M/Y JADRAN

Life seemed good to Martin Richardson as he lounged in the waters of the Red Sea. It had been a perfect, almost cloudless day and at 6pm the water, more than half a mile offshore from the low, sandy desert hills of the South Sinai Peninsula, was still bathwater warm.

The wiry, 29 year old, six footer was three days into a diving course taught by fellow Briton Harry Hayward. That day, July 23rd he had graduated from routine exercises to some actuall diving, all be it in 12 meters of water.

At the end of the day, 23 year old, fair haired Hayward congratulated his pupil: 'Thats it. Your almost done, just a few more dives and the rest is mainly theory, youll get though it no problem.'

In high spirits Richardson rejoined the half dozen or so other divers on the Jadran for the fifty or so minute run back to the Egyptian port of Sharm el Sheikh.

On the way back the crew spotted dolphins of the port bow. Dolphins would often come alongside boats in the Red Sea and ride their bow waves. If the boat stopped they would sometimes come and play near the swimmers.

During this time Captain Dan Hermon and first mate Harry Hayward were relaxing on lines coming off the back of the Jadran, enjoying being pulled along in the warm surf of the two 280 horse-power deisel engines.

Martin decided to join them, however did not have a firm grip on the rope when he jumped to the water and let go due to rope burns. Harry and Danny pulled their way back to the boat as the yacht circled to pick him up. Richardson struck up a strong crawl to meet the boat half way, however, tired from the days diving, he changed his mind. 'Why bother? Let the boat come to me, the whole point of travel is to take things easy.'

Suddenly. he felt something rip into the left side of his back, and saw blood in the water around him. Again there came a shock of giant teeth ripping into his back. He yelled 'shark!! shark!!' Once more the creature bit into his back tearing the flesh.

On the aft deck of the Jadran, Hayward heard Richardson's cries of anguish and saw him propelled out of the water to his waist.

Instantly, Hayward leapt down into the zodiac tied to the back of the yacht, In seconds, he had untied the 20 foot craft , started the engine and was speeding towards Richardson at full power.

When sharks attack like that, Hayward thought, they usually continue untill their victim is dead. Once a shark smells blood its in a feeding frenzy.

As tne Shark moved in again, Richardson saw its rubbery greyish-blue head. He clenched his right hand and punched with all his might. But razor sharp teeth fastened onto his left shoulder and upper arm, and ripped.

Desperately, Richardson scanned the water for the shark, to spot where it would lunge from next. But he could only see the deep, dark sea.

He yelled willing Harry to hurry. 'Please God, dont let me die here!'

Ten seconds crawled by. Suddenly, unseen, the monster was back. Ramming itself against his chest, it sank its teeth into his right side then came back to graze his lower stomach.

Summoning his remaining strength Richardson swam as fast as he could. 'Blood will attract the shark, get away from the blood! ' But his blood was trailing him in the water. Frantically he kept pumping his legs. 'There could be more than one of them. They could finish me off as a pack.'

As Hayward closed in he thought he saw a dolphins dorsal fin break the water behind Richardsons head, 'maybe there was a dolphin protecting him?'

'Harry ! ' Bawled Richardson, now surrounded by a pool of blood about 13 feet across. 'Get me out of here!' A final terror suffused his mind, 'my legs - the shark is going to get my legs!'

Richardson's arms were like lead as Hayward hauled him over the side of the zodiac. Hayward layed him face down on the wooden planking. Blood pumping out of Richardson's body coverd Hayward's body and shorts.

Hayward restrained a gasp as he saw great fold of flesh hanging loose on Richardson's back. With the ribs exposed, he thought he could see his heart, lungs and other vital organs, but he didnt dare say anything.

'Its not too bad,' he reasured Richardson as he gunned the motor into full throttle. Back at the Jadran they decided to leave Richardson where he was.

Hayward was thrown towel after towel in order to tornique the whole body in one giant bandage, and thankfully into the zodiac clambered the yachts Israeli Captain, 54 year old Itzac Hermon.

Protected from most of the pain by shock, Richardson was mainly aware of the whine of the Jadrans two 280 horse-power deisel engines as the craft headed full tilt for port.

Slowly he became aware of suffocating heat. 'I'm so hot,' he murmered. Bottle after bottle of water was passed down into the zodiac and poured gently over his head and shoulders.

'I cant breath,' mumbled Richardson. Hayward wondered whether one of his lungs had been punctured. He got passed and oxygen cylinder which Itzak and Harry administed to Richardson, but with the mask on he found it almost impossible to exhale. The cylinder was put aside.

'Im so tired,' sighed Richardson.'I just want to sleep.'

'Martin, you must not sleep.' Hermons face was close to his. ' You have to keep awake.' During his time in the Israeli army, Hermon had seen a lot of battlefield casualties in a similar state of shock. He knew they had to stop Richardson from loosing conciousness, letting slip the will to live.

Hermon plied him with questions about his family, his brothers and three sisters, about all the travelling he had done and the journeys he still hoped to make. 'But now I just want to sleep Richardson concluded.'

As Hayward poured more water over Richardson's shoulders he saw that his eyes were rolling back into his head. He was loosing conciousness.

Hayward began talking to him about the diving course. 'Your about the best student i've ever had. You picked it up very fast, so we'll definitely finish the course one day.'

Richardson grunted in appreciation. 'How much longer untill we get to port?' He asked weakly.

Danny Hermon made a call to Sharm el Sheikh to alert them they had a serious casualty on board.

Fifty minutes after the attack the Jadran berthed and Dr Magdy Zakaria, a slim, bearded 43 year old slipped down into the zodiac. He quickly realized there was noting he could do while Richardson lay in the bloodstained water that sloshed in the bottom of the boat.

Richardson was eased onto a stretcher, then hoisted onto the back of a pick-up truck for the three minute drive to the hyperbaric medical centre. Although the centre with its decompression chamber dealt mainly with divng casualities, Richardson was lucky enough to have fallen into the hands of an inspired trauma surgeon, trained not only at Cairo university medical school but also at St. Mary's Hospital in London, and in Germany and the U.S.

As Zakaria unwrapped the blood soaked towels from Richardson's body, he noticed the look in the eyes of his assistant Frederique Dalifard, a 22 year old on a three month break from her Paris medical school. For a moment, he wondered whether she would freeze.

Wisely, he kept her busy as he fed the first of three pints of fluid through an intravenous line into Richardson's right arm, then administered drugs to counteract the shock and pain, combat infection and help to raise his perilously low blood pressure. Zakaria reckoned he might have lost as much as 20% of his blood.

As she and Zakaria cleaned and bandaged his wounds, Frederique reassured Richardson with a constant comentary: ' Your injuries may look bad, but they are really not too serious. Youre going to be all right.'

 The shark had not removed too much flesh except on the left shoulder and back. There, a patch about eight inches square had been destroyed where the shark had bitten through into the thoracic cavity, causing the collapse of one lung, and chewed off portions of two ribs.

Zakaria now faced a major problem. He had installed a chest tube to drain off blood and fluid. But reinflating a collapsed lung required a full scale surgical procedure for which he had neither the staff nor facilities.

Richardson's only chance of survival was a well equiped hospital. The nearest was a new military facility at El Tur, 62 miles north up the SInai Peninsula. But with the Englishman's breathing capacity down to about 50 per cent and decreasing he would have to try and inflate the lung before he could be moved.

Acting almost instinctively, Zakaria began something he had never attempted before. He grabbed the square, strerile nylon wrapping from inside the chest tube pack. With this firmly attached to the surrounding skin on three sides, he fashioned a makeshift flutter valve that would create negative pressure inside the chest cavity, allowing the collapsed lung to reinflate.

After 40 minutes of hectic emergency treatment, they were ready to set off on the hour long dash to El Tur. In the ambulance, Frederique crouched over RIchardson, an arm round his shoulders and head. She continued to reassure him, 'You are doing very well...It wont be long before we get to hospital....Dr Zakaria is taking good care of you.'

Zakaria smilled as Richardson murmered,' At least I managed to punch the brute.' The doctor marvelled again at his spirit, the stoicicsm with which he bore his injuries. With those injuries, and so much pain, others would have died within half and hour.

Richardson, exhausted, hovered on the brink of conciousness. Near the end of the journey he grew restless. ' When are you going to give me something for the pain?' he asked.

Zakaria explained that they already had, ' but its effects are begining to wear off .' He daren't adminsiter more painkillers, for fear of further suppressing Richardson's circulation or breathing. 'We'll be at the hospital soon, Then we'll give you a proper anaesthetic, so we can patch you up.'

As soon as they arrived at the hospital, RIchardson was whipped off to the opperating theatre. With their patient on his side, Zakaria and two other doctors worked on him simultaneously, one on the front, two on the back. It took them three hours to wire up his damaged ribs, repair the thoracic wall and close the flesh wounds with almost 300 stitches.

By early afternoon the next day Richardson was awake; hours later he was eased out of bed and into a wheelchair. By the following day he was able to haul himself out of bed with the help of a length of bandage tied to the end of the bed.

A week after his admission to hospital, he discharged himself to fly home to see his family and for skin grafting for his wounds.

 The night before he left, he spent the evening on board the Jadran, sharing a meal and some beers with his friends under a starlit sky. With Harry Hayward he pondered the miracle of his survival. Why had the shark, probably an Oceanic White tip, not come back to finish him off? What could have deterred it from its usual deadly pattern of attack?

Was it the the dolphin that Hayward might have thought he saw in the heat of the moment, which could have just as easily been the sharks dorsal fin? or was it just his quick thinking and the speed with which he got to Martin in the first place?