So, what did happen that went so dearly wrong with the dive? Thanks to the underwater camera attached to Dave Shaw's helmet, we know. (The piece of high tech technology was made especially for this dive.)
The morning of the dive, Dave Shaw gathered the whole team and all of his support divers around him for a few quick words. "The most important person on this dive is you. If you have a problem, deal with your problem and forget about me. It's better to have one person dead than two."
At 6:13 A.M., just a few minutes later, Dave Shaw submerged under the water. Before he ducked his head into the cold silence of Bushman's Hole, he looked up into Don Shirley's masked face, who would be diving down after him in a few minutes. "If I don't make it, I stay there. That's the end of the story, I don't want to be recovered." Then he sank into the water.
Dave Shaw hit the sloping bottom of Bushman's Hole in 11 minutes. He felt the cave line where he had attached it to Deon Dreyer's body last time he had come, so it would be easier to find again. Sure enough, a few seconds later, he saw Deon Dreyer's dead body ahead of him. He knelt down and got to work on putting it in the body bag. By that time, Dave could probably feel the narcosis kicking in. The more he worked, the stupider he got. It felt like he had downed 4 or 5 martinis. He struggled with the body once more, now realizing he had been on the bottom for to long, he needed to get back up to the surface...
Entrance to Bushman's Hole.
The chimney-like water entrance to Bushman's inner chamber.
Dave Shaw
Dave Shaw decompressing under water.
Don Shirley got the green light; go, from the team just about 13 or 14 minutes after Dave went under the water. Shirley descended quickly; feeling content with that the dive was going according to plan until he reached about 500 feet. Then things seriously started to go wrong.
It was 500 feet into the dive, and the water was so clear that Don Shirley could see almost 400 feet below him. He saw Dave's light near the shot line, way below him. There was only one problem. That light wasn't moving.
By this time, almost 22 minutes into his dive, Dave Shaw should have been ascending towards the surface, decompressing, and sending bubbles shooting into Don Shirley's face as they vented from his body and his dry suit. But no bubbles. Nothing but a lonely, still light.
A motionless diver 886 feet below the water is logically a dead diver, but this was also his friend on the line, so Don Shirley dived even deeper, way past where he was supposed to wait for Shaw. Then Shirley realized that Dave was not coming back, and if he went any deeper, Shirley might as well stay with Shaw for eternity. With one final look, Don Shirley headed back up.
Don Shirley arrived at the surface in pain. Not only did he lose his best friend and dive partner on this dive, but he also got the serious case of the bends (When helium bubbles under your tissue and gives your horrible, insurmountable pain.) from a helium bubble in his head and in his leg. Coming up from his dive, Don Shirley was swiveling, vomiting, and trying to stay alive. if it weren't for the cave line, which Don held on to the whole time up, he would have joined his partner down in the depths of Bushman's Hole. It's not to say that Don Shirley walked away from the dive sight unscathed.
What went so wrong? How do we know for sure if Dave Shaw is dead?
It was a few days later, and the while dive team had packed up and went home with heavy hearts, two support divers remained. Peter Hurbst and his diving buddy Petrus Roux had been assigned to collect the extra oxygen cylinders that had been left from the dive, along with the cave line. By Wednesday, Peter had collected all but the very deepest oxygen cylinders, and he then waited for Petrus Roux to surface with them. A few minutes later, a head popped out of Bushman's Hole. "Did you see them!?" Roux exclaimed. Hurbst looked confused. "The bodies!" Roux said. "Deon and Dave are stuck in the cave at about 20 meters."
The police divers were called in, and a few hours later, the two bodies of Dave Shaw and Deon Dreyer reached the surface. The dive team is called back in, as many of them say their last respects to Dave. But more than anything, they wanted to see what happened on that video.
Everything went smoothly until Dave Shaw reached the body. The camera gives a good view on what was going on, although the picture is dark and hard to see at times. But after a few minutes of shadows, the camera gives a whole new image that makes the divers watching the video gasp. It's the body of Deon Dreyer, floating in the water around Dave Shaw's head. The body was not meant to be floating. A floating, turning, flopping body at 886 feet down is much harder than one immobilized in the silt.
This is where Shaw starts to have problems. He wrestles with the body for too long, almost 4 minutes. The narcosis looks like it had taken Shaw up to about 6 or 7 martinis now, and Dave Shaw, numb and tired and weak and feeling dizzy and faint from the narcosis, blindly starts working on getting the torso into the body bag, instead of working at the feet. Shaw is hyperventilating at a dangerous rate now, and every breath is a struggle. He is letting out loud grunts of effort, and he drops his cave light to try to get the body further into the bag. That was his final mistake. The cave light's cord was everywhere now, hooking around Shaw, the cave line, and the body. Shaw's breathing is so fast that the carbon dioxide is starting to build up, causing him to black out. What were around 39 huge breaths a minute was down now to six, and Dave Shaw's breathing slowly fades away...
In the end, Dave did what he had started out to do. He returned Deon Dreyer's body to his parents. Their son. Even if he played for it with his own life. He knew the risks, and he took them.
A few months later, Dave Shaw's best friends, Don Shirley and Don's wife Andre took a bottle of champagne and a small wooden box up to the beautiful African outlook near their home. If you squinted just right, you could see the entrance to Bushman's Hole. They toasted to Dave's amazing achievements, and what a man he was, before they opened the lid to the box, and threw Dave's ashes into the warm bright air. Then they spun to the baked ground and Dave Shaw was gone forever.
Glitsygrl.
