saw...
..a dead guy on the roof of the manifold.
I knew that it was going to be hard to get back to the bell.
The dead weight of Chris was very heavy.
The boat was moving up and down.
But I'm there to do my job and do what I'm told to do.
I wasn't thinking, "This is Chris Lemons.
"This is the guy who's building a house.
"This is the guy who's engaged to be married."
He's a thing that needs to be taken from one place to another.
I tried not to think Chris was dead.
Possibly, deep down, I had a thought he might have been.
I gave him two deep breaths.
I am just hoping with everything I've got that I can bring him round,
that I am going to make him breathe again.
It's very hard to communicate to people...
..quite what I went through and what I felt.
It's a time that I reflect on quite a lot.
I often try and put myself back in that position...
..to jog my own memory or to try and recreate what happened
because I have the same questions.
Thanks very much. Cheers.
TALKING OVER RADIO
And then there was instant silence.
It's very disorientating when it's so, so dark.
It's the most absolute blackness I think I've ever seen.
All my efforts at that point were focused on finding my structure,
getting to the top.
That was to make it easier for them to rescue me.
But I didn't know where I was.
I couldn't see anything at all.
I was panicking.
There was a real danger of walking out in the wrong direction...
..to effectively no-man's-land...
..and never be able to find your way back.
But I had to make a decision - I couldn't just stand there.
I had to choose a direction.
It came down, essentially, to pot luck from there on.
Then I bump straight into the structure.
It was 11 metres above me - the platform that I needed to be on.
I'm expecting to see the lights for the diving bell above me.
There was nothing.
I was completely alone.
I have probably got five or six minutes in this bailout.
I must have used it for two or three minutes, getting myself
up here to the top.
Even if the diving bell had been directly above me,
it would have taken the remainder of the gas that I had left on my back
just to get back there, if I was lucky.
So, at that point,
once you've calmed and done the maths, you realise
that your chances of getting out of this are almost non-existent.
The cold is something I don't have any recollection of feeling.
It doesn't make much sense, really, because I know that I would've
been very cold very quickly.
I feel as though I can recount everything from that night,
but the fact that I don't remember being cold...
..I begin to question how lucid I actually was.
Maybe I didn't last all the time I thought I did.
Maybe I fell unconscious straight away.
So sorry.
I'm so sorry, Morag.
I was explicitly aware of what I was about to lose.
I have very vivid memories of thinking precisely that -
thinking I'm not going to see...
..I'm not going to see the house I'm halfway
through building finished, which we'd put so much into.
I'm not going to see...
VOICE BREAKING: I'm not going to...
I'm not going to see my wife...
..on the day we get married, and...
..it's...
Why am I, a little boy from Cambridge,
in the blackness, about to die?
There's nothing to hide behind, you know,
that's the moment you're going.
BREATHING THROUGH APPARATUS
What sort of person are you?
Were you scared, or are you just telling yourself that you weren't?
Or were you calm?
Cos I'm not so sure.
My thoughts drifted away to the damage I was going to do.
Our hopes and dreams...
..all these plans we had for the future...
..about to be dashed.
I can remember it becoming harder to breathe.
Harder to suck down the air that you want.
I remember feeling it was coming.
And then... And then nothing.
SHUDDERING GASP
I knew we'd got him.
He was going to live.
I was just so elated.
At that point I didn't know if he had any brain damage.
I didn't know if he'd be the same Chris.
I didn't know if he'd ever speak again,
but I knew he was breathing. He was alive.
And he got stronger with every breath.
I can remember flashing lights.
Something wasn't quite as it should be.
It was very reassuring to see Duncan.
He's been a bit of a father figure to me in many ways
throughout my career.
It's very comforting to see a friendly face.
I'd decided that he was more than likely dead.
I think I'd started to come to terms with the fact that he was dead
and that we'd recovered a body.
I got into the bell.
I could see Chris sat down there, and...
..he was definitely not dead.
That was very confusing.
I mean, I remember him asking...
Chris, you all right, buddy?
And he said, "Yeah."
He seemed fine.
It was an extraordinary moment.
A lot of people were relieved.
Obviously, for Chris's sake...
..but also for their own personal wellbeing.
They didn't want to be involved in a diving fatality
and now they weren't.
I remember almost feeling a little bit pissed off with him,
in the same way that when, if you have a child that wanders off
when they're not meant to and you're frantically looking for them,
when you do find them, as well as the relief you've got,
you've also got a little bit of anger...
..because they've put you through something.
It's been quite traumatic.
WATER RUSHING, ENGINE WHIRS
That's the bell on the surface.
It wasn't until I went and had a shower that I realised
how exerted I must've been. I remember trying to wash my hair
in the shower and my hands were cramping up and my hands
were like claws, my fingers were stuck.
And that's when I thought, "No, I've worked hard today."
Down at the bottom door.
All right.
Dave, I'll come and talk to you later. Thanks for your help.
Yep...
I couldn't have felt more proud of myself and Dave that day
for what we achieved in that bell.
I did my job, and I would expect nothing less. And the divers
did their jobs and the bridge crew did their jobs.
Everyone did their job, so, you know, you don't pat yourself
on the back for that.
You turned up that day and that's what you get paid for.
Last man leaving the bell.
David and Duncs, they'd done enough.
It was our job to look after him from that point on.
I, for one, couldn't believe we'd got away with it.
I couldn't believe that he was just going to...
We were going to warm him up,
put a tea cosy on his head and he's going to be good to go.
That was incredible to me.
I can remember, after everything had calmed down,
we were doing hourly checks,
and I thought he was kind of just...not dosing, quite,
but he was relaxing.
And...
..and it's the only...
I'll have to do that one again!
Sorry. Yeah.
Hmm. Yeah.
The only time I've ever felt serious.
I was just halfway through taking his pulse...
..and he just kind of looked over at me, he said,
"You know it's OK?"
And I said, "Yeah, I know you're OK, yeah."
He said, "No, no, it's OK.
"I was just drifting off to sleep.
"I was kind of sad for a bit,
"but then I was cold and I got a bit numb,
"but it was like falling asleep. It's not that bad."
That was the only time that anything really got emotional for me,
and the point was, it kind of hit home that he had basically...
HE SNIFFS
..he decided he was going to die.
He's...
..trying to tell me that dying's OK,
and that really... That really got to me.
WATER RUSHING
WINCH WHIRS
How I survived is a very good question.
I don't think I will ever really know.
I always assumed that the lowering of my body temperature effectively
shut me down and allowed me to survive on what minimal oxygen
remained in my system.
Also, I'm fairly certain that the high levels of oxygen
which we carry in our emergency breathing gas...
..saturated my tissues, effectively, with oxygen and allowed
my organs to keep functioning,
even though I had nothing left to breathe.
These are all theories, though. Beyond that,
I'm still waiting for someone to give me the right answer.
I'm not sure I'll ever know.
I received that phone call that everyone dreads.
Your whole world falls apart.
I just kept picturing him lying there on the bottom
of the ocean, helpless.
It's always, you know... When it happens to...
When something like that happens to someone that you love,
I couldn't get that image out of my head.
It didn't matter that he was speaking to me and telling me
that he had survived,
I needed to physically touch him and see him.
It dawned on me that we're going to be OK,
we were going to be able to realise those hopes and dreams
and live our life together.
APPLAUSE
One person in here is definitely going to hate this.
Probably one of only two men in this room
who have given me a decent kiss on the lips.
LAUGHTER
APPLAUSE
That's Diver 2 in the water at 91 metres.
And, Chris, don't fuck it up this time.