Submarine Appliances And Their Uses
Deep Sea Diving, &c., &c.

THE FLOODED SEVERN TUNNEL. A DIVER’S PLUCKY FEAT. Any history of the Severn Tunnel would be incomplete without reference to the work done by Mr. H. A. Fleuss and Diver Alexander Lambert when, during its construction, the tunnel was suddenly flooded. Pumping having been tried without effect, it was resolved to send a diver down, in the ordinary dress, to shut the sluice, but, owing to the fact that he had to drag such a great length of air pipe (over 1,200ft.), the diver experienced great difficulty, and his movements were considerably hampered. Hearing of these difficulties, Mr. Fleuss volunteered, through Siebe, Gorman and Co., to go down with his original self-contained diving apparatus and endeavour to close the iron door in the head-wall, which was something over 1,oooft. from the shaft. He had never had any experience as a diver, and had never done any actual work under water, except to make a few descents to test the apparatus he had invented. On No- vember 3rd, 1880, he left London with his apparatus for Portskewett, and, on arrival the next morning, he was shown drawings, etc., of the shaft and the heading he would have to traverse, but no mention was made to him of the wrecked condition of the workings and the many difficulties to be encountered. He accepted the services of a foreman labourer as his attendant, and, as the ordinary signals used for diving were not suitable in his case, owing to the fact that he used no air pipe, he had to hastily instruct this man in the code that he had adopted. The shaft was about 200ft. deep, in which the water was 40ft. deep, and at 150ft. from the surface was a rough platform about 10ft. above the water. There was a ladder running practically clown the centre of the shaft and through a manhole in the platform. As Lambert was familiar with the workings, Mr. Fleuss asked him to go down first in the ordinary apparatus, and stand at the bottom of the shaft near the entrance to the heading so that he might assist him in detaching his life-line, and also give him some indication of the direction in which to proceed. There were no submarine lamps at that time, and the darkness under water was absolute. Mr. Fleuss went down to the bottom of the ladder, and hung on the last rung with his hands, but could feel no ground, so he let go and dropped some five or six feet; then, taking a couple of steps to the left to clear the ladder with his line, he walked straight forward to the wall of the shaft, then gradually worked his way round to the left until he found the opening to the heading. Reaching across this, he found Lambert waiting for him. No one had told him that the ladder did not reach the bottom, nor was he told that he would have to land upon a staging covering a 7ft. sump. The staging was somewhat broken up, and he frequently found the planks tipping up and giving way beneath him. Lambert and Fleuss shook hands, and then, as previously arranged, the life-line was detached, and Mr. Fleuss started on his journey up the heading, feeling his way as best he could between the rails. There was a ditch upon each side of the roadway, and sleepers of odd lengths projected partly across these ditches, so it was impossible for him to feel his way along the sides. He also found when standing upright that it was very difficult to know which way he was facing, so he crawled on his hands and knees between the rails. At first there was a considerable depth of soft mud which he could reach down through, and some distance further in there was a big fall, only just leaving room enough to crawl through between this fall and the head-trees. Naturally lie got along very slowly, and, after about an hour returned, and, feeling for Lambert, motioned him to refasten his life-line. While this was being clone he wondered if his attendant would give him a preliminary pull up so that he could reach the ladder. He gave his four-pull signal, and was very pleased to find that the man above pulled up, and that he pulled plumb with the ladder, so that Mr. Ficuss was able to reach it. Lambert followed, and from what Mr. Fleuss described to him, he was told that he had been up about 300ft. Of course, he meant to have another try, and came up to consider some plan of petting along more quickly. The next time lie tried feeling along the rails with a crow-bar, and another time he tried feeling along the sides and roof with a wooden stick. After several attempts, upon each of which he succeeded in getting- a little farther up the heading, Lambert came to him and asked to be allowed to put the apparatus on, and to have a lesson in its use. He had an hour or two’s successful practice that afternoon, and the next morning, attended by his own special signalman, he went down, taking off his own signal-line at the entrance to the heading. The whole time that he was away, Mr. Fleuss sat on the edge of the manhole counting the minutes, and it was exactly one hour and thirty minutes when Lambert returned to the life-line and signalled to be pulled up. He said that he had been the whole distance, and had shut one of the valves and taken up one rail and partly removed the other from the sill of the door, but that he wanted a shorter crow-bar to complete the work. In the meantime, Mr. Fleuss went to London for more oxygen and caustic soda, and, on his return, Lambert again went up the heading, and succeeded- in closing the iron door. This door was set in a gft. length of brick heading, 4ft. by 4ft., and before closing the door Lambert had to go right through this heading and close a flap valve at the far end of it. He also had to screw down a I2in. valve on the home side of the door, but, owing to this bein^ fitted with a left-handed thread, he screwed it wide open by mistake, and this, of course, macle the time of pumping out longer than it would otherwise have taken. 172