Johnson Sea Link accident
| Date | June 17, 1973 |
|---|---|
| Location | Off Key West |
| Cause | Entangled submersible |
| Participants | Archibald Menzies, Robert Meek, Edwin Clayton Link, Albert Dennison Stover |
| Outcome | Successful rescue of Menzies and Meek; recovery of bodies of Link and Stover |
The Johnson Sea Link accident was a June 1973 incident that claimed the lives of two divers. During a seemingly routine dive off Key West, the submersible Johnson Sea Link was trapped for over 24 hours in the wreckage of the destroyer USS Fred T. Berry, which had been sunk to create an artificial reef. Although the submersible was eventually recovered by the rescue vessel A.B. Wood II, two of the four occupants died of carbon dioxide poisoning: 31-year-old Edwin Clayton Link (son of Edwin Albert Link, the submersible's designer) and 51-year-old diver Albert Dennison Stover. The submersible's pilot, Archibald "Jock" Menzies, and ichthyologist Robert Meek survived. Over the next two years, Edwin Link designed an unmanned Cabled Observation and Rescue Device (CORD) that could free a trapped submersible.
The Johnson Sea Link was the successor to Edwin Link's previous submersible, Deep Diver, the first small submersible designed for lockout diving. In 1968 the Bureau of Ships determined that Deep Diver was unsafe for use at great depths or in extremely cold temperatures because of the substitution of the wrong kind of steel, which became brittle in cold water, in some parts of the submersible. Link proceeded to design a new lockout submersible with a distinctive acrylic bubble as the forward pilot/observer compartment. In January 1971 the new submersible was launched and commissioned to the Smithsonian Institution. It was named the Johnson Sea Link after its donors, Link and his friend John Seward Johnson I.
The Johnson Sea Link carried a crew of four in two separate compartments. The aft compartment was designed for lockout diving, allowing two divers to be compressed to the ambient pressure of the ocean and leave the submersible to work underwater. The forward pilot's compartment was an acrylic sphere with a diameter of 5 feet (1.5 m), providing a panoramic underwater view for the pilot and an observer. An air conditioning unit was installed on the aft starboard side of the acrylic sphere, creating a blind spot for the pilot.
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