Diary Of An Archaeologist - Wattys 2019 Non-fiction Winner

That Time We Were Trapped In A Sunken Ship

First of all, my apologies for the long silence. Keeping a steady update schedule is really difficult for me since I have to make sure not to post any sensitive information in these stories, but that's not an excuse to not update for more than a month. So don't feel bad if you ask me where that new diary entry is. I don't mind it guys, at all.

Now, more Underwater Archaeology, yeah!

This time we're going to dive in some nice tropical waters.
At the time of this story I was dating an Underwater Archaeologist, let's call him Léon. He and I had met in college and started dating during our final year of Archeology.
The relationship lasted only a year, after which we decided that we just wanted different things in life so we ended it. No drama, no heartbreak, just you go left and I'll go right, wish you all the best.
Boring, right? ;)

Well, my relationship with Léon was anything but boring. He is that type of guy that is always looking for the next adventure. He was (probably still is) a thrillseeker; always busy, always the life of the party.
Which is probably why he chose to do his final internship in Curaçao. His job was to check up on all the ships laying on the bottom of the sea in Dutch waters surrounding the island and check their conditions regularly.

I came over for two weeks to check out this beautiful island and see my then boyfriend, of course.

Anyway, it was my first weekend there when Léon had the bright idea to go surfing. I told him I didn't know how to surf, but he assured me he knew a guy who could teach me in no time.

So, we drove to the beach to meet these two surfer friends of Léon; Kai and his younger brother Gavin. Both were born and raised on the island, and after teasing me for my paperwhite skin they gratuitously leant us two surfboards and we went surfing.

Now, I was a pretty good swimmer and practised diver at this point, but I was still very anxious to be on that surfboard without even knowing how to surf. Davin was supposed to teach me, but he had more eyes for the moves of his brother and Léon. After falling from the plank for the hundredth time, I decided to paddle back to shore. My "teacher" had already left me to go surf himself, so I was just going to do something that wouldn't leave me bruised all over; snorkelling.

I think it took Léon about 20 minutes to figure out that I wasn't on the surfboard anymore and as I surfaced he paddled up to me. "I thought you wanted to learn how to surf?"

"I did. But I do need a teacher who wants to teach me." I retorted as Kai and Gavin swam up to us. At first, I thought that Gavin had heard my little stab and would hopefully apologize for leaving me struggling by myself, but nope, he only took note of my goggles.

"Oh right, you guys are divers, right? I saw this sick ship last."

Léon was instantly all ears and urged him to tell us the location of that ship immediately. Turns out, this was still an unknown ship. Léon wanted to check it out that instant, and honestly, I was all for it.
But there was one tiny problem; the boat of the institute Léon worked for was unavailable during the weekend.

As luck would have it, Kai offered to bring us to the location with his boat. So, the four of us were out on open sea within an hour. And that's when I got that foreboding feeling. That feeling you get when you just know shit is about to go down. I was far away from the shore, with little to no exact knowledge of where I was, no phone and although I trusted Léon with my life, I couldn't say the same for Kai or Gavin.

Gavin announced that we had reached the spot; a continental slope at the edge of the breaker zone (also known as the surf zone). From the boat, you could already see the ship laying on the bottom of the sea. Its hull was tilted sideways with the three masts buried in the sands all the way up to the deck.

Both Léon and I got super excited and started to speculate about what kind of ship it could be and how we could approach it. The fact that it was on a continental slope in a sideways position meant that there was a possibility it could slide down into deeper water if the current was right. And since we came out here in such a rush, we had not checked the currents or any of the conditions underwater, something that's pretty crucial if you go diving in any condition, but especially in these deeper waters. I'm talking 20 meters or deeper.

Léon might be a thrill-seeker, but even he knew that this was very dangerous. He announced that the best course of action was for us to only go down to 30 meters and stay near the reef on top of the slope, on a safe distance from the edge. We only had to observe the ship, and then go back and make an official report of it. I fully agreed and we readied ourselves to enter the water.
It was at this point that I noticed that there was an extra diving set aboard, but figuring it probably belonged to Gavin or Kai so I didn't say anything; it was their boat after all.

Léon and I entered the water, did our standard checks to make sure all our equipment worked and made our way down. Around 28 meters we took our position in neutral buoyancy and got to work. Neutral buoyancy means that you neither sink nor rise within the water. Your flippers can stir up sand or damage sea life, so it's super important that you basically float on a constant depth without making any sudden movements.

Well, we barely had photographed the ship or we see something, or rather someone, swimming in a direct line towards the ship being swept up by the currents and jerked around like rag doll while he sank to the ship.

Before I could even sign anything to Léon, he was already off towards the diver. I followed him as closely as I could, staying as close to the slope as possible so that I could avoid the currents. Well, guess who our kamikaze diver was?
Yes, it was Gavin. Léon caught him laying on the hull of the ship and it took a few moments before the kid was out of his disoriented state. After that, unfortunately, he was like a kid in a candy store. Swimming through a porthole in the ship the second Léon turned around to check on me.
Even though you can't really scream underwater, I'm pretty sure I screamed bloody murder when I saw Gavin disappear into the ship.

So, now we had an even bigger problem; that stupid Gavin swam into an unstable, unknown ship and no amount of ticking diving knives (a diving signal used to get other diver's attention if they're out of sight) made him come back.
We had no choice but to follow him into the ship and drag his butt out asap. Since I was the smallest, I went through the porthole as slowly as I could. One wrong move could damage either the ship or my equipment. Once inside, I tried to move as little as possible. I was terrified that I could break something in these small spaces. Luckily I spotted Gavin as soon as I had entered the ship and he couldn't swim very far before I caught up to him, grabbed his diving vest. He looked quizzical once I signed him that we were going to surface, but the uncomfortable creaking of the ship around us was enough to make him at least compliant. I exited the porthole first, foolishly hoping that idiot would follow my example of holding your hand on your oxygen tank to make sure that you didn't hit anything. Nope, of course, he just swam through it like he was ariel's long lost brother and in the process hit his tank on the porthole snapping the planks around it.

At this point, Léon was beyond done with him and grabbed him tightly by the arm as he swam back to the surface. As soon as he had his head above water he unleashed a verbal ass-whooping on Gavin. I had honestly never seen Léon this mad before, he completely lost it. Gavin didn't say anything back, at one point I almost thought he was going to cry.
I explained to Kai what had happened, and although it took a few hours, eventually Gavin apologized for his reckless behaviour once we were all safely back on land. He explained that he was so excited to see the ship he dove after us and figured we must have gotten into the ship already, never noticing us on the reef.

Léon did forgive Gavin, under the condition that he promised never to dive near ships again. Afterwards, when Léon and I were alone he admitted that while he was waiting for me to get Gavin out of the ship he was terrified for the first time in his life. It felt to him like we were done there forever, although in reality it only took a few minutes.

And on our report, we noted the broken porthole as an already existing damage from unknown causes.
Is it bad we never told anyone of how the damage occurred? What would you have done in this situation?

Let me know in the comments, and as always thanks  for reading!!