Pod Insights Real Survival Stories Race Against Time: Deep in Loch Ness About this episode A diver explores the depths of Loch Ness - on the lookout for a submerged World War Two plane. But suddenly, Hugh Williams finds himself trapped underwater. Something grabs him from below… and whatever it is, it’s not letting go. With his air supply running down, Hugh must make a series of pivotal choices. One wrong move could spell the end…
A Noiser production, written by Anne-Marie Bullock.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:34 John Hopkins? It's July 1977. A bright summer's day shines across the great glen in the Scottish Highlands, a deep, ancient valley formed during the Ice Age.
1:47 John Hopkins? Wild, rugged mountains tower into the broad skies above. The sun glows across the greens and yellows of the steep, wooded hillsides, and dances on the surface of the world's most famous lake, Loch Ness.
2:07 John Hopkins? The wind is gentle today, and the water seems calm and clear to the tourists walking and sailing along the northern shore.
2:16 John Hopkins? But moving downwards, beneath the surface, the water quickly becomes murky and dark, stained black by the surrounding peat.
2:26 John Hopkins? In places, the immense lake drops down 750 feet, shrouded in mystery.
2:34 John Hopkins? Deep in the loch, swimming far beyond the sun's reach, 24-year-old Hugh Williams is exploring.
2:43 John Hopkins? His orange neoprene dry suit protects him from the icy temperatures. He drifts through the water, slowly paddling his legs, scanning left, then right.
2:55 John Hopkins? Complete darkness surrounds him, save for a sharp beam of light that he angles from his lamp.
3:02 John Hopkins? The only sounds he can hear are his steady breath through his diving mask and the loud, rhythmic thud of his heart.
3:12 Speaker 04 Below 10 meters, and you're in pitch darkness. And when I say pitch darkness, it's darkness that one doesn't often come across in that you can put your fingers right up to the glass on your face mask and you won't be able to see them. It is that dark.
3:33 John Hopkins? Hugh points the torch beam through the gloom. Only a few feet away, he can make out the shadowy figure of his dive partner, John. The pair are vigilant and ensure they do not drift too far apart.
3:47 John Hopkins? A long cable and a safety rope are harnessed to Hugh and trail behind him, leading back up to the surface. At these depths, their air supply is limited. They don't want to push their luck.
4:02 John Hopkins? Hugh turns to John and gives a signal upwards. It's time to start their ascent.
4:09 John Hopkins? But as they begin to resurface, there is a sudden tug from below. Hugh is stuck.
4:17 Speaker 04 We came to a shuddering halt, stuck in the water at maybe, at that time, maybe forty-five meters or something. I knew we had very little time available to do anything. And I could feel these levels of apprehension, if not fear, starting to rise.
4:37 John Hopkins? The long cable attached to him is taut, caught on something in the darkness, as if it's been grabbed by something from below. Held fast, Hugh looks at John. How does he free himself? He has a tiny amount of air supply left, less than ten minutes. If he panics, he'll hyperventilate, using the oxygen more quickly. And even if he can free himself, resurfacing too quickly could also prove fatal. Hugh has a series of deadly obstacles in front of him and literal minutes to overcome them all.
5:16 Speaker 04 Just looking down into the darkness, that made me frightened, just thinking of having to go down to, I don't know, sixty, seventy, maybe eighty meters. That was really too frightening to contemplate.
5:38 John Hopkins? Ever 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.
6:02 John Hopkins? In this episode, we meet Hugh Williams, a confident, experienced diver and PhD student, well-trained in underwater technology and environments. Only 24, he's already completed scores of dives, undeterred by the UK's cold seas and wild currents.
6:23 John Hopkins? But every dive comes with risks. One day in 1977, Hugh is exploring the eerie and enigmatic depths of Loch Ness when something pulls him down from below.
6:37 John Hopkins? Whatever has Hugh in its grip, it's not letting go.
6:42 Speaker 04 The most dangerous thing, I think, with diving is panic. But I mean, you can feel a sort of rising fear. And that's when you're aware that you've really got to keep control of this. Otherwise, if you do lose control, a lot of those options just suddenly disappear.
7:01 John Hopkins? With time ticking away and his air supply disappearing, Hugh will have to make a series of pivotal choices, knowing one wrong move could put him and his diving partner in greater peril or even kill them both. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Network, this is Real Survival Stories.
7:45 John Hopkins? It's June 1977 in Glasgow.
7:51 John Hopkins? At Strathclyde University, the hurried footsteps of anxious students echo through the corridors. They crowd around small notice boards with the results of their recent exams. For some, it's relief and celebration. Others turn away in quiet disappointment.
8:10 John Hopkins? Hugh Williams walks past them confidently. He's older than the undergrads, nearing the end of his first year of his PhD, studying underwater navigation and survey.
8:22 John Hopkins? He's been called to one of the lecture halls by his supervisor. As he pulls open the heavy door, he scans the looming rows of wooden benches above him, which all stand empty.
8:36 John Hopkins? At the front of the room, three other students and two lecturers are standing around the main desk, unfolding large, unwieldy maps and documents. He's been invited to join an expedition, to help in a unique archaeological search.
8:53 Speaker 04 A sonar survey had been done of Loch Ness, and they had these pictures of the seabed, where there were these circular depressions and mounds, and also something that looked like a stone circle, a bit like a small version of Stonehenge.
9:10 John Hopkins? Little of the loch's bed has been mapped before now. The team is being asked to carry out a series of dives to verify, measure, and plot what has been seen on the sonar surveys. The main focus is a potential Neolithic site, which likely flooded centuries ago and is now hidden in the depths of Loch Ness.
9:33 Speaker 04 I think what we were hoping we would find is something that might have turned out to be a burial mound from Iron Age or a period of the Dark Ages. If it was a burial mound, there could be a great deal of information that could come from excavations in the future.
9:55 John Hopkins? The team lean in, pawing over the documents, excitedly sharing what they think they can make out in the images. It's a big opportunity, the chance to follow in the footsteps of other great archaeological discoveries.
10:09 Speaker 04 Now, this would be exaggerating too much, but the find of the Anglo-Saxon treasure at Sutton Hoo at the bottom of a mound, you know, that would have been the icing on the cake.
10:26 John Hopkins? This is no simple task. Loch Ness is vast, 23 miles long, and the largest body of water in the UK by volume.
10:35 John Hopkins? It holds more fresh water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined.
10:41 John Hopkins? Recent technological developments have been starting to hint at more of its history and the secrets hidden within. But while the surveys have generated images, they are open to interpretation. The expedition needs accomplished divers to gather more evidence. Hugh is more than up for the challenge.
11:02 Speaker 04 The plan was to do an investigation of what we could see on the sonar surveys, and then do a more detailed mapping of any of the sites that were deemed to be of interest.
11:22 John Hopkins? As a boy growing up in Newcastle in the 1950s, Hugh was inspired by tales of global diving pioneers discovering hidden underwater worlds. He watched black and white footage from Austrian biologists Hans and Lotti Hass, who helped popularise scuba diving.
11:40 John Hopkins? Meanwhile, Jacques Cousteau, a French naval officer and oceanographer, was also filming his explorations of the seabed.
11:49 Speaker 04 They were seeing, you know, the beauty of coral reefs and all the colourful fish. There were shipwrecks, sunken treasure. I mean, what's not to get excited about?
12:01 John Hopkins? But for young Hugh, it wasn't enough to simply watch others' adventures. He wanted to get involved himself.
12:07 Speaker 04 So, when I was still at school, I joined the Tyneside Tobacco Club and did a few dives with them off the Northumberland coast and at the Faroe Islands and such like. I remember I made my own wetsuit with sheets of neoprene and some glue. It kept falling apart because it wasn't very well made. But there's so many new things to see, and every dive is different. Now, I remember on my first snorkel dive, I found an old fisherman's anchor, which I managed to get back, and it's still in my garage somewhere.
12:47 John Hopkins? After first snorkeling on the surface, Hugh then progressed to deeper dives with breathing apparatus, delighted by what was revealed in the UK's coastal waters.
12:57 Speaker 04 Over the years, I've dived with seals, dolphins, whales, and you find all sorts of shipwrecks of all kinds. There is always the excitement of not quite knowing what you're going to come across whenever you get in the water.
13:17 John Hopkins? Planning is crucial. Kits must be prepared and checked, and communication is vital.
13:24 John Hopkins? But for Hugh, the rewards certainly outweigh any risks.
13:28 Speaker 04 For me, diving was exciting, but not dangerous. If you have the proper training and follow the rules, there's no reason why you can't enjoy it without being a danger, which is not strictly true.
13:46 John Hopkins? By the 1970s, diving is a rapidly expanding field. And now, at the age of 24, Hugh has studied underwater technology for several years and is even designing equipment himself. He's also working for the growing North Sea oil industry, carrying out surface dives and inspecting pipelines in small submarines. His fascination with the underwater world is becoming his vocation. Next up, Loch Ness and the promise of uncovering some historical treasures hidden in its depths.
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16:00 John Hopkins? It's July, and term has finished. With his kit assembled, Hugh drives a battered blue Land Rover out of Glasgow, heading some 200 miles north, towards Inverness.
16:14 John Hopkins? The equipment he has with him is up to date and of high quality, far more advanced than his early homemade wetsuit. Towing behind the Land Rover in a trailer is the dive boat. Hugh has been entrusted with transporting it to the loch.
16:30 John Hopkins? It's slow-going under all the weight, but the nervous excitement and expectation keeps him motoring onwards.
16:38 Speaker 04 It was going to be a fortnight. The plan was, we would take the information that we had got, and then we would go away, discuss it with other people and with archaeologists, and decide whether it is worth going back at another time to do a more detailed investigation of these mounds and anything else that we might find.
17:00 John Hopkins? As Hugh drives, the urban sprawl of Glasgow recedes, and the splendor of rural Scotland takes over.
17:10 John Hopkins? He reaches the Highlands, the summer floral growth scattering colour across the foothills. Purple heather pokes out among the grey rocks and green slopes.
17:21 John Hopkins? Hugh takes it all in while carefully navigating the winding roads.
17:27 John Hopkins? Finally, the loch comes into view and Hugh smiles.
17:34 John Hopkins? A few minutes later, he parks up, the grey-blue lake stretching out in front of him, elegant hills penning him in on all sides.
17:44 John Hopkins? Hugh climbs out of the car, excited to meet the rest of the crew, five others in total.
17:51 John Hopkins? His dive buddy is John Mills. They'll be spending the next two weeks together, diving two or three times a day.
17:59 John Hopkins? Hugh and John have never worked together before, but trust between the pair will be key.
18:08 Speaker 04 John had done an awful lot of diving before. I knew that he was extremely experienced. And generally, when you're diving with somebody who you've never dived with before, you get a pretty good idea very quickly of how far you can trust this person. It's very, very easy to see if somebody is relaxed in the water and in command of what they're doing. And so I had no doubts about John's competence, his experience as a diver, and just the way he moved in the water.
18:44 John Hopkins? But Hugh and his team are the only people milling around the banks of the loch. There are others here, carrying out research of their own.
18:54 John Hopkins? To many, Loch Ness is best known for the legendary Monster. By the late 1970s, reported sightings and grainy images claiming to capture the creature have appeared regularly over the years, leading to scientific discussion about its existence, as well as newspaper speculation and beer-fuelled arguments in pubs.
19:15 John Hopkins? Now, a number of believers can be found staying in caravans at various points near the lake.
19:23 John Hopkins? One serious enthusiast is an American lawyer, Robert Rhines, who has a summer house on the banks of the water. He is convinced the creature is real. He's even organised for remote, automatic cameras to be placed within the loch, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive Nessie. Using these, he has captured underwater images of what he states could be a diamond-shaped fin belonging to the monster. They're some of the most talked-about pictures to date. In 1977, the debate around Nessie is in a rather different place to where it is today. In fact, so remarkable are Rhines' photos at this time
20:05 John Hopkins? that they've been published in the reputable scientific journal Nature.
20:10 Speaker 04 One of the most famous naturalists at the time, a gentleman called Sir Peter Scott, he was almost the David Attenborough of his day. And he got very excited by these photographs, sufficiently that he even gave the Loch Ness monster a Latin name: Nesseterus rhombacteris, and tried to get the Loch Ness monster put on the British Register of Endangered Species.
20:42 John Hopkins? Hugh and his team are staying close by, and cross paths with Robert Rhines and Sir Peter on several occasions.
20:50 Speaker 04 So while we were doing this expedition, both of these people were up there at the same time and we had long conversations with them about the possibilities of the Loch Ness monster and looking at these photographs. So there was a general feeling locally, particularly with these two gentlemen, that the monster did exist.
21:14 John Hopkins? Hugh isn't so convinced himself, but immersed in the atmospheric environs of the loch, there's always room for tiny seeds of doubt.
21:24 Speaker 04 I didn't really believe at the time. However, these conversations and the possibility of the monster actually existing somehow just gets filed away in the back of your mind and you're not even aware that it's there, until you go in the water.
21:47 John Hopkins? Over the next few days, Hugh, John and their crew start to map the sites, diving down and placing equipment on the lock bed.
21:56 John Hopkins? Then, one day, they decide to pause the search for the possible ancient burial mounds and investigate something else instead.
22:07 John Hopkins? The sonar surveys have also raised suggestions of another historic ruin, the wreckage of a World War II Wellington bomber. The twin-engine aircraft was designed in the 1930s and saw service throughout the Second World War.
22:23 Speaker 04 The locals knew all about this in 1940. This aircraft had crashed into the lock, so we were pretty certain that it was a Wellington bomber. And you could even see it had the right number of engines and it was about the right size. And we all thought, well, this would be quite an interesting addition to our expedition if we could find the Wellington bomber, because again, we knew that nobody had ever been down and dived it before.
22:59 John Hopkins? The crew have risen early.
23:02 John Hopkins? They head out on their small boat and anchor it to a shallow shelf on the side of the lock. Below is a steep underwater slope, covered in silt. The sonar surveys suggest the wreck of the bomber is in this area, and they're hoping the slope leads down to it. But they're going in blind, unsure of its exact depth.
23:25 John Hopkins? For Hugh and John, their only link to the surface will be the safety rope connecting them with their crew in the boat. Hugh peers into the dark waters below, swishing his hand through the surface, feeling the temperature, as if somehow trying to get an instinct for what might be revealed today.
23:44 Speaker 04 The water tends to be very, very clear, but it is stained by the peat. So it's almost like incredibly weak tea. It has a slight brownish tinge to it. It's a dye. It doesn't have much part of them. So the visibility tends to be very good. But what happens is, very quickly as you go down, this dye sucks all the light out of the water.
24:13 Speaker 04 The visibility, the surface is very good, but the moment you get down to 10 metres, it is almost pitch black.
24:26 John Hopkins? From below, it's like being in a cathedral after dark, with moonlight shining through a stained glass window, only just revealing the surroundings.
24:37 John Hopkins? It also becomes incredibly cold. As a result, they have opted not to wear wet suits, but slightly warmer dry suits, made of spongy neoprene, sealed at the wrists and neck, and covering the entire body.
24:52 John Hopkins? They can add air to their suits through a tube, or remove it through a valve to help with descent.
24:59 John Hopkins? The thins on their feet, while clumsy on land, make them graceful when submerged.
25:06 John Hopkins? Because of the darkness, John and Hugh need to take a lamp with them into the depths. But this lamp is powered in a way that would almost certainly fall short of any modern risk assessment.
25:20 Speaker 04 We had a mains generator that was running on the surface, and this was putting out 240 volts. From the generator, we then had a cable, which was several hundred feet long, which was attached to the lamp. And the cable itself was also attached to a rope. We tied the rope to the harness on my tank. And before going in the water, we turned the generator on, checked the lamp was giving us light, and everything was working okay.
25:59 John Hopkins? The safety rope attached to Hugh is to be held and tendered by a member of the crew in the boat. It gives them a rudimentary means of communication through a system of pulls.
26:10 Speaker 04 So if the diver is swimming away, the tenders should be able to feel that and just lay enough rope out, but should still be able to feel the movement of the diver at the end. And then if he feels the rope is slack and he can't feel the diver, he should pull a little bit of the rope in.
26:33 John Hopkins? The team have made their calculations. They plan to dive to a depth of 50 metres, around 160 feet, in the hope of spotting the wreckage.
26:44 John Hopkins? With the equipment they're using, it's deemed to be a very deep dive, and air supply will be limited.
26:51 Speaker 04 The tanks were a lot smaller in those days. So on the surface with the sort of tanks that we were using, one might expect to get maybe an hour in the water. Now, if you double the pressure, which you do at 10 metres, you're basically using twice as much air, so you use it twice as quickly. So at sort of 50, 60 metres, we might be only expecting to get 10 minutes of supply of air from the tank.
27:24 John Hopkins? Not a lot of time to explore and then resurface safely.
27:29 John Hopkins? And running out of air is just one of the risks. Another danger is nitrogen narcosis, or NARCS, otherwise known as the rapture of the deep.
27:42 Speaker 04 This is caused by the inert gas that you're breathing, which is the nitrogen component in the air. It has an effect on the brain, and the deeper you go, the more this effect becomes apparent. And if you go deep enough, it's like being drunk. And so it takes away, to a certain extent, your ability to think clearly.
28:06 John Hopkins? The narcs can amplify any nervousness and lead to paranoia, to the conviction that there is extreme danger all around. In a setting like Loch Ness, with so many unknowns and speculative stories, this would be a major issue.
28:23 Speaker 04 Because people are no longer thinking clearly, they're not looking at how much air they have in their bottle, they might run out of air. Some people even been known to take their mouthpieces out and offer them to passing fish as they go by.
28:41 John Hopkins? John and Hugh complete their body checks, drop into the water, and swim out to the shallows. They fit their masks firmly to their faces.
28:52 John Hopkins? Releasing some air from their suits through the dump valve, they descend gradually to ten meters. The surface clarity starts to be swallowed by the gloom.
29:03 John Hopkins? Twenty meters. They're now in complete darkness. The lamp casts a narrow beam of light. The cable and rope trail behind, their link back to the boat.
29:15 John Hopkins? Thirty meters. Some divers can show signs of the narcs at this depth, but both men are composed and happy to dive down further.
29:25 John Hopkins? Forty meters. Hugh and John try to keep each other in view as they peer through the depths, looking for the wreckage.
29:33 John Hopkins? After five minutes, they have reached a depth of fifty meters, the equivalent of a seventeen-story building.
29:40 Speaker 04 We were both quite excited that we were going to see this untouched wreck of the Wellington bomber. And we got to fifty meters, and because we had a very powerful torch, we could actually see quite a long way with the lamp.
29:54 John Hopkins? Hugh angles the light around slowly, in the hope of illuminating some sign of the bomber. But it's extremely gloomy. There's barely any sign of fish or marine life, just an opaque void all around.
30:15 John Hopkins? John swims further away and Hugh peers around, trying to decipher if the vague, dark bumps in the water might be a propeller or a motor.
30:25 John Hopkins? The plane has been submerged for nearly forty years, so could be totally obscured by the build-up of mud.
30:32 John Hopkins? He swims back and forth, concentrating intensely, squinting his eyes, trying to ensure he doesn't miss a clue.
30:41 Speaker 04 So we could maybe see down another ten, fifteen metres or something like that, and we couldn't see any sign of either the bomber or the slope getting any more gradual.
30:56 John Hopkins? It seems the bomber is likely to be much deeper than they'd hoped.
31:01 John Hopkins? With their air supplies rapidly diminishing, the men are resigned to disappointment. It's time to call it a day.
31:09 Speaker 04 We knew the deepest part of the loch is well over two hundred metres, which is way outside of the range of any sort of air diving that we were doing. And at that point, it became pretty apparent that we weren't going to find the bomber, and we made the decision that we should come back up.
31:33 John Hopkins? The men signal a thumbs up to each other and start their ascent.
31:39 John Hopkins? Gradually, they begin to rise through the inky water. Everything appears to be going smoothly. But then, quite suddenly, there is a major problem.
31:51 John Hopkins? Hugh feels a violent jolt and his progress is abruptly halted. He cannot ascend any further. Something is holding him in stasis.
32:03 Speaker 04 We must have come up five, six metres or so, and then we just stopped. We came to a shuddering halt.
32:13 John Hopkins? He looks below and sees the long cable attached to his harness descending downwards into the black. It's pulled tight, caught on something in the bowels of Loch Ness.
32:26 John Hopkins? And then Hugh starts to feel a tug.
32:30 Speaker 04 Once we stopped, I got pulled in towards this steep slope, which was covered in very, very fine silk. So very quickly, the visibility went to almost zero.
32:43 John Hopkins? As he collides with the slope, an explosion of mud and pebbles engulfs Hugh. He is disorientated, blinded, flailing. He tries to paddle back away from the slope. Can John still see him? Or is he now lost from view entirely?
33:02 John Hopkins? Suddenly, in the confusion, an arm appears through the cloud and grips onto Hugh's harness. He turns and locks eyes with John, now just a few inches away.
33:14 John Hopkins? The visibility is worse than ever, but even so, Hugh can make out the concern on his dive partner's face.
33:22 John Hopkins? It's time to compose themselves, to ensure they do not panic.
33:28 Speaker 04 The key thing when you're diving is to always be in mental control and have the mental ability to cope if something unexpected happens. And if you lose that, then what can be a small or slightly difficult situation can soon descend into one that becomes a major emergency.
33:56 John Hopkins? First things first. Hugh steadies his breathing and takes stock of the situation.
34:03 John Hopkins? It seems their rudimentary system of rope pulls to communicate with the surface has led to some confusion.
34:11 John Hopkins? The young, inexperienced tender on board has misinterpreted something, letting out too much line and allowing it to drape dangerously below the divers.
34:23 Speaker 04 What had happened was on the surface, the cable that we'd be using was actually heavy in the water. So the tender at the surface had mistaken the weight of the cable for me pulling on the end of the cable and wanting more. So what he did is he just paid the cable out until there was no more to be paid out. But all I could see was the cable tight, going down into the depths of the loch. My first thought was, well, you know, too much cable must have been paid out. And the rope in the cable has got snagged around a rock.
35:05 John Hopkins? Perhaps if Hugh and John swim away from the slope, whatever is pinning down the cable will become dislodged.
35:14 John Hopkins? They swim down a few meters, attempting to release the rope. Then they flick their fins and try to push away.
35:23 John Hopkins? But after a few attempts to move, it quickly becomes apparent that Hugh is going nowhere. The line remains tight.
35:32 John Hopkins? At this point, there's no denying the men are in serious trouble. John, too, now seems to fully understand the gravity of the situation. They have no idea how deep down the cable goes, and they don't actually know what it's caught on.
35:48 John Hopkins? The otherworldly waters of Loch Ness have a way of messing with the mind.
35:55 Speaker 04 I suppose what it does, even though you're not aware of it at the time, it heightens your senses for the unexpected. Even though you're not thinking, oh, at any moment I might see the Loch Ness monster. But somehow, all the talk about it puts you slightly more on edge than you would have been if you'd been diving somewhere else. I knew we had very little time available to do anything. And I could feel these levels of apprehension, if not fear, starting to rise.
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38:15 Speaker 02 Huh, I'm having fewer headache days this month.
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38:57 John Hopkins? You and John remain stuck. One hundred and sixty feet below the surface of Loch Ness.
39:04 John Hopkins? While they cannot speak to each other, the men attempt to communicate via hand signals and eye contact.
39:11 John Hopkins? What do they do here? They have to make some choices, fast.
39:18 Speaker 04 The most dangerous thing that can happen to you when you're diving is panic or making the wrong decision. You have to be aware of the situation that you're in, otherwise, if you lose control, a lot of those options just suddenly disappear and you do the first thing that comes into your head, if you like.
39:41 John Hopkins? Hugh quickly weighs up his various options.
39:45 Speaker 04 One of the options was to swim down and try and find out where the rope and the cable is tangled, untangle it, and then go back up. But the problem there was we didn't know how deep that might be. And all the time we're using air, and we only had a few minutes. So that in itself could have been very dangerous. And I have to admit, just looking down into the darkness, I didn't like that idea. That made me frightened. Just thinking of having to go down to, I don't know, sixty, seventy, maybe eighty meters was really too frightening to contemplate.
40:26 John Hopkins? Next thought: Hugh could try to release himself from the cable by unknottin' it from his harness.
40:32 Speaker 04 I knew it went underneath my harness and then it was tied on. But because you have such a poor field of vision through the face mask, I couldn't see any of that. So I really didn't have a good handle on how it was attached.
40:48 John Hopkins? Keep thinking. Option three: A quick, but particularly high-risk move.
40:55 Speaker 04 One way out would have been to cut the cable, because I had a very sharp diving knife. But that would probably have electrocuted both of us, because electricity underwater is extremely dangerous and 240 volts would probably have killed the pair of us.
41:16 John Hopkins? Deep breath, stay calm. What else?
41:22 John Hopkins? Next idea: Dump his breathing apparatus.
41:26 Speaker 04 The other option was to take all the equipment off, the harness, the tank, and just leave everything, and try and make a free ascent from forty-five metres, which again, didn't appeal at the time.
41:41 John Hopkins? This would mean sharing John's air supply. And it's hard to know if he'd even have enough to get them both to the surface. Plus, hurrying back up too quickly could be lethal in itself, leading to decompression sickness, also known as the bends.
42:01 Speaker 04 What happens is, the gases that you're breathing become dissolved in your blood and your body tissues. It's commonly described as when you take the top off a lemonade or a Coke bottle, suddenly the bubbles will appear. And it's exactly the same thing with decompression sickness. If you come up too quickly and there's enough gas that's been dissolved in the blood and the tissues, it will come out as bubbles. And this can lead to, as well as excruciating pain, it can block the blood vessels, and in the worst cases, it can lead to death.
42:38 John Hopkins? Having ticked every other option off the list, Hugh is left with a single choice. But this plan is outlandish, to say the least, because it involves very quickly using up a significant amount of his remaining air supply. It's make or break.
42:56 Speaker 04 I remembered thinking, "This is pretty serious. This is not good." And then there is, if you like, there's a sort of plateau of fear that you have to cope with, and to work out what to do. It may not be the perfect solution, but it's taking you in the right direction.
43:21 John Hopkins? Hugh and John look at each other. The dark water of the loch bubbles menacingly around them. Wordlessly, Hugh shows his dive partner what he now wants to do. It's a big swing, but John follows suit.
43:41 Speaker 04 So the pair of us just started to put air into our suits to see if we could just get any movement at all. And luckily, actually, we had dry suits because the dry suit enables you to put a lot of air and get a lot of buoyancy.
43:56 John Hopkins? Via an inlet valve and the hose connection from his tank, Hugh is able to feed air into his suit. He then closes the valve to trap it. John does the same.
44:10 John Hopkins? It's an ingenious move, suddenly giving them far greater upward momentum. The divers' suits balloon until they resemble Michelin men bobbing in the water. John grips onto Hugh tightly, combining their buoyancy and giving them greater upward push.
44:30 John Hopkins? The cable strains as an epic underwater tug-of-war ensues.
44:36 John Hopkins? It's all incredibly precarious. They need to move gently upwards without snapping the cable, or they risk electrocution or flying up towards the surface too rapidly.
44:48 Speaker 04 If suddenly we were released, we would be heading towards the surface at far too greater speed, which has its own dangers, as well as decompression sickness, there's the danger of a burst lung if the air inside your lungs expands too quickly.
45:10 John Hopkins? The men give a trusting nod to one another in anticipation, but nothing seems to be happening.
45:17 John Hopkins? Their suits are fully inflated, almost creaking under the pressure. A few tiny bubbles start to creep out from the seals at their necks and wrists. Hugh checks his depth gauge. Its little needle remains unmoving, fixed.
45:34 Speaker 04 The worst moment was that first moment, that first minute or two, when you're stuck and you're not going anywhere.
45:45 John Hopkins? The seconds race by. With so much air going into their suits, they must have a tiny amount of breathing time left. They have to start moving upwards.
45:56 John Hopkins? Hugh looks again at the depth gauge, still nothing.
46:02 John Hopkins? And then, finally, he sees the needle move. It's small, slight, but unmistakable. They are ascending.
46:13 Speaker 04 Once we started to come up, then a lot of the danger, if you like, the fear, starts to go away. As long as you keep coming up, things are looking better all the time.
46:27 Speaker 04 The moment that the actions that you've taken start to go in your direction, then that burden starts to be released.
46:37 John Hopkins? Hugh has made the right choice. With the cable still dragging behind them, the two men rise incrementally through the water, safely making their way towards the sunlight.
46:51 Speaker 04 It's a gradual process. Until I can remember, once you start being able to see the light on the surface, once you start to be able to see the surface in front of you, and you're still coming up quite slowly, you say, "Yeah, I'm gonna make it."
47:12 John Hopkins? As they break the surface, the dark mire dissipates and the brightness of the summer sun glows around the Highland landscape, so brilliant it dazzles them both.
47:23 Speaker 04 It's just huge relief. You realise it's over. And it's just marvellous. It's wonderful. Just seeing the sunlight, the fresh air. You know you've made it.
47:39 John Hopkins? The men look around to get their bearings.
47:43 John Hopkins? Spotting the boat crew about eighty feet away, they shout to pull them in. They're still too weighted down to swim, still entangled on something below, which they've dragged upwards with them.
47:57 John Hopkins? With clearer waters now around him, Hugh looks down. What he sees is truly unexpected.
48:08 Speaker 04 All of a sudden I could see this large bit of scrap metal hanging off the cable. It was definitely part of a chassis member of an old car. Hesitate to think how much it weighed. I don't know, fifty, sixty kilos, maybe more. It still had bits of the suspension hanging off it.
48:32 John Hopkins? Suddenly, the rust speckled car part dislodges and disappears into the depths again.
48:40 John Hopkins? Why it was down there is just another of Loch Ness's mysteries.
48:46 John Hopkins? With the weight gone, the men release the air from their suits and swim towards the approaching boat.
48:53 John Hopkins? The crew haul them on board, busy with questions. What exactly happened down there? The whole ordeal has been and gone in a matter of minutes.
49:04 John Hopkins? Still stunned by what's just happened, Hugh takes himself off for a quiet moment. He heads to the front of the boat alone, in silence, and lights a cigarette.
49:17 John Hopkins? He sits there, taking in the beauty of the Highlands all around him. Suddenly, there's a sense of calm. The verdant hills glow against the enormous Scottish sky.
49:28 Speaker 04 I think it enhances the senses. It makes you appreciate more what you see around you. That's how I felt about it. And thinking, this is a really lovely day at Loch Ness, sun's shining, and it's very nice to be here. There's a feeling of how good it is to be alive.
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50:29 Speaker 00 The Lemonade has spent decades keeping lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Their lemon agenda has infiltrated everything, even our music. That hit song named after the color of lemons? Not a coincidence. Big Lemon has been pulling strings in the industry for years. Think about it. But now, 7-Up is fighting back with their new Lime Lemon Soda. Now lime comes first. 7-Up, flip the sip.
50:59 John Hopkins? In the hours and days following the dive, Hugh and the team take stock of what has happened. While it's clear mistakes were made, there's no finger pointing. No specific blame is apportioned, not even to the inexperienced crew member who allowed too much of the cable into the water.
51:19 Speaker 04 We did have a quick chat about what had happened. The tender had not had any experience of tending divers before, which was a mistake on our part really, not on his part. So we had a quick run through. There was no problem and then we just moved on.
51:40 John Hopkins? The team has faced their own monster in the loch and come out of it unscathed. In fact, the incident doesn't disrupt the expedition at all. Things quickly get back to normal.
51:53 Speaker 04 It never stopped me diving and in fact, we were in the water the following day. I don't think it changed my attitude to diving. Maybe made me a little bit more careful about preparation particularly. There are a few things we did wrong. Having been through something like that, it does make you a little bit more aware of the potential dangers of what you're doing and perhaps be a bit more careful.
52:20 John Hopkins? After several more dives in the loch, the team finally pack up their kit and leave. They didn't find the Wellington bomber, but at least they're all in one piece.
52:36 John Hopkins? Not long after his return home, Hugh decides to quit his PhD to pursue other underwater ventures, including working on deep sea remotely operated vehicles.
52:48 John Hopkins? Thanks to his involvement in this field, Hugh was able to return to Loch Ness, determined to find that bomber that had previously eluded him.
52:58 Speaker 04 A number of years later, I was working as an engineer and we built this remotely operated submarine vehicle called Pioneer. And we went to do trials for the ROV in Loch Ness. So one day we decided that we were going to have a search for the Wellington bomber and we found it. And it was lying in about 70 metres of water, perfectly preserved, even to the extent that the tail gun was turned around and you could see the hatch where the tail gunner had escaped from the bomber and it was amazing. So a number of years later, I did actually get to see the Wellington bomber.
53:43 John Hopkins? Nearly fifty years on from the dive that almost claimed his life, he was still working, still going strong. He was literally a few breaths away from death that day in 1977. But strangely enough, looking back, he says he's almost glad it happened to him.
54:01 Speaker 04 Forty-five years later, I almost look back on it fondly, because I think there are so many days, in my life anyway, where I'm doing routine things that just disappear into, you know, a mush. Whereas that's a day I'll never forget, and I'll never forget the guys I was with, and I don't regret it at all.
54:27 John Hopkins? Next time, we meet Olympic gold medalist Rulon Gardner.
54:32 John Hopkins? One day in 2002, the champion wrestler finds himself in a different kind of fight. A monumental clash of man versus nature in the vast, freezing mountains of Wyoming.
54:45 John Hopkins? On Valentine's Day, Rulon and two friends head out for an afternoon of snowmobiling in the wilderness of the Cowboy State. But after they lose each other, Rulon finds himself alone and under siege from the savage elements. With daylight disappearing and no idea where he is, he'll need every last drop of his will if he's to find his way out of this nightmare. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.
55:18 John Hopkins? Listen to Rulon's story today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noiser Plus.
55:24 Speaker 00 The Lemonati has spent decades keeping lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Their lemon agenda has infiltrated everything, even our music. That hit song named after the color of lemons? Not a coincidence. Big Lemon has been pulling strings in the industry for years. Think about it. But now, 7-Up is fighting back with their new Lime Lemon Soda. Now lime comes first. 7-Up: Flip the sip.
55:54 Speaker 01 Chronic migraine means 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, onabotulinumtoxin-A, is a chronic migraine treatment that prevents headaches in adults. It's not approved for adults with migraine who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Botox prevents, on average, eight to nine headache days and migraine-provoked migraine days a month versus six to seven for placebo.
56:13 Speaker 02 Huh, I'm having fewer headache days this month.
56:15 Speaker 01 Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS-Lu-Gericks Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulin and toxin, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.
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