The Cordova daily times., 1921-05-14
BURGLARS TRY
 TO SMASH SAFE
 IN SUNKEN SHIP

That burglars attempted to dyna- mite the safe of the steamer Prin- cess Sophia, wrecked in Lynn canal in October, 1918, is the statement of J. w. Clouse, who was the man who salvaged the safe last summer for the Deep Sea Salvage Company. This, as well as experiences of Jack Don ovan, another Seattle diver who worked for many months on the So- phia wreck, where he almost lost his life, was told in an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, as follows:
 Movie fans have witnessed many time on the screen the deep sea or subma rine diver at his work, and have watched with bated breath his perils and marveled at his adven- lures. To many, perhaps, they have seemed fiction, the conjured Pigments of the product of an imaginative scenario writer or director and shown on the screen to furnish thrills for a dollar-spending public. How many are there who know that right here make their living by deep-sea diving, and undergo even greater perils and have had even more thrilling adven. lures than those pictured adventures that bear out the veracity of the old saw that truth is stranger than fife. tion.
 Whoever heard of submarine rob. bers? But, according to several of the divers, there are men who go down to the bottom of the sea and rob the dead, dynamite and loot the safes and even the trunks lost in wrecks. According to a submarine divers way of looking at things, this is the foulest of crimes. It is rare, but it has occurred.
 , J. W. Clouse, Seattle diver, who grew up here and learned his pro- fession when working for the old I Seattle Construction Company about fourteen years ago, is the man who brought up the safe from the wreck l of the Princess Sophia, which sank in Lynn canal in October, 1918 He claims that sometime previous to the rescue of the safe some one had tried to dynamite 1t. The safe blowers did not take into consideration the depth of the water in which the safe laid and did not use enough powder to overcome the pressure of water. AL though the safe was badly dented and even blown through the floor of the pursers room to the deck below, it was not torn open.
 That divers are temperamental as well as actors or persons in some other professions is demonstrated well by Clouse. He says that he never goes down unless he is feeling in the best of health and spirits, and that he never lets any man dictate when he shall submerge or when he shall come up. He says he uses his own judgment at all times and thinks that is the reason he has never had any serious mishaps.
 Clouse has had many hair-raising encounters with octopuses and at times has had to knife them in order to save himself. The octopuses are numerous on this coast in the waters near Vancouver Island and Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, Clouse says. Tn one place where he was working there were so many of them that il was necessary to use dynamite to be gin work. He says that while he was at work on the Princess Sophia wreck the halibut and cod were sc numerous they obstructed light from above and it was necessary to push them out of the way in order to see to work. The halibut were so large that when he stepped on them they would raise him off his feet. All divers say that fish pay no more at tention to diver than they would to friendly fish.
 The temptation to give out false reports on wreck where there is money or other valuables is too great for many young divers to resist according to Clouse, and soon causes their downfall
 Like any other robbers, they are apprehended sooner or later," he says.
 Capt. A. J. Verbeck, another Seat. tie diver, and who perhaps is one of the oldest men in the diving pro. fession here, has had a number of miraculous escapes from death.
 In June, 1916, he was under the water for almost six hours, pinned beneath some iron rails which he had been trying to extricate from be- heath the Smith cove dock. At that |