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Adventures of a Sea Hunter (D&M $35)
James Delgado, Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, has toured the wreck of the Titanic two miles beneath the surface of the Atlantic. He has seen Pearl Harbour from the sand up and he has dived to investigate an American Civil War submarine-in Panama. As co-host of The Sea Hunters, a television show syndicated in more than 170 countries, Delgado has also examined a Dutch cargo ship sunk carrying 18th century art belonging to Catherine the Great and found vestiges of the Kublai Khan's lost treasure fleet off the coast of Japan. A veritable Neil Armstrong of the ocean floor, Delgado has even explored the waterfilled remains of the Third Reich's underground munitions factory in the Harz Mountains of Germany where Buchenwald prisoners lived, drilled and blasted rock in twelve-hour shifts.
But his most harrowing underwater experience, described in Adventures of a Sea Hunter (D&M $35), occurred closest to home, in 1987, while investigating the hulk of the Hudson's Bay Company supply ship Isabella, a relic discovered near the mouth of the Columbia River more 150 years after it sank. In the same area, Delgado has examined the hulk of the British four-masted barque Peter Iredale, wrecked in 1906. After viewing the remains of the Isabella, Delgado resurfaced to the dive boat, pulled off his mask, spat out his regulator, without first removing his weight belt. Reaching down to pull off his fins, he fumbled and fell backwards off the ladder, plummeting back to the Isabella.
"With the desperate strength people sometimes find in these situations, I push off the bottom with my legs and kick for the surface, my lungs burning,"; he writes, reverting to TV-speak. With outstretched hands, Delgado was able to claw and scratch his way along the fibreglass hull of the dive boat, but the weight of his tank and belt dragged him back downwards again to the bottom.
"My mouth opens convulsively, and I take a breath of cold water and gag. I'm going to die, I realize, and I'm really angry."; His dive training finally saved him. He tugged the clasp of his weight belt and it fell free. "Then I reach up to my buoyancy compensator and pull the lanyard that activates a co2 cartridge. I start to float off the river bed and remember not to hold my breath or I'll burst my lungs as I rocket to the surface."; Pulled into a Zodiac, Delgado coughed up muddy water and eventually quipped, "Well, did I die like his men?";
1-55365-071-9
[BCBW 2004] "Maritime"
But his most harrowing underwater experience, described in Adventures of a Sea Hunter (D&M $35), occurred closest to home, in 1987, while investigating the hulk of the Hudson's Bay Company supply ship Isabella, a relic discovered near the mouth of the Columbia River more 150 years after it sank. In the same area, Delgado has examined the hulk of the British four-masted barque Peter Iredale, wrecked in 1906. After viewing the remains of the Isabella, Delgado resurfaced to the dive boat, pulled off his mask, spat out his regulator, without first removing his weight belt. Reaching down to pull off his fins, he fumbled and fell backwards off the ladder, plummeting back to the Isabella.
"With the desperate strength people sometimes find in these situations, I push off the bottom with my legs and kick for the surface, my lungs burning,"; he writes, reverting to TV-speak. With outstretched hands, Delgado was able to claw and scratch his way along the fibreglass hull of the dive boat, but the weight of his tank and belt dragged him back downwards again to the bottom.
"My mouth opens convulsively, and I take a breath of cold water and gag. I'm going to die, I realize, and I'm really angry."; His dive training finally saved him. He tugged the clasp of his weight belt and it fell free. "Then I reach up to my buoyancy compensator and pull the lanyard that activates a co2 cartridge. I start to float off the river bed and remember not to hold my breath or I'll burst my lungs as I rocket to the surface."; Pulled into a Zodiac, Delgado coughed up muddy water and eventually quipped, "Well, did I die like his men?";
1-55365-071-9
[BCBW 2004] "Maritime"
Submitted on September 23, 2004 in By David.
