Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — A Grewsome Calling. [ARTICLE]

A Grewsome Calling.

The most grewsome modern calling, beyond all question, is that of a deepsea diver employed in examining and clearing away sunken wrecks. Putting aside tho fact that his life is in constant danger from the as aults of submarine enemies or accident to his diving-dress and apparatus, the sights that he is called upsn to see, and to see, moreover, amiu. the most horrible surroundings, ovceen in ghastliness even tho e which c idfront the hospital or the army surgeon. Nowhere else on land or sea are so many accumulated horrors to be found as in the hull of a ship which has sunk with crew and passengers. The hideous condition in which the diver finds the victims of the wreck, some half-devoured by fish, sore standing upright anl flouting to and fro with a ghastly parody of living motion, some still locked together as though yet in the last agony of the death' struggle, each fighting for some real or fancied chance of escape, and some swollen to twice their natural size, floating about the interior of a ship, and knocking and rubbing up against him with a hideous life-likeness that is utterly indescribable—these are some of the horrible sights which deep-sea divers have# to work amid when they are employed on sunken wrecks. When to all these are added the awful gloom and silence amid which the work has to be performed, there will not seem to be much doubt that of all modern callings that of the deep-sea diver is the moot giewsome.