The safety diver who saved the life of early deep diver Hannes Keller has died at the age of 73. Veteran US diver Dick Anderson was with Keller and British diver Peter Small when they made their 1000ft bell-dive in 1962, becoming the first men to reach that depth in open water.
Small and another safety diver, Chris Whittaker, died when things went tragically wrong in the bell, and it was Anderson who saw that Keller's fin was stuck in a hatchway, and hacked off the fin's tip to free him.
Anderson was a technical consultant on the Walt Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1954, came up with a still-used regulator design in 1960, and later became an underwater film-maker, and editor of the US magazine Dive during the 1960s and '70s
Anderson died of motor neurone disease, leaving his wife Bridget, daughter of film-producer Hal Roach, and three daughters.
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