Underwater Labyrinth: Wedged Beneath the Waves

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1:04It's August the 22nd, 1999. A mild summer's morning in Portland Harbor on the south coast of England. On the surface of the English Channel, all is calm. Boats bob serenely on the water. Seagulls call out overhead. Beneath the waves, however, a different world reverberates. Deep down in the murky depths is a relic of a bygone age. A vast battleship, sunk during the First World War, lies on the seafloor. Upside down, the secrets of its glory years hidden from view. Fish swim through its rusty hull, riddled with holes. And somewhere in this vast underwater labyrinth, a young woman is trapped. Although precisely where and by what, it's impossible to know.

2:02Encumbered by her diving gear, 22-year-old Nikki Daniels tries to wriggle her way free from whatever it is that's wedging her in place. But no matter how hard she tries, she cannot move. She cannot escape the wreckage. I just, I couldn't quite believe it. It was extraordinary that I was completely and utterly stuck. Nikki isn't alone. Right next to her is her boyfriend, Chris, floating freely in the water. He tries frantically to wrestle her loose, but the more they struggle, the worse things get. Panic sets in. Nikki breathes harder and harder. Her oxygen cylinder is rapidly emptying. With every passing second, her situation grows more desperate.

2:49I couldn't see a thing. There was absolutely no visibility at all. So zero vis. I tapped my finger on my mask and I couldn't see my finger. You're under so much pressure because you know you've only got a certain amount of time to get out of the situation you're in. The clock ticks. Time seems to be rushing past. Nikki tries to focus on her training, but nothing has prepared her for this. To compose herself, she takes a deep breath. She can only hope that it won't be her last. This is it. This is life or death. So if you don't get to grips with this in the next few seconds, we're dead.

3:37Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, Could you make the right choice? Welcome to real survival stories These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations People suddenly forced to fight for their lives In this episode we meet Nikki Daniels A keen amateur diver, Nikki is never happier than when exploring life within the open seas in Britain and far beyond In the summer of 1999, she goes on an expedition with her diving club. It's the kind of thing she's done dozens of times before. 50 feet underwater is her home from home.

4:20But one wrong move turns her happy place into the scene of potential tragedy. I went into thoughts of, my God, 22 years old and I'm going to die. Like literally, do I have 10 minutes? Do I have 20? I don't know how long we've got to get out of this. Trapped within an upturned ship at the bottom of the sea, with low visibility and scant supplies of oxygen, Nikki will need to think and act fast if she's going to solve this deadly puzzle. And in order to escape, putting herself in even greater danger may be her only option. I mean, to die like this, this is absolutely ludicrous. And I said to myself, there must be a way out of this.

5:03Think of it. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

5:37It's 9am on Sunday, August 22nd, 1999, just off Portland Harbour, Dorset, on the south coast of England. A border diving boat out at sea. Six divers are kitting up. Equipment is checked and securely fastened. Dry suits and fins, oxygen cylinders and eye masks, stabilizer jackets, torches, knives and underwater watches. The smells of seawater and sun cream float on the breeze For 22-year-old Nikki Daniels, this is all routine In fact, she went through the exact same procedure yesterday Today is her second dive of the weekend at this very spot But for her, this isn't a tedious preamble It's the countdown to being transported to another universe The excitement of diving It starts when you're kitting up on the boat You know, you're getting your mask sorted out, you're doing your final kind of checks, so we're checking our air is okay.

6:37And then you do the okay and down signal. And then just going below the surface, there's a whole world under there.

6:48Nikki's love affair with life underwater began as a child growing up in Karsholton, a town on the outskirts of South London. I think I was more fish than child. I was always in the water, just absolutely loved it. I've always called it my happy place. As a schoolgirl in the 1980s, Nikki was fascinated by the ocean. She daydreamed about swimming with dolphins and exploring their habitats. But it seemed the stuff of fantasy, the kind of thing that other people did, not her. I'm going up in the 80s. Where would that opportunity have even been? I don't know. It's just my mum and I at home, we didn't have money to spare.

7:28So I don't think I'd have even given it a thought. But all that changed when she turned 18 and began studying at Kingston University. I literally walked in the door of Freshers' Fair, you know, where they have all the stands and the clubs and sports and things you can join. And there was this group of people who became lifelong friends in the end, running scuba club. I didn't know they had a scuba club. And I just was, oh my God, I can go diving. This is accessible to me. Nikki fell in love with her new pastime. It was at once thrilling and unexpectedly soothing. It's just, it's magical. It's absolutely fantastic.

8:06And I found that any worries that I had above the ocean, sort of life worries, stuff going on at home, whatever that might be, stresses, as soon as I was underwater, that just literally just disappeared.

8:26Nikki left Kingston University in 1998, but she remained involved with the Scuba Club, participating in dives at the weekend. Now a year on, they've reconvened for their latest jaunt, an exciting two-day dive at a special spot just off England's southwest coast. It's the site of HMS Hood, a battleship that's been languishing at the bottom of the sea since 1914. The ship was deliberately sunk at the start of the First World War to create an underwater barrier, protecting Portland Harbor from potential attacks by German U-boats. Any sunken ship is a tantalizing prospect for inquisitive divers, but Hood offers something extra.

9:12Back in 1914, explosives were used to send the vessel to the seafloor. A hole blown in the side, filled it with water, hood soon capsized, and ended up rooted nearly 60 feet below the surface, upside down. It makes for a highly unusual diving location, a jungle gym under the water, shrouded in darkness, full of obstacles and features to explore. Newbies might be wary when encountering HMS Hood for the first time, but Nikki is well acquainted with the wreck

9:50As she checks her kit on the boat on the morning of August the 22nd, she's preparing for what will be her 17th trip to the sunken ship Placing her feet into her fins, Nikki looks around at her half-dozen companions, five other divers and the boat skipper as usual they'll be diving in pairs it's a crucial part of the health and safety protocol safety is absolutely key to scuba diving because so much can go wrong and it can go wrong so quickly and it's all about staying you know with your buddy so that you can help each other if there's a problem you're always thinking of what have i got with me that can help keep me alive really you've got your computer on your wrist showing you the depth that you're at you got your gauges to show you your compressed air levels.

10:39There's an awful lot of health and safety that needs to be involved to get you home. Nikki flashes a smile across the boat at her buddy for this weekend. It's Chris, her boyfriend. They've been a couple for two years, and Chris has been Nikki's buddy for almost half of the 100 or so dives she's ever done. We knew each other obviously very well, and we worked well together as a buddy pair because we took it very seriously. We had talked about descending to the seabed, making our way to the wreck, and we wanted to go further inside than we had done before, because you dive the wreck a lot of times and you want to see something different.

11:17But the trouble when you've done something like that for a while, there is a danger that you become a bit overconfident. Deep under the sea, there's no room for complacency. On their own, in the gloom of the English Channel. They'll have nobody but themselves to make sure they return safely to the surface.

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14:02It's 9.30 a.m. Nikki and Chris are perched on the side of the boat. It's nearly time. Strapped to her back, Nikki has a 12-liter oxygen cylinder. comfortably enough for the 25-minute dive they have planned. Chris has a 15-liter cylinder, and attached to that he's got an extra 3 liters in a small emergency cylinder. Safety first. They put their air regulator mouthpieces in place. Then, one after the other, they roll into the waves.

14:39In the cool English water, visibility isn't great. The sea in the UK is murky at best. So generally you can't see too much of where you're going. But you can see a buoy line. You pull yourself down the buoy line, equalising your ears as you go down. And then you start to see the boulders that are on the seabed near the harbour wall. As they descend, visibility improves. Teeming aquatic life presents itself. Silvery shoals of fish swim around the clumps of white coral. Huge, spindly spider crabs scamper across the seabed. The current swirls in their ears. Creatures send out strange clicking noises.

15:26Nikki can even hear the sand shifting beneath her.

15:36She and Chris swim even further into this alternate world Soon the wreck comes into view It's a spooky sight Upside down, edged in the murky green light Nikki has explored wrecks in other locations They're always spectacular In warm, clear waters, some sunken vessels can be seen in their entirety, like a model ship at the bottom of a fishbowl. But HMS Hood is different. The whole thing is on its head, so things that were screwed into the deck are now on the ceiling. It's very rusted and in a few pieces, but you're trying to work out what you're looking at. I know some novices who thought wrecks are terrifying, but I just found them really fascinating.

16:27And the ship was so big, it's roughly 125 meters long, so it's huge and just a fascinating place to be, really. Nikki and Chris swim towards the wreck, a submerged ghostly wall of steel 400 foot long. All along its side are large, ragged holes. Each tells a story of the violent sinking and the subsequent decades of slow decay. They glide through the ship's ruptured side. Bubbles from their breathing apparatus rise toward the surface as Nicky and Chris disappear into Hood's dark interior. But in their eagerness, they have forgotten something. the safest thing to do is to have a lie safety line that you can secure to the outside of the wreck and kind of follow it in and you reel that in as you go so it's kind of like a hansen and gretel dropping their crumbs and then following their way back for whatever reason we decided not to do that that day and looking back that's like a step that i'm aware we missed and then actually I think once you've missed one safety step, you're probably going to miss another safety step.

17:46From the inside of the wreck, Nikki is struck by its eerie beauty. Daylight filters through the holes they've just entered. Divers call these blue windows. Under torchlight, the hidden world of HMS Hood is revealed. It's alive with creatures of the deep, seeking shelter in its recesses, darting through the water in search of prey. Nikki kicks her fins and pushes deeper into the ship's belly.

18:18HMS Hood is a baffling time capsule. Below her is a mass of detritus from naval service nearly a century ago. Above her is a trove of ancient machinery. Giant hoists and pulleys, engine gears and forbidding gun turrets hang like rusting stalactites in a dank, dark cave. In its seafaring days, this equipment was all bolted tight to the ship's floor. Now, after 85 years upside down in the water, the structure is breaking up. From time to time, chunks of the metal above clatter to the seabed. Dangers are everywhere, but Nikki and Chris are in their element. It's an adventure and it's your explorers, really.

19:05You're kind of picking your way across tons of rusted metal, basically. And as we got to a certain point, we looked up and there seemed to be like a hatch above us that looked intriguing. And we signaled to each other, OK, we're going to go in. Let's have a look. Perhaps it takes us to another section of the ship.

19:31Chris goes first. Nicky watches as he propels himself up through the water. His head disappears into the narrow opening, then his torso. As he fades from view, Nicky calmly follows. It's intriguing, this little pocket they've discovered. Who knows where it might lead. In no time she is entering the hatch. Once through, she spins around to face Chris. And as their eyes meet, an awful realisation hits both of them. His face was horrified. His eyes were huge. As if he's kind of going, oh my god, stop. Don't come in. But it was too late, because I was already in. What Chris has discovered is not a monstrous sea creature, or an old underwater explosive, but something just as dangerous.

20:23The opening he has swum through isn't a hatch leading somewhere new. It is a dead end. The opening to a storage space, probably only two meters in length, depth, and width. It's dark and almost completely sealed. The only way out is the narrow aperture they've just entered. In the vastness of the open sea, this is how they find themselves, side by side, in this tiny, enclosed space. I think there was a moment of, oh god, alright, we've really mucked up, this is not good, we need to get out of here immediately. Their immediate problem is that they're both the wrong way up. Their only point of exit is the opening they've just swum through.

21:07They now need to turn themselves upside down in order to swim out again. Easier said than done. With little in the way of light and burdened by the kit they're wearing, turning around in this small underwater space isn't straightforward. It might be impossible. Nikki attempts to maneuver herself into position. As she does so, she brushes against a five-inch pile of silt, thick, gloopy sand that swirls up into the water in front of her. My heart just sank. The whole lot kicked up. and Chris just disappeared. I couldn't see a thing. I tapped my finger on my mask, and I couldn't see my finger. So I fell down by my waist, and I had my torch there.

21:53I quickly turned it on. And these are pretty heavy-duty underwater torches, and I could see a pinprick of light. So that's really telling me how bad this is.

22:08In the darkness, Chris reaches for his own torch. He switches it on. But again, it's almost as if the bulb was blown. The thick silt swallows any hint of illumination. As sand clogs the water, Nikki's body floods with fear. Experienced diver though she is, she has never been in this kind of danger before. Encased by silt, unable to see, speak, or move freely, a feeling of claustrophobia kicks in. Her heart pounds. Beneath the layers of her dry suit and underclothing, she begins to sweat. Being stuck in a small dark space anywhere can be frightening, but more than fifty feet under the sea with limited air, there is a very real chance that this cupboard could turn into an underwater coffin.

23:00In the space of just a few seconds, a dreamlike dive has turned nightmarish. It's hard to believe how quickly things have unraveled. Silently, Nikki rages at herself. We should never have both come into a space that we didn't understand, we didn't know where it led. What have we done?

23:23In retrospect, the safety line could have forestalled disaster. Had they fastened a line to the outside of the wreck, it could have provided an easy escape route. Perhaps. But it's all academic now. Self-flagellation is of no use to anyone. What's needed is a practical plan. It's Chris who makes the first move. Despite the obvious restrictions, basic verbal communication is possible underwater, just about. Chris begins to shout a few short words. Unable to see his face, Nikki listens intently. She hears enough to understand the plan. Chris will turn himself upside down and feel his way to the opening.

24:06If Nicky holds onto him, they will, with any luck, be able to exit one after the other. It's an imperfect plan, but there's no apparent alternative. If they had to get out of here, they'd have to do it by touch alone. Chris turns in the water, Nicky's hands resting on top of his oxygen cylinder. The movement causes the silt to stir once again. Nikki can feel him searching his way down. Her hands are now on his waist, then his legs. Eventually, she feels his fins. She grabs hold of them before he moves out of reach. Chris swims through the opening. He is now safely on the other side. Nikki anxiously reaches her hands out in front of her.

24:53And there it is, the edge of the hatch. So, okay, I'm in the right place. really aware that I'm now on my own in a dark pitch black cupboard. Upside down breathing isn't very comfortable underwater. The bubbles kind of all around your face, which isn't great. So I put my head down and I felt through the hatch and I started to lower myself. My head was out, my upper body in my arms. I couldn't get any further. I was completely wedged. Unable to see what's holding her back, she shifts from side to side like a fish flailing in a net. It's no use. She's stuck tight. Hanging upside down, Nikki attempts to free herself.

25:42She wriggles backwards inside the cupboard. Her hope is to move herself clear from whatever obstruction is in the way. She tries it once, and again, and again. Yet every time she hits the same problem. By this point, Chris, from the other side of the hatch, is trying to pull her free. He heaves on her stabilizer jacket. But it's to no avail. Nikki is going nowhere.