There were ships going in and out, and in those days and there were a lot of people on the breakwater to watch the warships. There was a priest and he stayed behind so that when I was raised to the surface, he'd be there. They rang for my foreman, but instead of being at Tarzna, he was at Kalafrana. They rang for him at about nine in the morning and he ended up arriving at two in the afternoon. Around one o'clock, I must have woken up and with my knife, I cut the rope around me and I found myself on the surface.

Q. If they thought you were dead, how come they kept on pumping air?

For sure, that's so that I'd always have air. Anyway, I got to the top and found myself short of breath again. They threw me on to the breakwater. There were alot of people around and they all wanted to see. The priest was saying "Give him space, give him space, let him breath because he's still alive". After a little while, I felt better. The foreman and the engineer came at around two o'clock. When the engineer saw that I was feeling better, he wanted me to go back down again but I didn't want to. Anyway, I went down to the bottom and came up straight away, to get rid of the fear. I felt better then went back up.

Down I went, and I found lots of mud which stirred up and I wasn't able to see anything, let alone trying to find this shackle. There was a roll of wire, and this roll of wire was thick wire of about four inches thick. As soon as I put my foot on it, it was like a spring, so when I stepped on it, about three coils unsprung and dropped over me. I became entangled in the wire that remained coiled and the wire that had become entangled around me. I couldn't go back up.

So, as the mud was soft, not hard, I'd figured out what was going on. I couldn't lift the wire because when I lifted the wire I'd sink deeper into the mud. I had to grab the wire and pass between it and the soft mud. On the way up, once I'd escaped, I'd found that the shackle that I'd been looking for was in my hands. I went up and asked "Is this it?". They replied that it was.

They had no idea what had happened to me. The man holding the lifeline had been signalling me but I hadn't signalled back. That's how I ended up escaping. He pulled and made me pass through the mud, under the wire. I'd escaped and floated to the top.

I went to Tarzna with him and when we arrived I saw that the people at the air pump and all the diving equipment was ready to go. All I had to do was to dress up and go down. Then they told me that the tunnel supplying water for the generation station was blocked.

So down I went and at the tunnel entrance, I found tanks and wood stuck in the opening. As soon as I touched it, it collapsed and the water dragged me into the tunnel. The man up top holding my rope couldn't hold me. As soon as the pipe had filled up with water, they managed to pull me out and hauled me up.

As soon as they pulled me out, they saw that the rope had cut into me here, and they took me to the hospital emergency. They took me quickly to the emergency and saw that the rope had cut into my stomach and my back. The doctor was there and they started massaging me to try get the blood moving again. They kept me there for about six hours. When the rope burn had lessened, they sent me home. They told me to take the next day off, but I went back after two days.

So I'm going down, and bring back up sacks of wheat and flour that were in it. I used to bring up the bags six at a time all tied up, first the wheat then the flour. So I'm tying them up, and tying them up. Beneath these sacks there was all this wood and when they found that the weight had been removed from them, they floated up to the entrance of the hold. When it came time to pull me up, they couldn't because of all the pieces of wood that had blocked the entrance.

The wood was roughly six inches thick and was about fifteen feet long. There was these three sacks of flour that had fallen on to the wood, leaving enough of a gap. I could pass between the beam and managed to escape.

The wood also managed to escape, so much so that they managed to fill a whole barge with it.

There was this one that they searched and found this flour. She named every person that she knew that had bought flour from this man, and she named me.

The police came to search my place and they looked everywhere. In the sheets, in the wardrobe, in the drawers, everywhere. This sack was in the entrance hallway and the only thing on it was an apron. So they'd come in, past this sack of flour, they left, past this sack of flour, they'd searched everywhere, even out in the field, just to see if the sack of flour was hidden out there.

They left, but they didn't find this sack. After a while, when everything had settled, I told everybody what had happened.

[Note: It seems that their next door neighbour hid a sack of flour in a recess in his well. It was found and he spent three months in jail.]

Once on top, I found that the pump men were all confused and had stopped pumping, thinking that something had happened because no air was going through. They lifted me up and I asked what had happened. It seems that this launch had passed and my pipe had got caught up in the bow without them realising this. When it moved on, I found myself against the propellor as the pipe had got caught on the bow. Then I dropped down then got dragged back up. I wanted to know what had happened and they told me what had happened.

The men on the pump had stopped because they didn't know if the pipe was OK or not, so they wanted to find out, so they stopped pumping. I got out and there was lots of trouble. The inspector came, so did the dockyard police and the foreman, to find out what had happened as there were lots of questions.

They wanted to blame the trouble on the pilot of the launch. I said that I was OK so there was no need to blame anyone for what had happened. But the blame really was on the man that had lowered me. The inspector asked me if I wanted to follow it up, but I said no as nothing had happened to me.

From that time on, an order was made that anyone that wanted to come next to the jetty had to go past this way, keeping a distance away. That still exists today. You need to keep your distance.

When I was back on the bottom, this huge stomach pain hit me and I nearly vomited. I had to go back up. The boss was there and he asked what was happening. I said I didn't know and asked to get undressed. Once undressed, I said that I was going home. I was at Ta' Pintu. A man in a car asked if I wanted a lift home but I said that it was OK. I was going up the hill of the Crucifix and I was hit with a pain in the stomach. It passed but I waited for a car to arrive, got in and got a lift home.

My wife was home and she prepared some hot water with lemon but the pain was very strong. They had to send for the doctor. The doctor came and said that he didn't know what was going on. He tested me but the pain went away. When he left, the pain came back, very strongly and I vomited, so strong was the pain.

The doctor came back, then the professor came and ordered the ambulance to take me to hospital as quickly as possible. When I arrived, they gave me an injection, and I wasn't even in the door yet. They admitted me in and I spent two months in hospital.

You know what I had. I had an inflamation of the liver, that's what I had. I was always healthy, so I never knew what it was like to be sick.