Death in Number Two Shaft

By Steve Lewis

In 2007, one of a team of expert cave divers died in strange circumstances while exploring Bell Island's flooded Iron-ore Mine in Newfoundland, Canada. Joe Steffen's death was a terrible shock for his team-mates and an unexpected and unwelcome tragedy for his friends and family. Although the expedition continued until its scheduled conclusion, and successfully placed two kilometres of permanent guideline in the mine's network of passageways and galleries, Steffen's death closed the mine to further exploration and the possibility of guided dives for almost a decade.

In his new book, best-selling author Steve Lewis tells the story of Steffen's death and its aftermath, from his perspective as expedition leader and Steffen's roommate during their time together in Newfoundland. He writes honestly about the profound effect his friend's death had on him, how it wove itself into his life — both underwater and above — until finally, somewhere on the road to Spain's Santiago de Compostela, how he rid himself of the heartache and guilt associated with it.

He says: "I needed to write this book because it turns out the story of Bell Island is more important than four shipwrecks, several square kilometres of flooded mine, and a dead friend. What started out as one local man's quest to put Bell Island on every diver's bucket list, became much more complex than anyone — certainly any of the people involved in that quest — would have guessed."

From Lewis' childhood dream of sinking below the surface of the ocean into "a blue world as quiet and as soft as cotton wool" to dropping in on a shark out for a morning constitutional, all the way to floating in a Mexican cave and reading in the flowstones and stalactites "all the complicated activities acted out in the sunlit jungle overhead," this book is not your average dive book. This is not an average story.

According to one reviewer, Lewis' narrative "delves into the very nature of adventure and what drives people to push the limits of their existence."

Robert Osborne — a Toronto-based documentary film-maker who produced a TV show about the 2016 expedition to Bell Island Mine — writes: "Death in Number Two Shaft is not only a book anyone fascinated by adventure should read, but everyone interested in a good story, well told and giving us insight into the human condition."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Techdiver Publishing
• Release date: Oct 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386555049

Book preview

A TRUE-LIFE UNDERWATER ADVENTURE

Steve Lewis

TECHDIVER PUBLISHING,

ROSSEAU, CANADA

Copyright © 2018 Steve Lewis

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical review and other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Techdiver Publishing, Rosseau, Ontario, Canada

A Meisenheimer Schoolhouse production.

Cover design: Collective Noun Inc., Muskoka

Printed by CreateSpace 2018

REVISED FIRST EDITION

DEDICATION

To Joey, Lindsey-Rose, and Jennifer Steffen, whose connection to events in this book are stronger than anyone could ever guess. I hope you know how deeply Joe loved you.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

In the space-time vortex that was the writing of Death in Number Two Shaft (The Newfoundland Book), it quickly became obvious that to remember everyone who had a part in or whose support and encouragement played an important role in making things happen is simply impossible.

Also, with the passage of time (considerably more than a decade in some cases), memories of actual events inevitably begin to trespasses on fiction. During that process, names, and who did what, to whom, when, and how many times, get pushed out of chronological order and becomes jumbled up with other diving projects, fragments of old shopping lists, the cycle of family births, marriages and deaths, personal upheavals, life’s other traumas, and the pile of things we wished had happened differently.

The best I can do is to offer thanks to everyone involved in the Mine Quest Projects in any way. Volunteers, supporters, sponsors, and the brothers and sisters who dived with me. The whole team numbers close to 100. Incredible. It’s been a trip and a privilege; thank you.

That said, those deserving special thanks include Rick and Debbie Stanley — without whom none of this could have happened — Gordon Skanes, Teresita McCarthy and all the board members of the Bell Island Heritage Society, and the people of Bell Island for their sponsorship, backing, and hospitality across the years. You folks are a true delight.

To Phil Short who found time to write the foreword sandwiched between a steady and relentless stream of teaching assignments, and for unquestioning friendship throughout the whole Newfoundland Saga. To the extraordinary Jill Heinerth for being part of this story among so many others, and for her tremendous belief in Bell Island, and in me.

For the dive luminaries who’ve sponsored me personally for years — Sean Webb and Marcus Darler at O’Three Drysuits; David Burroughs and Nick Hollis at Hollis No Limit Dive Gear — nothing but gratitude.

Special thanks as well to my editor, Jane Herbert of Aquamedia who kept smiling in spite of my ‘creative’ punctuation, mid-Atlantic idioms and idiosyncratic spelling. And who will thrash me when she sees the last-minute changes I did NOT run by her.

And also thank you to Emma Lovell of Collective Noun for getting it after the shortest of briefings and then producing excellent design work on the cover.

And finally, thanks to Susie Regan Kenney who put me on the road to Santiago after a lifetime of stalling, and who held my hand and my heart every step of the way. Thanks, Imp.

DEATH

IN

NUMBER TWO

SHAFT

The exploration of Newfoundland’s Bell Island Mine

FOREWORD

— by Phil Short —

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As I swam down the set of immaculately preserved railway lines between the walls of a tunnel far into the Bell Island Mine with the line spooling from my exploratory reel, I realised how privileged and honoured I was to be there.

There, was a deep level in a flooded Iron mine on the tiny Bell Island off the coast of Newfoundland, but the privilege and honour were not in the dive or the incredible undisturbed pieces of Industrial Archeology I was passing and observing. The privilege and honour was to meet such soul-changing group of people as the Newfoundlanders, the Bell Islanders, the expedition members, and the project leader Steve Lewis.

I had ended up on this particular expedition almost by accident, the other team members knew each other well and had worked together before, I was simply recommended to Steve by a dive industry contact when he was inquiring about suitable people to swim around in a freezing-cold, flooded mine.

The history of the Island and its place in the events of World War Two are incredible. World class shipwreck dives, oft described as the cold water ‘ Truk Lagoon of the North,’ sunk by the Axis to prevent the ore they carried aiding the Allied forces. The ore they were carrying sits still in their soft coral, rainbow coloured hulls. It was dug from the iron mine a few hundred metres away. The whole place — from the wrecks to the flooded mine galleries — is a time capsule that remains unspoiled and protected.

Within the first few days of the expedition’s phase one I realised that I was quickly making friendships and bonds with my team members and our Newfoundland hosts that would last a lifetime. At times over the years I feel like Rick and Debbie Stanley are a second family and a home I could turn to any time. To bond with groups in such a way is rare.

Prior to the expedition I had heard of Steve Lewis through the diving network but never met him. Within minutes of my arrival at Ocean Quest in the snow, he was abusing me with a string of movie quotation insults that had me holding my sides with laughter and racking my brain to return the banter. Our London-area backgrounds gave us a common ground and from that, a genuine deep mutual respect grew. It has remained to this day. But beyond that comedic banter, under that skin lies a deeply intelligent and honourable gentleman that I am honoured to call my friend.

As our first expedition into the cold, silent museum of wonders that is Bell Island Iron Mine continued, almost every dive resulted in an empty dive line reel. We visited galleries last seen by the workmen who toiled here daily to raise ore from the deepening seams, and as we did, we found new wonders. Our project underwater photographer caught beautifully haunting images of the time-capsule of a hard workplace from a bygone age. One such image will never leave me, the self portrait of a mine worker painted onto the wall next to the giant pump wheels; his work place.

Sadly our first expedition included tragedy as we lost a team member, a friend, and inspirational human being full of laughter and life and an incredible morale booster. But from that tragedy grew strength. The dive and support team members, the Bell Islanders, and all involved, continued the project as our friend would have wished. We continued to lay line in more and more remote sections of the mine for future dives, and we collected more and more data to map archeological finds.

From these beginnings, our quest continued with a second Mine exploration project under the flags of both the Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. That second expedition took understanding of the mine and its heritage beyond just divers and our team, and afield to young Newfoundlanders in local schools. In addition team members from both expeditions have videoed, photographed and surveyed the wrecks of Conception Bay finding and securing for future generations many rare artefacts including the ships navigational sextant. The tiny seed sown by that group of divers, who became a team and then friends, who met by the fire in Ocean Quest Resort, has grown tall and strong and the memory of our friend continues in the development of our collective knowledge of the region.

Having spent many hours over two expeditions in the mine and personally had a brief glimpse of the wonders under the crystal clear waters of Conception Bay whist diving the Rose Castle and peering into its intact Marconi Radio room, I know it is a venue I will return to again and again, and not just for the diving but for the friendship, hospitality and open-armed welcome that is Newfoundland.

Steve has done an incredible job, telling the stories and pointing out the opportunities of the wreck, mine, wildlife and scenic diving off St. Johns and Bell Island and more importantly given his readers a taster of the hospitality and kindness to be found there for any diver who searches for an incredible all-round experience.

Phil Short

Fellow Explorers Club.

Fellow Royal Geographical Society.

July 2018 Devizes. United Kingdom.

PROLOGUE

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

— Graham Greene: Author and the Godhead of English Literature for a scruffy English school kid

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Newfoundland — an island on the extreme eastern edge of North America — is closer physically to the bleak, beautiful and mysterious fjords of Greenland than to the flat and fertile farmland of Central Canada, or the mixed-wood plains and sprawling suburbs of Ontario just a three-hour flight away. In distance measured by human spirit, Newfoundland’s capital — St. John’s — is about as far as you can travel from the self-conscious boutique cafes and hipster neighbourhoods of other Canadian cities like Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver; especially on a summertime Saturday evening. Measured in purely experiential units, Newfoundland offers Flipper Pie at a Legion supper in Come-by-Chance, and the opportunity to drink a pint of good stout in the The Duke Of Duckworth and by doing so, to be transported to a less disconnected time. These are things impossible to match anywhere in the rest of the country; perhaps anywhere in the rest of the continent. So, given that, let’s just say, Newfoundland is different.

Sure, it has Tim Hortons, Shoppers Drug Marts, Loblaws, and RBCs like its sister provinces, but somehow in Newfoundland things otherwise universal are distinctively and totally singular. Moreover, by dint of not trying to be different but just by being itself, Newfoundland and its people seem to have no problems staying connected to the here and now in their own real and comfortable way. Newfoundland, it turns out, is the perfect marriage of Old World and New; North American Type A bravado, European congeniality.

Perhaps most important of all, while the rest of Canada struggles with the concept of two official languages, Newfoundland has its own.

In the early summer of 2003, I headed to Conception Bay, Newfoundland for the first time in my life; and it changed my life. In small steps admittedly, bit by tiny bit, but the change was unremitting and spread unconsciously over years.

For many Canadians (and certainly folk from the rest of the world) the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is a vague notion: an unfamiliar and slightly unsettling mix of icebergs, softwood forests, rum, Celtic music, and a broken cod-fishing industry. It is the place you fly over on your way to and from Europe. It’s where your childhood friend’s crazy Uncle Jack came from. It’s the country where all the girls have pretty red hair, are called Lilly, and can dance a jig while playing the fiddle.

And of course it’s Newfoundland that has towns called: Heart’s Desire, Placentia, Blow Me Down, Paradise, and the ever popular Dildo. Tourists stop to take selfies beside road signs there.

Due to its singularity and differences, Newfoundland, like everything outside the prosaic and mundane suffers from a huge misunderstanding packed inside a misconception, like a cod stuffed with crabmeat. Newfoundland and things Newfoundland-ish are subject to gross generalisation. (For instance, all the girls are not strawberry-blondes, are not all called Lilly, and not every one of them can play the fiddle and dance a jig.)

In person and face-to-face, Canada’s Province of Newfoundland and Labrador is far, far more subtle, more beautiful and more compelling than the press clippings from the rest of the world would have us believe.

And it’s Newfoundland more than any other part of my chosen country that gave me experiences that deepened personal awareness and insight. Odd to say, but the people on the eastern edge of North America — a British Dominion until 1949 when it joined with the rest of Canada — took on the role of my Indian Swami; my Guru; my Rōshi, without blinking an eye. It came naturally to them it seems.

I’d go back there again and again as a form of retreat and renewal just to be woken up and pointed again in the direction of things that matter.