Diving in South Africa has a rich and diverse history, encompassing military operations, record-breaking feats of exploration, and the recovery of lost cultural heritage. From the elite ranks of Special Forces divers to the dedicated individuals mapping slave shipwrecks, South African divers have left an indelible mark on the underwater world.
South African Special Forces Insignia
The Elite: South African Special Forces Divers
To be a Special Forces Diver is the humbling pinnacle of diving. These military dive courses have an incredibly high failure rate compared to recreational dive training. Special Forces, by default of their mandate within military organisational structures, typically don’t operate within the borders of the country they serve.
As one of the world’s most revered military diver training courses, you cannot just volunteer to be a South African Special Forces Diver. The entry pre-requisite is successfully completing the gruelling 18-month Special Forces Operator training course, which is itself notoriously difficult to achieve.
Originally located on Salisbury Island in the Durban harbour, special forces seaborne operations fell under the auspices of the then- named 1 Reconnaissance Commando. As the need for specialist seaborne operations grew, so did the requirement for a secluded specialist training and operational base. 4 Reconnaissance Commando was thus officially commissioned on an isolated peninsular near Langebaan, north of Cape Town, in July 1978. Their function was to provide ‘specialist amphibious, surface, and underwater capabilities for reconnaissance and offensive purposes’.
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Hopeful Operator candidates are filtered out very quickly if they cannot contend with the incredibly gruelling physical and endurance demands of training. The Special Forces Operator course includes an introductory ‘Water Orientation’ training phase, ensuring basic competency in seaborne operations.
Training as a Special Forces seaborne specialist is an intense 6-month additional commitment consisting of various building blocks. Basic watermanship training can require completing 50m underwater swims in one breath, passing the infamous drown-proofing test, and long-distance ocean swims with fins at night demonstrating endurance and navigational competency.
Any Special Forces Diver has phenomenal strength of mind in hand with incredible vigour and endurance, can work in isolated high-stress situations for long periods, and is equally a good team player. They are trained to the highest level of competency utilising all manner of underwater apparatus, including 100% oxygen rebreathers and underwater propulsion vehicles.
Bushman's Hole: A Deep Diving Legend
For any diver who can stomach the risks, Bushman’s Hole is world-class. The entrance to Bushman’s Hole doesn’t hint at the vastness beneath-it’s the third-deepest freshwater cave in the world. It’s located on the privately owned Mount Carmel game farm, 11,000 acres of rolling, ocher-earthed veldt sparsely thatched with silky bushman grass and dotted with sun-baked termite mounds.
No one had any idea how deep Bushman’s was until Nuno Gomes arrived. On his first visit, in 1981, the Johannesburg-based Gomes dived to almost 250 feet, dropping down through a narrow chimney that opens up into an enormous chamber below 150 feet. In 1988, he set an African depth record of just over 400 feet, and Bushman’s reputation as a deep diver’s cave started to spread.
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During the Exley expedition, Gomes performed a sonar scan of the hole. It revealed Bushman’s to be the largest freshwater cave ever discovered, with a main chamber that was approximately 770 feet by 250 feet across and more than 870 feet deep.
Diving Bushman’s is exhilarating. The narrow entrance is claustrophobic, but once you reach the vast main chamber, it’s like spacewalking.
The greatest depth attained was by Nuno Gomes in 1996, diving to a depth of 282.6 metres (927 ft).
Bushman's Hole
The Tragedy of Deon Dreyer and the Heroism of Dave Shaw
In 1994, Deon Dreyer, a young and adventurous diver, joined a team at Bushman's Hole. They planned a descent to 492 feet, and Deon was to provide support. During a practice dive, Deon blacked out at 196 feet and disappeared. The best guess is deep-water blackout from carbon dioxide buildup.
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Ten years later, in 2005, Dave Shaw, an experienced deep-water diver, descended into Bushman's Hole. He planned to lay a line at a depth that no rebreather had ever been taken. At around 886 feet, he discovered Deon Dreyer's body.
Shaw, feeling a connection to Dreyer, decided to attempt a recovery. He was a man who dived to expand the limits of the possible. Shaw wrapped his arms around the corpse and tried to lift. It didn’t move.
On 8 January 2005, Dave Shaw died after becoming tangled in the line while attempting to recover Dreyer's body.
Diving With a Purpose: Uncovering Black History
Enter Diving With a Purpose, a group that trains divers to find and conserve historical and cultural artifacts buried deep in the waters. Since its founding in 2003, DWP has trained some 500 divers to help archaeologists and historians search for and document such ships. The group’s goal is to help Black folks, in particular, find their own history and tell their own stories.
During 2015 Diving with a Purpose was part of a major effort, directed by the international Slave Wrecks Project, to document the remnants of the São José-Paquete de Africa, a Portuguese ship that sank off Cape Town in South Africa in 1794, its enslaved passengers bound for sugar plantations in Brazil. Researchers believe this was the first time wreckage was recovered from a ship that went down with slaves aboard.
According to Jay Haigler, some of these excursions begin as pure detective work. "One place where we start looking is insurance records: These ships were insured. There was an investigation. A claim was filed, and a payment was made for cargo that was lost - no different from when there is a car accident. But unfortunately, at this time human beings were the cargo.
Each new artifact adds to the picture, Jones said. “If you find pottery or a musket, you can investigate where that was made. We’ve found pottery of Chinese origin [in the São José], which means the ship would have been to China or to a port where it was sold.
“When we are documenting ships involved in the global slave trade, this is consecrated ground. We are investigating the greatest crime ever against humanity.
DWP also investigates other wrecks. Haigler said, “The airmen prevailed through the thought that African Americans did not have the ability to become fighter pilots. They overcame segregation in the Jim Crow South while becoming world class. That was their story. But it isn’t as well known that after their basic training, they got advanced training in the great state of Michigan.
“The rubber tires were still there,” he said. “And we know that this was the plane of 2nd Lt. Frank H.
Diving With a Purpose
The Story of Charlie Shapiro and the Brederode Shipwreck
Centuries-old trinkets from rusty buttons to gifts destined for kings take up a room in Charlie Shapiro's house - treasures from a lifetime spent combing the ocean floor for shipwrecks. But the wreck diver's trove is incomplete, as one of his richest recent finds lies waiting in the deep fathoms of the ocean a decade after its discovery, at risk from pillagers.
Shapiro found the 224-year-old shipwreck of the Dutch Brederode 11 years ago, but a series of mishaps has left him still waiting for government to grant him a permit to excavate its 120 million-rand (£10.1 million) cargo.
"That wreck was my baby, that was my life's work," Shapiro says of the ship which has dominated three decades of his existence. From combing archives in Europe and South Africa, to a 16-year search and against-the-odds discovery of a ship considered an amazingly well-preserved archaeological find, Shapiro's tale is literally of a treasure hunt.
Greed and disagreements broke up the group of salvors that he formed, and his permit to excavate the ship was lost in a whirl of law changes and a government moratorium on all permits, which has only recently been lifted.
David Shaw's Last Scuba Dive
Key Figures in South African Diving History
Here's a table highlighting some key figures and events in South African diving history:
| Name | Achievement/Role | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Nuno Gomes | Deepest scuba dive (927 ft) in Bushman's Hole | 1996 |
| Dave Shaw | Diver who attempted to recover Deon Dreyer's body | 2005 |
| Deon Dreyer | Diver who died in Bushman's Hole | 1994 |
| Albert José Jones | Co-founder of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers and Diving With a Purpose | N/A |
| Jay Haigler | Master scuba diver trainer and member of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers and Diving With a Purpose | N/A |
| Charlie Shapiro | Shipwreck explorer who discovered the Brederode | N/A |
