The Inside Story Of The Thai Cave Rescue’ By Rick Stanton With Karen Dealy

Ron Howard blurbed Aquanaut: The Inside Story of the Thai Cave Rescue as “a case study in courage.” This real-life adventure story authored by Rick Stanton with Karen Dealy is indeed that. Just as importantly, however, it highlights the role that science literacy plays in some life-and-death quests—and of the value of an ongoing trope in the sci-fi novel A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“Don’t panic!”

Really, don’t, at least not underwater when more than a dozen lives are at stake. In 2018 in Thailand, Rick Stanton and his diving partner John Volanthen didn’t, and that along with fundamental understandings of geology, hydrology, gas mixing, and physiology saved the day.

Stanton and Volanthen are hobbyist cave divers, both from the UK. Aquanaut‘s main story is their 2018 rescue of 13 young boys who’d become stranded behind miles of flooded underground tunnels in Tham Luang, Thailand. That main narrative is interspersed with recollections by Stanton of his earlier diving adventures and rescues in Europe and Mexico. At first as I read Aquanaut, the then-vs-now dive juxtapositions could feel jarring. Soon enough, though, I realized that, in each of the recounted pre-Tham Luang dives and rescues, Stanton acquired a knowledge base that he relied upon when the lives of 13 boys were at stake. 

Spoiler alert: The boys all lived. But probably you knew that, as their rescues were broadcast live around the world.

Aquanaut opens with the discovery of Stanton finding the boys dry and well but having no way to flee their dry perch at the end of a miles-long, flooded tunnel. The book then rewinds to the beginnings of the hunt for them. Were they even alive? After resolving that they were, it details the chaos, setbacks, and success of each boy’s hair-raising rescue.

Time was in no one’s favor as the rescues themselves were plotted and executed. Everyone knew that approaching monsoons would not only fill all of the caves along the tunnel with even more water but would accelerate the current; against it even the strongest rescue divers might be powerless. The boys would soon be awash in floodwater. Stanton and Volanthen knew that, even if the water didn’t drown the boys, it would edge out any fresh air. Exhaled carbon dioxide would smother them.

Panic on the part of “our heroes” would, at this point, seem like an appropriate response.

Of course, that didn’t happen.

The Chaos at Tham Luang

Before Stanton and Volanthen even arrived on the scene at Tham Luang, hundreds of Thai SEALS had begun planning a rescue that would fail absolutely.

Enter Stanton and Volanthen. In comparison to the sleekly-equipped Thai SEALS, Stanton especially may have seemed to be a bit of a comic figure, too dense to be unnerved. After all, he was equipped mostly with instruments and tanks he’d made at home from used and found parts and from the likes of kitchen utensils. He had never acquired in his sixty or so years even a single academic degree. He hadn’t served in the military. How could Stanton especially succeed in a task at which the SEALS had failed?

What Saved the Day

Here’s what Stanton had going for him by way of credentials:

• In his decades as a recreational caver and diver, he’d set records for depth cave diving.
• He had planned and executed several against-all-odds underwater rescues, including saving six British cave divers from a labyrinth cave near Pueblo, Mexico. Because of such dives he’d been awarded royal medals for both gallantry and chivalry.
• He had gained the trust and respect of the cave diving community around the world.
• He had trained himself never to resort to panic. At the same time, he developed a knack for methodical, creative, and sometimes even fanciful problem-solving.
• He had a diving partner who, like him, was skilled and resolute.
• He deeply understood the necessary aspects of geology, hydrology, gas mixing, and physiology. (By book’s end, readers do, as well, and at no harm to them.)

Aquanaut is an exceptional, true-life adventure book. Heroism wins the day. But, ha! It does it with a strong assist from science.

Pegasus Books. Hardcover ISBN 978164313919. 448 pp. $29.95. Publication: January 4, 2022