Our travel editor gave me first shout on the scuba-diving press trip to the Bahamas because he knew it is one of my interests. Twelve storeys down from the Daily Mirror, on the tenth floor of Canary Wharf tower, the same trip was being offered to David Graves, one of the Daily Telegraph's most senior news reporters. It was to be a "treat" for his 50th birthday. Like me, David was a qualified diver and was delighted to be given a dream job. It certainly made a change to his usual foreign assignments, covering wars in Angola, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Kashmir. Like hundreds of journalists every year, David and I accepted the all-expenses-paid "facility trip" in our own holiday time on the understanding we would write a travel piece. But David Graves did not come back. He drowned during one of our diving expeditions, leaving a wife, Diana, 46, and two sons, Oliver, aged nine and seven-year-old Nathan. David died a year ago, on July 8, 2002. Last week, the jury inquest in the Bahamas delivered an open verdict. Over the past 12 months, I have had time to reflect on the incident and what has happened since. It has raised a question mark over the relationship between journalists and PRs. It's relatively easy for a PR to handle the press when a trip goes well. But when things go wrong tensions can mount. Thankfully it is rare that something as terrible as this happens. The scuba-diving trip was organised jointly by the Bahamas Tourist Office and the Dive Show, a trade show at the NEC. Our brief was to write about diving facilities on the islands and include a line about the forthcoming exhibition in Birmingham. The group met at Heathrow Airport on Sunday July 7 where we were introduced to the PRs, Kim Rolle, from the Bahamas Tourist Office, and Sara Huntington, of Exposure Communications, the PR agency commissioned by the Dive Show. There were six journalists - myself, David Graves, Michael Leventhal from the Daily Express, Susannah Osborne from Red magazine, Lee Holden from M magazine and John Bantin, technical editor of the specialist publication Diver Magazine, which was sponsoring the Dive Show. The invitation had stressed that only competent divers with a PADI qualification should come on the trip. In fact the editor of Diver had sent an email to Huntington's boss before we left the UK noting the advanced standard of the diving on the itinerary and warning that safety should come first. "After all," he wrote. "A dead journalist can't write copy." We arrived later that Sunday on the island of Andros, a 20-minute flight from Nassau, and settled into our accommodation, Small Hope Bay Lodge, which operates the dive centre. The following afternoon, on the second dive of the day, we watched reef sharks feeding from frozen bait. It was billed as one of the highlights of the trip before we did more specialised "blue hole" diving later in the week - a bit like "caving" underwater. The sharks ate the bait in around 15 minutes and we were then free to explore the reef for a further 20 minutes. On this particular dive, the "buddies" - the internationally recognised safety system where divers always swim in pairs - was not in force. This issue was to occupy much time at the eventual inquest. However, I buddied up with Michael Leventhal, who had been my diving partner that morning. When we surfaced after 35 minutes, we realised David was missing. His body was recovered and brought to the boat soon afterwards. We watched, in horror, as he was given resuscitation. All we could do was cling to each other and pray. But our prayers weren't answered. David was later pronounced dead at a hospital on a nearby US naval base. The next 24 hours were a blur. We were all deeply affected by what we'd seen. Few of us slept and we were anxious and tearful. There was also a haunting feeling of guilt. Why hadn't we seen what had happened to David? Could we have saved him? The next morning, 7.30am Bahamas time, I got a call from the Telegraph. Julie Angove, of the Bahamas Tourist Office, had informed them of David's death by natural causes. But they had few details and wanted information both for themselves and Diana Graves, David's wife, and his family. I briefly told the executive what had happened and was quoted in a report in the next day's paper. That call changed everything. The Bahamas PR Kim Rolle and fellow PR Sara Huntington were unhappy - insisting that I shouldn't have spoken to the Telegraph because the Bahamas Tourist Office wanted to be the principal outlet of information. "What if your information gets distorted in the paper?" they said. They were concerned that David's wife should know the truth, but only once the facts were established, they said. | | The following day, a handful of publications, including the Daily Mail and the Times, reported that David had apparently suffered a coronary. I pointed out to Kim and Sara that Diana and David's employers were getting no details at all. I owed it to them to tell them everything I knew. Then, Jeff Birch, owner of Small Hope Bay Lodge, read us a press release he had prepared. It described the accident, including the line: "David was found lying, peacefully, under a mound of coral." I pointed out that it was impossible to "drown peacefully" and he agreed to drop that particular sentence. At 2pm, around 18 hours after David had died, on the arrangements of the director general of the Bahamas Tourist Office, we left Andros on the next plane out to Nassau. We spent the following five days on the main island. John Bantin took the option of flying home early. The rest of us decided to stay, thinking it was important for the group to stick together and try to come to terms with what had happened. The rest of the trip passed uneventfully. We went scuba-diving again with another operator. It was partly because we thought David would have approved and partly to try to overcome our anxieties about getting back into the water. We were still unsure and bewildered by David's death. With hindsight, I wish I'd flown straight back to the UK. Meanwhile David Sapsted, David's Telegraph colleague, came out to identify his body in Nassau before travelling to Small Hope Bay Lodge. A group of us - the PR Sara Huntington, myself, Susannah Osborne and Michael Leventhal - went to David's funeral a fortnight later near his home in Ealing, west London, where we met Diana and her sons. After that, some of the journalists met occasionally for a drink. It was then we learned that not only the original underwater video taken of the fatal dive, but also the only copy of it had been accidentally wiped. We had wanted to see it while we were on Andros but had never got the chance. Now, neither would anybody else. Meanwhile post-mortems of David's body in both Nassau and London ruled out a heart attack. The cause of death was acute pulmonary oedema due to drowning. A month or so later, we all received a letter of condolence from Small Hope Bay Lodge. In it, the marketing manager Mona Birch offered each of us a complimentary, week-long stay so we could "see what we'd missed": we could bring a partner. I declined. In April this year, we gathered again in Andros, this time to give evidence at David's twice-adjourned inquest. We only knew about it because the Telegraph had informed us. The coroner's office paid for our flights. It was a tense time. On the second evening, some of us chartered a boat to visit the spot where David had died for a short memorial service conducted by Diana. I gave evidence on the last day. It was a gruelling 90 minutes, mainly because of the grilling when I used the word "whisked" to describe how we left Andros. Suddenly, what I thought was an innocuous phrase became the subject of a lengthy debate. I was asked who had "whisked" us off Andros. I explained it was Kim Rolle, on the instructions of the director general of the Bahamas Tourist Office. During cross-examination, the lawyer argued that the decision to leave Andros had been taken by the group. Back at the hotel, Kim was upset. She still disagreed about what I'd said in court about being "whisked" off the island. She then said I had been the most "difficult" person on the original trip. Looking back, I believe the whole episode could have been handled better. I think the Bahamas Tourist Office was naive. It was obviously a catastrophe for them. After all, what could be worse than a national newspaper journalist dying on a trip designed to showcase their islands? Often I reflect on the character of David Graves, an older, well-respected journalist. Although we were colleagues for only two days, if it had been me who hadn't come back from that trip, I rather think he'd have been "difficult" too. by JANE RIDLEY Click graphic to view shark feeding timeline |
