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RICK ALLEN
Adapting to life’s challenges
DIVE SLATE
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WINTER 2012
R
ick Allen strapped on his
scuba gear and peered over the edge
of the barge. He’d made this same
dive to Blackbeard’s infamous shipwreck,
the Queen Anne’s Revenge, more than 200
times before — but not like this, not since
his life-altering accident on Jan. 3, 2011.
That night Allen returned to his Fayetteville,
N.C., home from a Carolina Hurricanes hockey
game. He stepped into his garage, forgetting
he had laid out some dive gear to prepare it for
winter storage. He accidentally knocked over
an aluminum cylinder of compressed oxygen,
causing an explosion that ripped off his left
arm at the elbow.
Allen’s first thought after the
explosion was a lesson he learned from his
dive instructor, Larry Brown, more than
a quarter century earlier: “Panic, and you
die.” He credits that creed with saving
his life. His second thought, after looking
down at his missing arm, was, “Oh wow,
my life just changed forever.”
More than a year later, one thing
has not changed: Allen’s determination
to dive. He has been a self-proclaimed
waterbug since he can remember. “For me,
it’s much easier to play in the ocean than
it is to walk on land,” he said. It was the
ocean’s pull that persuaded Allen to leave
his job as a television photographer in
1997 after more than a dozen years in
the business. “At age 36, I needed a new
challenge, a chance to do new things and
take my shooting, editing and lighting skills
to a higher level,” he said. “I also wanted
to be the master of my own fate and focus
on the subjects I love most. It really was
a great leap into the unknown of self-
employment but something I had to do
and a decision I’ve never regretted for an
instant.” A few months before Allen hung
his shingle, a private research firm called
Intersal Inc. had discovered the Queen
Anne’s Revenge on the ocean’s floor, right
off the North Carolina coast near Beaufort
Inlet. It didn’t take long for Allen to get
acquainted with Blackbeard’s lost ship.
By 1998 Allen and his company, Nautilus
Productions, had begun shooting underwater
video of the shipwreck, working hand in
hand with the North Carolina Office of
State Archaeology, Underwater Archaeology
Branch, on the ship’s exploration and
recovery. Allen later received the exclusive
video rights to the underwater footage
of the wreck, parlaying those rights into
documentaries for the Discovery Channel,
the BBC, UNC-TV and others. In 2000 Allen
took his work a step further, co-producing a
groundbreaking, weeklong live Internet
broadcast that provided live video and audio
footage of the shipwreck to the world.
Filming the Queen Anne’s Revenge has
been Allen’s passion, but far from his only
one. He and his wife, photographer Cindy
Burnham, have dived shipwrecks the
world over. In 2009 Nautilus Productions
won a coveted Bronze Telly award for a
documentary on the mysterious Mardi
Gras shipwreck, an estimated 200-year-old
vessel that lies off the coast of Louisiana.
Allen is also fond of sharks — really big ones.
He likes to film 3,000-pound great whites
underwater and above when they break the
surface to devour their meals.
P HO T O S T H I S P A G E C I ND Y BURNH AM
Underwater videographer Rick Allen
triumphantly returns to the Queen
Anne’s Revenge after his life-altering
accident in January 2011.
Hometown:
Lubbock, Texas
Age:
48
Years Diving:
28
Favorite Dive Destinations:
North Carolina and Truk/Chuuk
Why I’m a DAN Member:
“DAN provides global assistance
for victims of dive- and travel-
related accidents, publishes
current dive science and medical
information and fills the need for
comprehensive dive and travel
insurance.”
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