The crew

Peggy Sue: a life in rescue, and never one word of thanks.

That's her up there in the good sunglasses. Peggy Sue is my rescue mannequin — the official drowning victim of every Rescue Diver class I teach. I bought her, all foam and good intentions, before I ran my very first rescue course as an instructor, and she's been the one going under in my classes ever since. Every student I've walked through a tired-diver tow or hauled up from the bottom has practised it on her, and she has never once complained.

Her origins are humble and, frankly, a little mysterious. As the legend now goes, she was born to Mamma Sue and Papa Sue — a long and dignified line of rescue mannequins whose entire reason for existing is to be in trouble. The Sues are people built only to be saved: no hobbies, no opinions, no survival instinct to speak of. Peggy arrived in a cardboard box, weighed about as much as a wet labrador, and has spent every year since living right up to the family name.

And what a career it has been. She has been recovered from the bottom of quarries and the murk of rivers, towed across more surface water than most divers will swim in a lifetime, given mouth-to-mouth by total strangers, had her chest compressed by nervous students counting under their breath, and been shocked back into a life she never actually had by a training defibrillator more times than is strictly polite to mention. Sunny days, rainy days, cloudy days, the odd night dive — Peggy Sue gets rescued, and Peggy Sue says nothing. Not a cough, not a sputter, and certainly not a thank you.

For years she didn't even have a name; she was just "the manikin." Then one warm afternoon I was down running a class and left her bobbing on the surface between drills. While I was under, one of my students — a twelve-year-old girl who'd just earned her Open Water certificate, with a sense of humour well beyond her certification level — conspired with her equally guilty father to give my training aid the holiday it had clearly earned. I surfaced, scanned the water for my victim — and found her instead reclining in a deck chair, in a bikini, behind a pair of sunglasses, a brightly coloured cocktail in one hand, tiny paper umbrella and all. My freshly minted diver looked me dead in the eye, christened her "Peggy Sue," and the name has stuck like wet neoprene ever since.

She's still with me, of course. She's outlasted gear, gear bags, and one or two dive buddies, and she has quietly attended every rescue class I've ever taught — the patient, soggy, faintly smug heart of the whole thing. Every diver I've ever brought through a rescue course owes her a small debt. She is the most-rescued and least-grateful being in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and I wouldn't trade her for the world.