Mike Wallace wrote:

> Every recovery dive is high risk, regarless of depth of water. Your
> body might come up again, not always, for a couple hours to a day
> then it's going back down.

Reminds me of the most unpleasant business trip I ever took - to Lagos,
Nigeria, back in 1990. The shipping line I was working for had effected a
large shipment of T-shirts and ghetto blasters, for a client who proceeded
to go bankrupt. So with lien in the cargo, our bartering department found a
buyer in Lagos, and I went to assist in supervising the unloading.

Many of my best dinner party stories have their origin in that trip, but the
one that is relevant in this context is that in was in the Port of Lagos
(Apapa) that I met the Bayonet Man!

Lagos is probably one of the most horrific places on Earth, from just about
any perspective. Falling into the water there is certain to at least land
you in hospital with many exotic infections, largely because the Niger
River, which feeds into it, is used as a garbage disposal system by anyone
who lives upstream from the port. Anything thrown into the river will end in
Apapa Port, and that includes an extravagant amount of dead bodies, human
and animal.

The Bayonet Man's job, which I understood to be passed down from father to
son, was to scour the port area in a dug-out, armed with a World War
1-vintage, 3-foot long bayonet, mounted on a 6-8 foot long bamboo pole, with
which he would puncture any dead, bloated body that floated to the surface,
so it would sink back to the bottom!

I didn't complain about my job for months afterwards :-)

Bjorn