Transcript of Fatal Depths

Today's podcast will feature 3 stories about underwater divers who underestimated what was waiting for them beneath the surface. The audio from all 3 of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.

The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.

The first story you'll hear is called "The French Pass," and it's about a small stretch of water in New Zealand that kills. The second story you'll hear is called "The Fourth Chamber," and it's about two cave divers who explore a deep underwater chamber. And the third and final story you'll hear is called "Don't Let Go," and it's about the number one rule in cave diving: never let go of the dive line. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload 4 times a week: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So if that's of interest to you, please sneak into the Followbuttons' house and replace all of their family photos with pictures of you wearing their clothes in the same poses. Okay, let's get into our first story called The French Pass.

The northern end of New Zealand's South Island is a chaos of bays and sounds, and within this intricate coastline lies a narrow stretch of water called the French Pass, and it has a deadly secret. In 1827, French Admiral Jules d'Urville was mapping the coastline of South Island when he instructed his navigator to enter the pass. As D'Urville's crew was entering the narrowest section of the pass, they lost control of their ship and they began spinning. They eventually hit some rocks which cracked their hull, but luckily they came to rest on a nearby reef which prevented them from sinking. After the incident, D'Urville went back to France, and in his report he said no one should enter the French Pass unless in an emergency situation, because as D'Urville and his crew learned firsthand, the French Pass is home to some of the world's most deadly whirlpools. Whirlpools, which are exactly like the swirling tubes of water going down your drain after a bath, but these are just much larger and will kill you. Now, these French Pass whirlpools are only really dangerous when the tides are actively changing, because during that time a current rips through the waterway that increases the speed and violence of the whirlpool.

Once the transition is complete and it becomes fully high tide or fully low tide, or even during slack tide, the current slows down so dramatically that the whirlpools more or less vanish. So today, mariners do go through the French Pass, but they'll only go through during high, low, or slack tide. If they miscalculate the tides and get caught in a whirlpool, they could be dragged over the rocks just like Admiral D'Urville and his crew. Now, while sailing through the pass is certainly hazardous, it's nothing compared to the risks of scuba diving through the pass. If a scuba diver mistimes the tides and gets sucked into a whirlpool, they won't get dragged over the rocks, they'll get pulled straight down to the bottom where they'll be funneled into these ultra-deep holes that line the sea floor. The deepest of these holes is called Jacob's Hole, and it goes down over 100 meters. On March 10th, 2000, 7 experienced divers headed out to the French Pass to begin their 5th week of instruction in their divemaster course. With a divemaster certification, they would become professional divers. This day, as part of their curriculum, they needed to complete what's called a drift dive, where instead of trying to fight the current, you simply go with it.

The 7 divers, which were 6 students and 1 instructor, would all be tethered to the same 30-meter-long line that had handholds evenly spaced throughout it. On one end of this line was attached a buoy, and then connected to the buoy was an inflatable raft.

This allowed surface observers in the boat to track the progress of the dive.

The plan was to boat out to the middle of the pass during high tide, jump in the water, and then ride the slow current out of the pass again, avoiding all the whirlpools. So at high tide, a boat took the 7 divers out to the middle of the pass. They all sat on the edge of the boat with their fins hanging off towards the side of the water. They clipped into that line, made sure their gear was good to go. They looked at each other, gave the okay symbol, they jumped into the water. As soon as they hit the water, they removed all the air from their compensators and their life jackets. And then when they were ready, they looked at each other, gave the thumbs down, and they went subsurface. One of these student divers' husbands, a man named Hallett Smith, who had previously completed the divemaster course, was in the boat as a safety observer. And he said as soon as the group got in the water and they went subsurface, immediately their buoy and raft took off at a rapid pace. Smith had to tell the boat driver to speed up just to keep pace with the divers.

But after only a minute or two, the divers appeared to just stop suddenly in the water and the inflatable raft started spinning in circles. When they drove over to the raft to see what was going on, Smith looked down and realized what had happened. The buoy and the line attached to it that all the divers were holding on to had ripped off of the inflatable raft and been sucked under the surface out of view. It would turn out the lead instructor had gotten the tides wrong and nobody had noticed. When the divers jumped into the water, it was not high tide like the instructor said it would be. It was changing from high tide to low tide, which meant instead of there being a 1 or 2 knot current, perfect for a drift dive, there was a 6 knot current ripping through the waterway that sucked them under.

And for reference, any current that's above 3 knots is basically physically impossible to swim out of.

So all these divers could do was ride it out and hope the current spat them out before pushing them into a whirlpool.

But unfortunately, that didn't happen.

All 7 divers were pulled directly into the worst whirlpool of all because it sat over Jacob's Hole, and down they went, all the way down to 100 meters at the bottom of this hole where they were pinned until eventually the whirlpool began releasing them. Back on the surface, Smith, along with the other rescue boats he had called in once he realized this was an emergency, began hauling the divers out of the water one by one when they popped up on the surface floating face down. 6 divers surfaced. 4 were badly shaken up but were alive. One of them was the lead instructor. 2 had drowned. That was 40-year-old Ricky McDonald and Smith's wife, 33-year-old Norelle Tipuri. As for the 7th and final diver, 21-year-old David Welsh, his His body was never found, and so that's led some people to believe he may still be trapped at the bottom of Jacob's Hole. The lead instructor who had gotten the tides wrong and the dive shop that employed him were both charged with negligence and had to pay a fine. After the accident, there was a big push to ban scuba diving in the French Pass, but it didn't hold.

Today, it's up to each diver to make sure they never go in the pass when the tides are changing. Our next story is called "The Fourth Chamber." In Central Texas lies a stunning natural wonder called Jacob's Well. It's this beautiful clear water spring that every summer when the weather gets really hot in Texas, people converge on Jacob's Well and enjoy swimming in the water. But it's not just for casual swimmers trying to avoid the heat. It's for daredevils that strap scuba gear on and dive down through Jacob's Well through a 10-foot-wide shaft that leads to one of the most intricate and dangerous underwater cave systems in the world. Jacob's Well is broken up into 4 chambers. As you move from chamber 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, it gets harder and harder to squeeze through the narrow spaces, and each of the chambers gets smaller, and they get darker because you're losing sunlight, and they just become overall much more difficult to navigate the deeper you go. Imagine you put on your scuba gear and you hop into Jacob's Well and you start swimming straight down. Now there's going to be what looks like the floor of the well, and then at the center of it is a 10-foot-wide shaft that goes straight down.

And if you swim down through that, you're going to reach the first chamber, which sits at about 30 ft and goes all the way down to 55 ft. In that first chamber, the sunlight still hits, so there's algae, there's wildlife, and it's where rookie scuba divers will spend their time in Jacob's Well. At the bottom of the first chamber is another shaft opening, but it's more narrow than the very first one you went through. And that shaft, that tunnel, is actually what makes up the second chamber. It brings you down all the way to 80 ft. So So from 55 feet to 80 feet, you are in the second chamber, and it's basically a tube. Any diver that's going to be in Jacob's Well has to be aware when you are in the second chamber on your ascent to not go down the false chimney. The false chimney is this opening that looks exactly like the main exit out of the second chamber into the first chamber, but it's not. It's a dead end that loops around before you hit a wall and you gotta go all the way back out. So hopefully you have enough air at that point.

The second chamber attracts novice scuba divers and intermediate scuba divers. You still have light coming in, but it's definitely more tight, it's more claustrophobic, and because of that false chimney, it's a little bit more hazardous going into the second chamber. If you continue down past the 80-foot mark, which is the bottom of the second chamber, there is a very tight squeeze that you can barely get through with your tanks on that will bring you into a very small room that is the third chamber. At this point, the sunlight is gone, and there's all this silt and loose gravel inside of the third chamber that if your fin so much as knocks it, it will float into the water and then it will blind you. The third chamber is only from 80 feet to 90 feet, so it's only 10 feet of water. Generally speaking, you only see expert divers going into the third chamber. At the bottom of the third chamber is this heavy metal grate that sits over this tiny little opening. And that is the opening to the infamous fourth and final chamber of Jacob's Well. No one can describe what it looks like inside of the fourth chamber because, one, as soon as you go in there, it's impossible not to kick up a ton of silt, so you're going in blind.

But two, anyone that has attempted to go into the fourth chamber and maybe has been successful has died. There are literally divers that are deceased inside of the fourth chamber. And after about a dozen people died trying to get into that fourth chamber, they finally just sealed it up. But if you were to pry open that gate and go into the fourth chamber, you would have to remove your air tanks, push them into the fourth chamber, and then you'd have to wriggle your way through while keeping the mouthpiece in your mouth into the fourth chamber that, again, we don't even know what's in there. In 1983, 24-year-old college students Richard Patton and Clark McConnell entered Jacob's Well around 8:30 PM. They were both experienced scuba divers. They were in an advanced scuba diver class with all the certifications for that. They had dove Jacob's Well before, and they wanted to check out the fourth chamber. They got in the water, they went through that initial shaft into the first chamber, they continued into the tunnel that was the second chamber, they wriggled their way into the third chamber, and they reached the gate. Using some equipment they brought with them, they were able to pry open this gate, and Richard Patton was the first one to go into the fourth chamber.

He removed his tanks and pushed them inside of this opening, and then he began headfirst to slither inside of this fourth chamber opening while Clark waited. And Clark would later say that as soon as Richard had pushed his way and had actually made it into the fourth chamber, Richard comes screaming up back out of the fourth chamber, and Clark realizes that he doesn't have a mouthpiece in, he doesn't have scuba tanks on. Richard is desperately trying to wriggle his way out on a breath hold because he's dropped his tanks, and he's reaching for Clark to help him get pulled through this hole, and he can barely get out of this hole. And as soon as he gets free, Clark takes his mouthpiece off and he jams it into Richard's mouth. And so they begin buddy breathing. One guy breathes while the other guy holds his breath, and then they reverse that, back and forth, back and forth. That's not something you would do on a dive for a long period of time. It's an emergency procedure and you need to get to the surface as soon as you can. So the pair calms down, they're buddy breathing, and they're making their way back up.

They're leaving the equipment that they lost in the fourth chamber. And they're kicking their way up and they get back into the third chamber. They make their way up into the second chamber. They're kicking it out, they're kicking it out, and then their heads hit the wall and they realize they've gone down the false chimney. And what's even worse is they hear that awful "ka-thung," which means you have no air in your tanks. Clark, who had taken a full breath before this had happened, he immediately turns and starts swimming and manages to get out of the false chimney and makes it to the surface before he drowns. But Richard wasn't as lucky. His final few moments were spent in total darkness with silt kicked up all around him. He's got no air, he's got no idea where to go, and he's desperately trying to swim up, but he keeps hitting the wall of the false chimney before ultimately drowning. When recovery divers went down to retrieve his body, they found him jammed up at the very end of the false chimney.

The next and final story of today's episode is called "Don't Let Go." At 6:30 PM on May 14th, 1955, a 24-year-old man named Donald Giroux stood next to his friend, 28-year-old Marie Anderson, on on the shore of a natural spring in the state of Georgia. The spring was called Radium Springs because literally there was radium in the water. Radium is a naturally occurring, highly radioactive metallic element, but there were such low levels of it in the water that it wasn't really a hazard. However, the radium did have an effect on the water. It made it practically neon blue, and so it was totally mesmerizing. I mean, you look at this thing and you know there's something different about the spring. Also, the spring was incredibly deep. So Donald and Murray were both members of the US Navy, and so naturally they spent a lot of time, you know, in and around water, because that's what the Navy does, they work in and around water. But ironically, it was actually when Donald and Murray were not working that they spent the most amount of time in the water, because in their off time, they were recreational scuba divers.

Except back in 1955, recreational scuba diving was totally not safe. And that was because, you know, underwater diving certainly existed at the time. I mean, institutions like the Navy, they were prolific divers, but civilians did not really dive on their own. And so as a result, if you wanted to recreationally scuba dive, well, you didn't really have access to good equipment or even proper equipment. I mean, there just wasn't anything available to you. And so for people like Donald and Murray who did want to go explore the underwater abyss on their own, they had to literally make their own diving equipment, like their own oxygen tanks and their own flashlights and goggles. I mean, all of it. I mean, it was amateur. It was homemade equipment. And so that's what made it really dangerous. On top of, when you're underwater diving, as I've done myself, a lot of things can go wrong. And so that's also dangerous. And so the whole thing, you know, it's asking for problems. But for Donald and Murray, it was actually the danger associated with recreational diving that made it so appealing. They liked the idea that other people were scared to go underwater, you know, with their DIY equipment.

You know, for Donald and Murray, they loved it, they got a thrill out of it, and on top of that, they kind of felt like explorers. They got to go to places underwater where literally nobody else had gone before. In fact, they had already gone to other locations and mapped out, you know, tunnels and underwater cave systems and all these different things that literally nobody else had done before. And they loved it. And today was gonna be no different because there were sections in Radium Springs that nobody had mapped, and they were gonna go down there and see it for themselves. So after the two men looked at each other and nodded and just kind of gave the signal it was time to begin the dive, they donned their amateur equipment, you know, their oxygen tanks and their goggles and their flippers, and then they walked into the neon blue water and submerged. A few minutes later, Donald and Murray had traveled about 70 feet straight down the water column. And at this point, you know, the light is really fading. They can't really see too well. They did have flashlights that they had rigged up that they'd waterproofed.

But at this point, down 70 feet, it's getting pretty dark. But right in front of them, off to the side, was this huge entrance, this underwater tunnel entrance. And this was actually a well-known cavern. Like, this is actually where other recreational divers would go to if they went to Radium Springs. This cavern. But, while the entrance to the cavern had been sort of mapped out and searched, there were all these little spidery offshoots once you got into this cavern that had not been explored. And so what Donald and Murray were going to do is go into the cavern and then basically start, you know, splintering off and seeing what else was in there and mapping it out. Now, as much as Donald and Murray did like the sort of risks associated with this activity, they weren't completely reckless. This. They had attached a dive line when they had gone into the spring that they attached to the surface and they fed down with them. It's a 200-foot line and they carried it with them. The lead diver would basically unspool as they went. The two divers would be right next to each other and they'd be holding on to this line.

And so when they would go into this cavern, if for some reason they got turned around or, you know, if they got, you know, totally confused, whatever it was, they could always just follow their line back out of the cavern, back up to the surface. This was not like rocket science. This is something that divers today still do. So using a dive line, very common practice, and Donald and Murray were doing just that. And so they went into this cavern, they got their dive line spooling out, and everything is totally fine. But once they were inside of this cavern, all the light completely went away. I mean, the cavern was relatively spacious, but, you know, the light is coming straight down, and this tunnel entrance is basically, you know, horizontal. And so once they're inside of this cavern, it's utterly pitch black. But Donald and Murray have dove other underwater cave systems. They knew going in how dark this cave system was going to be. They had their flashlights, you know, that they had jerry-rigged to be waterproof. And they're holding on to their line and they're going into this cavern looking for their first offshoot.

But as they're going into this cavern, there's all this silt, all this mud that's kind of caked to the walls and the floor that began getting kicked up from their slippers and bumping into it. And before long, because of the silt and the lack of light, they could basically only see maybe 6 inches in front of them. Like, even shining their light, all they'd see is all the silt. And so very quickly, the visibility basically fell to zero. But, you know, again, they're going in knowing this is the environment they're going into. They're confident, they're cool, they're moving along. But as the two divers were continuing through the cavern, you know, getting deeper and deeper, and it's starting to get more and more restrictive, you know, the deeper they go, They were about to go into this offshoot when Donald suddenly started seeing all these air bubbles coming up against him. And now he can't quite see where they're coming from, but there's only one place that an air bubble could be emerging from, and that's from his oxygen tank. And so clearly there's some sort of issue. He can't see 'cause it's so dark.

He also has homemade equipment, and so the risk of catastrophic failure is pretty high with his equipment. And so he begins trying to figure out where this leak is coming from, you know, checking his equipment, trying to make it stop. But he can't, he can't really communicate to Walter, who's got the spool of dive line, who's continuing straight forward into this offshoot. He can't quite tell him what's going on. They can't actually speak to each other. Again, it's pitch black, there's silt, it's sort of claustrophobic and stressful. And so ultimately Donald grabs Murray and just tries to shake him and sort of signal, "Hey, I got an issue here." But he had no way of knowing if Murray actually understood. But Donald, he knew he just had to get out of there. He had to go back to the surface and fix his issue before it got way worse. And so even though he knew he was kind of leaving his buddy here, he's thinking, "Okay, you know, Murray's got the dive line, he's experienced, I just grabbed him, everything's gonna be okay." And Donald turned around, you know, kicked up more silt and held onto that dive line, but now followed it back out of the cavern and back up to the surface.

And when he got to the surface, he took a big breath, he was saved, you know, he checked his equipment and realized, you know, wherever the issue was, and he was actually able to fix the issue. And so before long, after only being on the surface for a couple of minutes, he had put his equipment back on, he was back in the water and following the dive line back down towards the cavern. As Donald began his descent down towards that cavern, 70 feet down, the whole time he's holding onto the dive line, you know, making sure he doesn't lose that. But really what he's focused on is checking his equipment because as he's going down, he's got basic visibility here. You know, it's not gonna be like in the cavern where you can't see anything. And so as he's going down, he's checking his equipment and just making sure that there isn't a leak. And by the time he got all the way down 70 feet and the dive line turned and went into that cavern, Donald was feeling pretty good that his equipment was good, it was not malfunctioning, and it was safe to go back into the cavern with Murray.

And so that's what he does. He's got his flashlight in one hand, he's got the dive line in the other, and he's now looking straight into this dark opening of this cavern. And in Donald goes, the whole time holding onto that dive line. And pretty much immediately, once inside the cavern, the flashlight became useless because again, the silt still kicked up. There's no current running through this cavern, so the silt is not going anywhere. But either way, you know, Donald knew what he was doing. He was going straight in there to connect with Murray and continue this dive and see what else is in here and, you know, map it out for other divers. And so into the cavern he goes. He's holding the dive line in one hand, he's got his flashlight, and he's going deeper and deeper into this cavern. And the whole time he's expecting at any moment he's just gonna bump into Murray. But he just keeps going and going deeper and deeper into the system. The walls are getting tighter and tighter around him. And eventually he reaches the very end of the dive line, 200 feet at this point deep into this cavern.

And there's no Murray. Murray's gone. Now Donald, he's looking around. Remember, it's total darkness. All he's got is this flashlight, which basically just illuminates the silt that's been kicked up all around him. But where he is at this exact moment, The silt wasn't too bad. It was just like this abyss all around him. It's totally black. There's nothing around him. And in a sudden panic, Donald thinks, "Oh my goodness, I'm so far into this cavern. I haven't found Murray. Like, something's happened to him. He's run out of air or he's gotten lost. Like, how could he have let go of the dive line? What's going on here?" And so Donald immediately just starts going down to the bottom of the cave and searching the ground, thinking that, you know, maybe Murray got to this point and passed out and sunk to the bottom. But he gets to the bottom of the cave. There's nothing there. He starts feeling the tunnels. There's nothing. And at this point he's kicked up even more silt and so, like, he really can't see anything. And he's thinking, "It took me a while to get in here and I'm running low on oxygen right now.

I need to get help immediately." Because Murray, he's gonna run outta time really quickly here. And so Donald, he turns around and holding onto this dive line, he pulls himself out of the cavern, he goes back to the surface. You know, some part of him was hoping that when he got up there that he would just magically see Murray waiting for him, but Nope, he's all alone. There's nobody here. And at that point, Donald took off his gear and he contacted authorities. Not long after that, two commercial divers along with an entire US Navy dive team arrived at Radium Springs and began looking for Murray. And they searched and they searched and they couldn't find him until 8:00 AM the next morning, 12 hours after Donald had surfaced. It would turn out when Donald had that malfunction that caused him to leave the cavern and leave leave Murray behind and go to the surface and fix himself and then go back down again. Well, in that space of time that he was away from Murray, Murray continued to spool out the dive line, maybe not necessarily knowing that Donald had left him at this point.

And Murray got all the way to the end of the dive line, 200 feet. And at that point in this uncharted tunnel he was in, somehow or another Murray became disconnected from the dive line. Maybe he let go of it, maybe he bumped into something, something we don't know, but either way, he let go of the dive line, basically right at the end of the dive line. And when Donald came back down and got to the end of that dive line and discovered Murray wasn't there— well, what he didn't know is that Murray actually was just a couple of feet away. He was basically right above him. Because that's where Murray was ultimately found. He had drowned literally feet away from the dive line, but Donald, he couldn't see him, and in a total panic state in an effort to find Murray. Donald began fumbling around, going down and rubbing up against the bottom and the walls, kicking up all this silt. And you gotta figure at this exact moment Murray, who's very much alive at this point almost certainly, is right above him, and now his visibility, which was already terrible, he's probably scared to death because he's looking for this dive line, and now the silt is just getting kicked up all around him.

He probably knows Donald's nearby, He's swimming around looking for Donald. Donald's looking for Murray. They swim right past each other. It's absolute madness. But then eventually Donald just vanishes because he's going to find help. And Murray is left all by himself in total darkness, disoriented, terrified, has no idea where the dive line is. Silt is making it impossible to know what direction he's even going. And so in Murray's final moments, he just scrambled around trying to find his way out again. Until he eventually drowned, again, just feet away from his dive line, the very thing that would have brought him to safety. A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes. The Mr. Ballen Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballen. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locascio. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasciano. Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Locascio and Jordan Stidham.

Production support by Antonio Manata and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner. Theme song "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballen Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballen YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts or visit siriusxm.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.

So that's gonna do it.

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