Hero calls rescue `just a job’
Published: October 11, 2004
British diver risked own life to fish sailor out of sea.
In a five-day submarine drama full of heroism, Leading Seaman Garth Spence has every reason to feel good about himself.
The British navy diver’s single-handed rescue of a Canadian sailor swept overboard the crippled submarine HMCS Chicoutimi is the daring stuff of movies. Canadian Master Seaman Gary Rowe is alive today because Spence risked his own life to fish him out of a raging sea.
“I’m proud of what I did,” Spence said. “It’s a nice feeling.”
Spence told his story on the deck of this warship, while watching the disabled Chicoutimi sub being tugged to a Scottish port through the Firth of Clyde channel yesterday.
Spence, 31, was the safety diver on duty as the difficult job of hooking a towline to the drifting sub began Thursday afternoon.
Struggling to hook up the line was Master Seaman Rowe, precariously balanced on the deck of the sub and tied to it with a three-metre long safety cord. Six-metre-high waves swayed and bopped the sub like a cork, and strong winds lashed at Rowe’s face.
Suddenly, a “freak wave” crashed across the deck and swept Rowe to the sea. Another one then smashed him against the side of the sub.
Rowe’s nickname is “Greasy,” but there was no slipping out of the jam he suddenly found himself in. In a flash, he was trapped under water and pinned to the sub ? his foot jammed in a fitting on the side of the vessel and his body tangled in the still-attached safety cord.
Stuck to the side of the 70-metre-long sub, Rowe was at the mercy of the sea and submarine attached to him like a massive steel coffin. When the waves rocked the sub one way, he disappeared under water, when they rolled it the other, he would suddenly re-emerge gasping for air before being rolled back under.
“It was life-threatening,” said Spence, who witnessed the drama unfold in a nearby boat. “He was trapped on the side of the casing, a good 10 to 15 feet under the waves. He was under the water for up to 15 seconds at a time, which in those conditions, when you’ve just entered the water, is extreme.”
“He wasn’t getting enough breath on the surface to inflate his lungs, so he was in a bad way,” he added.
Spence is used to danger. His regular job with the British navy is to clear underwater mines by rigging them up to be detonated.
He had a quick chat with his commanding officer, since the wild weather would normally make a rescue attempt too risky.
“I said, are you happy for me to go in?” Spence said. “He said, `Yeah, as long as you are.’ And I put my fins on and jumped.”
As soon as Spence hit the water, a wave sent him flying across the deck of the sub. He stopped himself from being propelled to the other side by somehow grabbing Rowe’s safety rope.
“The submarine was drifting at quite a bit of speed. I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with if I hadn’t grabbed the line,” he said.
He then slid himself down to the trapped Canadian.
“He said to me, `Cut me free, I only have two breaths left.’”
Spence reached for his knife, cut the rope and Rowe managed to free his trapped foot when both men sunk deeper into the sea. Spence then pulled a ripcord to inflate his diving suit. They floated to the top and were quickly fished out by sailors on the Montrose.
“I knew he would be a bit shook up, so I just sat next to him,” Spence said. “I gave him a big hug, just to reassure him. I told him my name, I asked him his name; I just kept him talking … just to take his mind off it.”
“He’d obviously been through a massive ordeal,” he added. On Friday, however, Commodore Tyrone Pile, head of Canada’s Atlantic fleet, mentioned the incident merely as a post-script to his daily news briefing in Halifax, and said there was no indication that the incident had been serious or dramatic.
Montrose commander Andy Webb said yesterday: “Aside from being slightly shaken and stirred, he (Rowe) was absolutely fine. He stayed on board overnight for observation and enjoyed some hot food, a shower, and he may even have had a beer or two.”
Spence said he only started thinking about the fact that he saved someone’s life after his wife told him she was proud.
“At the time,” he says modestly, “it was just a job.”
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