DAVEY JONES’S LOCKER
THE NAVY CADETS
BOOK 1
© Copyright C. R. Cummings 2004
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. The right of C. R. Cummings to be identified as the moral rights author has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000 (Commonwealth).
Seaview Press Edition
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Cummings, C. R.
Davy Jones’s locker: a north Queensland story about navy cadets.
ISBN: 1 74008 297 4.
1. Scuba diving- Queensland - Great Barrier Reef - Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
A823.3
This eEdition published by DoctorZed Publishing
www.doctorzed.com
eISBN: 978-0-9872061-2-1
Cover photos- Top left- HW Cummings collection- Wewak at Thursday Island 1956; Top right- HW Cummings collection- Tully Falls in Cairns 1956; Bottom right- C. R. Cummings collection- Wheeler Reef 2004; Bottom left- HW Cummings Collection- Lugger at Cairns; Centre- from Newnes’ Pictorial Knowledge, Volume 5, facing Page 49.
C.R. CUMMINGS
DAVEY JONES’S LOCKER
The Navy Cadets
DOCTORZED PUBLISHING
www.doctorzed.com
Dedication
This book is respectfully dedicated to my late father
Captain Herbert (Bert) William Cummings
Master Mariner
1912- 1993
With particular thanks to LT(ANC) Geoff Brown
CO of TS ‘Coral Sea’, Townsville Australian Navy Cadets who provided me with inspiration and assistance in the preparation of this book.
Thanks also to the very professional and friendly instructors of ‘Diving Dreams’, Townsville, for their excellent training and encouragement
ALSO BY
C. R. CUMMINGS
THE GREEN IDOL OF KANAKA CREEK
ROSS RIVER FEVER
TRAIN TO KURANDA
THE MUDSKIPPER CUP
* DAVY JONES’S LOCKER
BELOW BARTLE FRERE
AIRSHIP OVER ATHERTON
THE CADET CORPORAL
STANNARY HILLS
COASTS OF CAPE YORK
KYLIE AND THE KELLY GANG
BEHIND MT BALDY
THE CADET SERGEANT MAJOR
COOKTOWN CHRISTMAS
THE SECRET IN THE CLOUDS
THE WORD OF GOD
THE CADET UNDER-OFFICER
THE SMILEY PEOPLE
Map 1: The Coral Sea
CHAPTER 1
ANDREW
Andrew strove to master rising panic as he peered through his face mask into the murky green water. The rasping sound of his own breathing coming through the ‘second stage’ regulator and air pipes of his SCUBA equipment didn't help either. It sounded very loud and seemed to be quite inadequate for what he needed to stay alive. His rational mind told him not to be silly, that he was only a few metres below the surface, but that was little help. It wasn’t just the awful feeling of being crushed and trapped that was causing his heart rate to shoot up, but the imagined fears of what might lurk in the water.
The list of what might be lurking was long and cataloguing it was the wrong mental approach for peace of mind. Andrew knew that but had trouble controlling his thoughts. He was well aware that he was swimming in the Coral Sea which was home to all sorts of aquatic ‘nasties’: sharks, crocodiles, deadly jelly fish, sea snakes, poisonous octopuses, stone fish.....
What made these fears particularly strong was the memory of the shark attack on one of his friends only three weeks earlier. It had happened just after one of the sailing races. Max Pulford, a boy from the same school, had dived overboard and been fooling around in the water when a shark had taken off his leg below the knee. Another friend, Graham Kirk, had rescued him. Andrew had helped carry Max ashore and the sight of the blood soaked bandages wrapped around the stump was an image that made him nauseous to think about and which filled him with fear.
‘Stop thinking about it you idiot,’ he chided himself, but he found it very hard to resist the urge to keep looking over his shoulder to where the water faded into gloomy green depths. Where Andrew was swimming was only a bit over his head if he stood on the bottom. Actually it was a fairly boring bit of seabed, mostly sand, with the odd rock and hardly any fish. The most interesting thing he had seen was an old rubber car tyre.
In spite of his efforts to push the fear out it kept coming back and Andrew had to battle with himself. ‘Stay calm! Breathe normally! Stop worrying,’ he told himself. A glance upward showed him the rippling effect of the gentle waves that were lapping into the bay. They were just large enough to cause movement in the water. This was stirring up the fine silt, making the water cloudy and lowering visibility to about ten metres.
Andrew knew that the whole idea of taking the diving course was probably a mistake, one that he had allowed himself to be talked into. He admitted to himself that he had agreed rather than let others think he was scared. But it was not only his own self-discipline that held him under water. There was the even stronger desire not to let Muriel think he was a coward. Muriel was the new love of his life. She was the same age, 14, but went to a different school, so he had not met her until a few weeks earlier when she had joined the Navy Cadets.
Andrew was a navy cadet and very proud of it. He had been a cadet for over a year now and was rated as a Seaman. He had strong hopes of being promoted to Able Seaman, having done the promotion training and exams during the recent June camp. This was strengthened by his ambition to be a naval officer, as both his father and grandfather had been.
It was through navy cadets that Andrew came to be swimming along in Bosuns Bay, just past Giangurra on the eastern side of Trinity Inlet near Cairns. Two of the adult staff, Sub Lt Sheldon and Petty Officer Walker, were both keen SCUBA divers and were qualified dive instructors. A weekend expedition had been organized to build on the basic training lessons carried out in the swimming pool. Bosuns Bay had been chosen because it was the closest coral reef to Cairns, although it wasn’t particularly clear water and it was a sad little reef really- more rocks and mud than the pretty coral of the tourist brochures.
But now Andrew was having forcibly brought home to him something he had known but tried to ignore- he was scared of swimming underwater.